author
M. de (Jean Lévesque) Burigny
1692–1785
An 18th-century French historian and man of letters, he wrote lively studies of figures from both sacred and secular history. His long career moved between scholarship, journalism, and the learned world of the French academies.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Reims in 1692 and later active in Paris, Jean Lévesque de Burigny built a reputation as a wide-ranging scholar of history, philosophy, and theology. Early in his career, he worked with his brothers on a vast manuscript compendium of universal knowledge, a project that helped shape the breadth of learning seen in his later books.
He also spent time at The Hague, where he contributed to L'Europe savante, a literary and scholarly journal. Burigny went on to publish works on subjects including pagan philosophy, the life of Erasmus, and the history of Christianity, showing a taste for learned biography and big intellectual subjects.
Burigny was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, a sign of the respect he earned in the republic of letters. He died in Paris in 1785, leaving behind the work of a patient, curious historian whose books reflect the energetic scholarship of the French Enlightenment.