What is the reputation of Pierre Bayle, and why should his ideas be restored to the canon of political thought? For his Dictionnaire historique et critique, first published in 1697, was for nearly two centuries rarely out of print. As one man's encyclopaedia of error the Dictionary, even at first glance, seemed remarkable. Its most celebrated feature, however, was the extended footnote where the author elaborated his criticisms of current scholarship. Bayle's admirers in the age of the Enlightenment were apt to distil the essence of these comments into just two words: tolerance and scepticism. They were notions with which Bayle's name became synonymous, even though his concerns went deeper than his posthumous admirers supposed. For in addition to tolerance and scepticism Bayle's Dictionary promoted justice as the end of government, and critical freedom as its prerequisite.

The texts in this collection have been selected to highlight the Dictionary's political ideas. Recent scholarship has in any case begun to redraw the links between Bayle's historical criticism and his convictions as a Huguenot who opposed persecution. Bayle's biographer, Elisabeth Labrousse, uncovers in his œuvre as a whole an engagement with a range of specifically political themes: for example, raison d'état, absolutism, the philosophy of history, tolerance both ecclesiastical and civil, and liberty of conscience (Labrousse (1963–4), vol. II, pp. 449–591).