Nicole

Summary

[The Jansenist Pierre Nicole died in 1695 giving Bayle the opportunity to include in the Dictionary's first edition an appreciation of his work. The article is, I believe, a landmark in political theory insofar as it shows, a century before Kant, that Bayle foresaw an evolving role for the philosophe théologien. For ecclesiastics were apt to believe that their judgements concerning heresy should, as under a once-united church, remain binding on every Christian. Bayle's view, hardly grasped by those whom he challenges, was that a theologian had no more claim than any lay thinker to escape assessment by peers in the republic of letters. When Bayle refers to a ‘death of controversy’ he is mocking the prediction of ‘certain persons’ for whom the outcome of such respect for religious ‘error’ would supposedly be religious apathy.]

Nicole (Pierre), one of the finest pens in Europe, was born at Chartres in 1625 … He was a member of the party of the Jansenists, and collaborated on many books with M. Arnauld, whose ‘loyal companion he was during the last ten or twelve years of his exile’. It was he who put into Latin M. Pascal's Provincial Letters and added a commentary to them [(B)]. He did not follow M. Arnauld when the latter left the kingdom in 1679, and he even consented, it is said, to an accommodation with the Jesuits, which consisted of agreeing to write nothing against them while not breaking with his old friends. One of his finest works is that entitled Essais de morale.