Claude Yvon

(1714 - 1791)

A philosophe abbé who contributed some fifty-five entries to Denis Diderot’s encyclopedia project, Claude Yvon attracted the attention of the Great Council’s advocate general, who was suspicious of Yvon’s Enlightenment rationalism and accused him of atheism. By 1752 Yvon was forced to flee Paris under fear of arrest. Voltaire came to Yvon’s defense, arguing that the abbé’s entries did not support materialism.