The son of a Calvinist minister, Pierre Bayle was born and raised in France during the reign of Louis XIV, whose revocation of the Edict of Nantes outlawed Protestantism in 1685. Educated at the Jesuit College in Toulouse, Bayle converted to Catholicism, but several years later he adopted Calvinism. Bayle moved to Geneva in 1670 and continued his education in philosophy and theology until returning to France in 1674. In 1675, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Protestant academy in Sedan, where he remained until taking up a position as professor of philosophy and history in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1681. Bayle was dismissed from this position in 1693 after a heated dispute with a Calvinist colleague concerning the latter's extreme orthodoxy. He then spent the last years of his life completing what is probably his most famous work, the Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary).

In the Dictionary, Bayle employed his critical and skeptical approach in compiling a series of biographical articles on mostly obscure historical figures, which were then supplemented by digressive analyses of controversial factual, theological, and philosophical problems. Bayle's skepticism toward all ideological and religious orthodoxy had a great influence on many of the major Enlightenment thinkers, even though the Dictionary was condemned by the French Reformed Church of Rotterdam and banned by the French Roman Catholic Church soon after its publication.

Although the Dictionary was a massive work consisting of numerous entries and annotations, the underlying theme of the text was that of Bayle's longstanding plea for broad political toleration of divergent opinions on religion. In 1686, Bayle had published his Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jesus-Christ "Constrains-les d'entrer" (Philosophical Commentary on the Words of Jesus Christ "Compel them to come in"), in which he attacked religious intolerance and defended the claim that the intolerant should not be allowed to persecute others. Bayle even went so far as to suggest protecting the "rights of the erring conscience" against persecution by authorities who dogmatically assert knowledge of absolute truth with respect to religious matters. According to Bayle, religion and morality are independent of one another because religion can be based only on faith and not on reason. Therefore, contrary to the beliefs of many of his contemporaries, Bayle argued that theist and atheist alike are able to act morally. Toleration, in Bayle's uncompromising defense, is a necessary political remedy to the disease of sectarian violence and state repression.

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