He was the son of Charles Bayet, Byzantine art historian, director of higher education, and the son-in-law of the historian Alphonse Aulard. He graduated in 1901, becoming a professor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1922. In 1923, he became directory of studies in the « Histoire des idées morales » [ethics] department of the École pratique des hautes études, later leading ethics courses at the Sorbonne.[2]
He was the president of the French National Press Federation (FNPF) from 25 August 1944 to his death in 1961. After having been clandestine president in 1943 and 1944, participating with writer Victor Charbonnel in the journal L'Action. He was also member of the French Human Rights League for many years, president of the Ligue de l'enseignement from 1949 to 1959, and general secretary of the Union rationaliste [fr]. He also took part in those which, shortly after the liberation, left the Radical party to join the Progressive Union, the 'kindred spirit' to the French Communist Party.
Bayet was a proponent of the Christ myth theory. With Paul-Louis Couchoud and Prosper Alfaric he authored Le Problème de Jésus et les Origines du Christianisme (The Problem of Jesus and Christian Origins, 1932).
Works
Les Écrivains politiques du XVIIIe, extracts with an introduction and notes by Albert Bayet and François Albert, 1904
Pacifisme et Christianisme aux premiers siècles, 1934
Attentats et terreur : instruments de conquête politique, Comité franco-espagnol, brochure, 1937
Histoire de France, 1938
Qu'est-ce que le rationalisme ? 1939
Histoire de la Déclaration des droits de l'homme : du 89 politique au 89 économique, 1939
Pétain et la Cinquième Colonne, 1944 (publié clandestinement durant l'Occupation)
Les Pensées de Pascal, 1948
Pour une réconciliation française. Laïcité XXe, 1958
Histoire de la libre-pensée, 1959; « Que sais-je ? » 848, 1970
References
^Archives municipales numérisées de l'état civil de Lyon, birth certificate 2/1880/268, date and place of death mentioned in the certificate margin (accessed 25 January 2013)
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