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Early Modern · 1697
Historical and Critical Dictionary
Pierre Bayle · 1647–1706
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What it is
A biographical dictionary whose footnotes swallow the entries, raising sceptical difficulties about miracles, providence, and the problem of evil at every turn.
Why it lasted
The most read book of the early Enlightenment and the arsenal from which Voltaire and the philosophes drew their arguments.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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