Baillet, Adrien

BAILLET, bɑ̄´´yê´, ADRIEN: Roman Catholic; b. at Neuville, near Beauvais (54 m. n.n.w. of Paris), June 13, 1649; d. in Paris Jan. 21, 1706. He was educated in the Seminary of Beauvais; became a priest 1675 and obtained a small vicarage; in 1680 he was appointed secretary to Lamoignon, president of the Parliament of Paris, and spent the rest of his life in unremitting devotion to study. His most important works were: Jugements des savants sur les principaux ouvrages et auteurs (9 vols., Paris, 1685-86); Les vies des saints (3 vols., 1695-1701); Vie de Descartes (2 vols., 1691); Histoire de Hollande, a continuation of Grotius (4 vols., 1693). He was favorable to the Jansenists and has been called hypercritical. A monograph, De la dévotion à la Sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû (1693) was thought to attack the doctrine and practise of the Church and put upon the Index, and a like fate befell the first and second volumes of the Vies des saints, which were said to contain remarks little short of slanderous. The first volume of the Amsterdam edition (1725) of the Jugements des savants contains an Abrégé of his life.