Pierre Bayle’s Reflections on a Much Discussed Woman: The Heloise Article in the Dictionnaire Historique Et Critique

Abstract

Several kinds of difficulties arise in finding one’s way to the invaluable and entertaining article on Heloise by Pierre Bayle, contained in the vast encyclopedia compiled by this seventeenth-century érudit. Although Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique is cited in the bibliography of Charlotte Charrier, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende, 1933, at no. 429, it is translated neither by Richard H. Popkin in the Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections from the Dictionnaire nor in the earlier four-volume selections titled An Historical and Critical Dictionary, Selected and Abridged from the Great Work of Pierre Bayle. For readers of French, the original four folio volumes of the Dictionnaire are cumbersome and relatively rare, meaning that in most cases they are available only in rare book libraries. The best modern access to Bayle’s article on Heloise remains the nineteenth-century, sixteen-volume edition, titled Dictionnaire historique et critique de Pierre Bayle, edited by Beuchot.

Pierre Bayle’s commentary on the Abelard-Heloise correspondence has never been translated into English.The article heloise merits our consideration both for its inherent interest and its relevance to the authenticity question surrounding this correspondence.