Claude Sallier (4 April 1685, in Saulieu – 6 September 1761, in Paris) was a French clergyman, librarian, and philologist, as well as professor of Hebrew at the Royal College of France and Keeper of the Bibliothèque du Roi during the Age of Enlightenment.
I believe I owe to the memory of this honest and learned man a tribute of gratitude that all the scholars he was able to server will surely share with me.”[5] During the Age of Enlightenment, the cultural influence of France made the King’s Library in Paris a “beacon”, with Claude Sallier as its guardian for forty years.
This position led Sallier to exchange considerable amounts of correspondence and books with scholars from England, Holland, Prussia, Poland, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, and Spain.
Sallier’s prominence and breadth of knowledge led him to give a large number of conferences and lectures on classic scholars such as Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, and Cicero; on poets like Charles d’Orléans and Christine de Pizan; on sculpture and painting, and even on ancient clocks.
He frequented literary salons and associated closely with the society's intellectual elite including Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Buffon, Charles Marie de La Condamine, and Réamur.