Abstract: In the central letter of Ce que c’est que la France toute catholique, a young Protestant, “appalled” by the French Church, formulates a radical criticism of religion itself. How much of Bayle should we see in this rejection of the intrinsic harmfulness of all religions? This question is only the more complicated given the fact that during that in 1686, Bayle published the Commentaire philosophique, where he defined the conditions of philosophical tolerance of religion even though the first text seems to invalidate any such attempt.
