Encyclopédie: translation
The great 18th-century French enterprise, the Encyclopédie was designed as a synoptic description of the branches of human knowledge. The leading figures behind the enterprise were Diderot and D’Alembert, and contributors included Holbach, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, sometimes known collectively as the encyclopedists. The work is a bible of the Enlightenment, philosophically very much in the tradition of Locke and Bayle . Its anti-clerical, humanistic tone led to suppression by royal decree in 1759.