M. de (Jean Lévesque) Burigny

Born in Reims in September 1692 and later active in Paris, Jean Lévesque de Burigny was a French historian and man of letters. Early in his career, he worked with his brothers on a vast manuscript dictionary of universal knowledge, a project that seems to have fed the breadth of learning seen across his later books.

He also contributed heavily to L'Europe savante while in The Hague, and on returning to Paris devoted himself to historical research. Sources describe him as a conscientious, modest scholar, and he moved in the intellectual circles of his time, with ties to writers and philosophers and, later, election to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1775.

Burigny's books ranged widely, from Histoire générale de Sicile and Histoire des révolutions de l'empire de Constantinople to works on pagan philosophy and religion. He is especially remembered for biographical studies, including lives of Hugo Grotius and Erasmus, which were valued for preserving details not easily found elsewhere. He died in Paris on October 8, 1785.