BAYLE, PIERRE. - Protestant philosopher and man of letters, born at Carla (Ariège) on 18 Nov. 1647, died at Rotterdam on 28 Dec. 1706. In 1669 he left Calvinism to embrace the Catholic faith; but almost immediately he returned to Calvinism. He was at Geneva, then at Paris and Sedan, where he taught at the Protestant university. When this was closed he went to Rotterdam, where he taught at the École illustre from 1681 to 1693. He lost his chair on the charge of irreligion.
B. carried to its extreme the antithesis between reason and faith. The two terms are absolutely irreconcilable:
The arcades of the central nave with panels showing traces of Anglo-Saxon or Eastern inspiration, the pillars and ogives of the side aisles and the southern porch. The ambulatory around the choir leads to nine radiating chapels; the upper level
and was translated into various languages (in Italian, Rome 1867, and Anselina 1889), wrongly attributed to Fr. G. Roothaan.
B.’s Eucharistic theory is widely refuted by G. B. Franzelin, De Eucharistia, 5th ed., ed. G. Filograssi, Rome 1932, pp. 291-98, and by Fr. C. Piccirilli, Disquisitio de catholico intellectu dogmatis transubstantiationis, Naples 1912, pp. 130-31, 174, 185, 240.