Correspondance de Pierre Bayle, Vol. 7, juillet 1686-décembre 1688
Volume 7 of the magnificent new edition of the Correspondance de Bayle covers the period from July 1686 to December 1688. For this period, Pierre Desmaizeaux’s edition of his missives in the Oeuvres diverses contained ten letters; this volume contains 132 (nos. 588-719). It also corrects a number of errors in Labrousse’s Inventaire de la correspondance de Pierre Bayle (1961)(e.g. 157, 227). It is a pleasure to read, partly because almost any possible questions one may have about people, places, or events mentioned in the letters are answered in the notes. The volume is a window looking out onto the intellectual life of the late seventeenth century.
This period in Bayle’s life covered the last year that he edited the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (NRL), which explains why many of the letters are from writers who want him to review their books, and from those who are either happy or unhappy with his reviews. One of the unhappy readers was Queen Christina of Sweden, who wrote to him, at first through an anonymous intermediary, to complain of Bayle’s treatment of her in print. The editors agree with a recent identification of the intermediary as Giovanni-Francesco Albani, later Pope Clement XI. Christina was upset that when she wrote to protest the violence used against the Huguenots Bayle remarked that this showed that she still had Protestant feelings. This could, of course, be interpreted as a charge that her conversion to Catholicism was insincere. She demanded and received an apology. The publicity from publishing the correspondence with her surely did Bayle’s reputation no harm.
Bayle was at the center of the history of philosophy of the time. It seems like almost everyone in the Republic of Letters cared about Bayle’s opinion. Scientists and philosophers who wrote to Bayle in these years included Robert Boyle and Leibniz. One of his correspondents mentions a visit to Spinoza years before (477). The volume contains an entire short book by Antoine Arnauld, who published a Dissertation sur le pretendu bonheur des plaisirs des sens (1687) in the form of an answer to Bayle’s comments in the NRL in favor of Malebranche (373-428).
Arnauld was concerned to defend strict morals against the perceived dangers of libertinism or Epicureanism. The latter is indeed a current in some of the letters. A number of Bayle’s correspondents were self-described Epicureans, such as François Bernier and the baron Des Coutures. Of course, exactly what that meant, other than having some knowledge of Epicurus and Lucretius, was not always clear. There is one place where Bayle writes of the “talents that make you prefer the pleasures of the earth to the practice of the virtues”, which the editors most likely rightly identify as a lapsus in which he meant to say the opposite (10). (They note that it also could have been a misprint of the nineteenth century German editor.) If the recipient of the letter, one of the Dohnas, was indeed a vulgar Epicurean and thus what Bayle wrote was not a lapsus, that would change our understanding of Bayle’s remark. Bayle may have been an Epicurean, although probably not of the vulgar variety, which makes one think of Freudian slips. Later, another Dohna revealed his high-mindedness or his lack of subtlety by inviting Bayle to refute atheism with the same vigor with which he had refuted idolatry and superstition in the Pensées diverses (260).
There is a good deal of humor in the letters. For example, he excuses the excesses in a book by Pierre Jurieu with the ironic claim that the author is probably not experienced in polemics (364). Everyone knew that Jurieu was indeed very experienced in polemics. Bayle also observes that when Jean Le Clerc accuses others of odium theologicum he ends up painting his own portrait (19).
There are also many little gems in the notes. Du Rondel writes to Bayle about Gijsbert Kuiper’s edition of ancient texts about Harpocrates, the ancient god of silence. The editors call attention to the recent edition of Harpocrates that makes the point that total transparency tends to the totalitarian, and that various sorts of silence and even dissimulation may be the principal condition of civil liberty (352). Bayle’s Commentaire philosophique came out in several parts in 1686-88 and he mentions it often in letters, but he is always careful to maintain the pose that it is not by him. Bayle knew when to be silent, and what to hide, but on the whole one cannot accuse this very prolific author of keeping too much to himself.
