BOULAINVILLIERS, HENRI, count. - Born at St-Saire (Normandy) on 11 Oct. 1658, died in Paris on 23 Jan. 1722. A curious figure: historian, politician, astrologer. An advocate of the feudal idea against the monarchical one and of the myth of Germanic superiority; essentially a Spinozist, beneath a merely apparent reverence for Christianity, he was one of the most skilful dechristianizers of his time.
In La vie de Mahomed, published posthumously (2nd ed., Amsterdam 1731), taking up the concept of the “nobility” of Islam already advanced by a group of Arabists, he came to portray Maometto as the implementer of a natural and humanitarian religion: according to B., the religion of Maometto knows how to reconcile nature with law, whereas Christianity is not only against nature but also unnatural; through his idea of the impossibility of the existence of any religion that is not exclusively natural, he sought to undermine the concept of positive religion and that of revealed Christian religion. This myth of Maometto was of fundamental importance in rationalist and deistic France and is connected with a whole series of other myths (e.g., the lofty morality of the Chinese, together with the related assertion of the uselessness of Revelation).