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A Controversial Treatise — Baillet's De la Dévotion à la Sainte Vierge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Leonard J. Wang
Leonard J. Wang
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, (Newark Division)
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Extract

Adrien Baillet, an erudite priest who was librarian and preceptor in the house of the distinguished magistrate Chrétien-Fran¸ois de Lamoignon from 1680 till the time of his death in 1706, was one of the most prolific writers of his time. A Cartesian and a Jansenist, the author of substantial biographies and histories, voluminous critical compendiums on both secular and theological subjects, and provocative religious treatises, and the center of some of the stormiest quarrels of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, he is today unknown to nearly everyone except specialists in his period. Many of the latter, moreover, are acquainted only with his massive biography of Descartes (1691) and his nine volume compendium Jugemens des scavans (1684–1686), an incomplete composition calculated to evaluate the principal works composed in all fields of human endeavor since earliest times as well as the judgments of their critics. The present study concerns one of the most obscure and at the same time most explosive of Baillet's works, his treatise on the cult of the Virgin Mary.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 1958 , pp. 263 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1958

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References

1 De La Dévotion à la sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû, Paris, Cellier, 1693. The story of the origin of Baillet's treatise on the Virgin is related in the generally reliable Abregé de la vie de Mr. Baillet composed by Baillet's nephew Augus-Frion and published in Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs, revûs, corrigés et augmentés par M. de La Monnoye, Paris, C. Moette, 1722, I, 3–28. See the Abregé, pp. 20–21. It is to be noted that the sermon on the conception of the Virgin which Baillet heard was not the one that is published in Bourdaloue's works. The published sermon concludes with a passage complimenting the king on the marriage of his grandson, the Due de Bourgogne, to Marie-Adelaide de Savoie. This marriage took place in 1697, nearly five years after Baillet had written his treatise. See Sermons du Père Bourdalouë de la compagnie de Jésus, sur les mystères, 1709, II, 1–52.

2 Cited in Henri Bremond, Histoire du sentiment religieux en France, Paris, Bloud et Gay, 1932, IX, 253Google Scholar. Also see ibid., pp. 247–288, passim.

3 Ibid., p. 254.

4 See ibid., pp. 254 ff. According to Bremond, Bourdaloue's sermon on the “Dévotion à la Vierge” is probably a reply to the pastoral letter of Gilbert de Choiseul.

5 The news that Baillet was planning to publish a work on the Virgin was first announced by the Protestant journalist Basnage de Beauval. “Mr. Baillet,” he wrote, “va mettre sous la presse un Traité de la Devotion raisonnable envers la Sainte Vierge, &. du culte qui lui est dû. Ce Traité, à ce qu'on dit, est dégagé de beaucoup d'opinions populaires. Il n'est pas favorable à ceux qui ont quelque pente à la superstition, ou qui font un trafic sordide de la devotion. Ce n'est qu–un in 12, de 13. ou 14. feuilles.” Histoire des Ouvrages des Sçavans, February 1693, p. 274. See ibid., May 1693, p. 522.

6 De La Dévotion à la sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû, pp. 222–223.

7 Ibid., pp. 237–239.

8 Histoire des Ouvrages des S¸avans, December 1693, p. 165.

9 See E. Caillemer, Lettres de divers savants à l'abbé Claude Nicaise, Lyon, association typographique, F. Plan, 1885, p. 38.

10 Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1697, II, 657, note c.

11 See Paul Hazard, La Crise de la conscience européenne, Paris, Boivin & Cle, i vol., 1935, P. 211. Also see the Histoire des Ouvrages des Sçavans, May 1693, p. 526, and August 1693, p. 645.

12 Mémoires de l'abbé Le Gendre, publiés d'après un manuscrit authentique par M. Roux, Paris, Charpentier, 1863, p. 224.

13 These approbations are found preceding the text of Baillet's treatise.

14 See Histoire des Ouvrages des Sçavans, December 1693, pp. 173–176.

15 For details of this controversy see ibid., August 1696, pp. 534–538.

16 Le Clerc, Jean, Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique, 1693, p. 236Google Scholar.

17 See the letter from Quesnel to du Vaucel dated June 25, 1694, and published in Un Janséniste en exil; correspondance de Pasquier Quesnel, edited by Mme. Albert Le Roy, Paris, Perrin et C10, 1900, I, 305. In a letter to the abbé Nicaise, dated July 19, 1694, Baillet lists in passing the names of two of the Jesuits who attacked his work. See the Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français no. 9361, p. 155. One must add in all justice that not every Jesuit attacked Baillet. “Le P. Dorléans, Jésuite,” wrote the abbé Dubos in a letter, to Bayle dated September 23, 1696, “… vient de donner un traitté de la dévotion à la Vierge, où Mr. Baillet n'est point repris comme l'on s'i attendoit.” See Lettres inédites de divers savants de la fin du XVIIme et du commencement du XVIIIme siècle; I, Correspondance de Pierre Bayle, publiées et annotées par Emile Gigas, Copenhague, B.E.C. Gad, 1890, P. 275.

18 This letter is found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français no. 9360, pp. 155 ff. Lamoignon was criticized on more than one occasion. “Un théatin, nommé le P. de la Croix (reconnu visionnaire), alia trouver, il y a quelque temps, M. de Lamoignon, avocat général,” wrote Père Quesnel in a letter dated June 25, 1694, “et lui déclara sans façon qu'il se sentait inspiré de Dieu pour lui parler contre le livre de M. Baillet, De la dévotion à la sainte vierge. Et après quinze jours u trois semaines, voyant bien qu'on ne s'en remuait pas, il est revenu à la charge pour faire à ce magistrat des reproches de sa négligence, de la part de Dieu.” See Un Janséniste en exil; Correspondance de Pasquier Quesnel, I, 304.

19 The news of Baillet's acquittal was first announced by Père Quesnel in a letter dated August 14, 1693. See ibid., p. 282.

20 See ibid., letter of June 25, 1694, pp. 304–305.

21 See the Appendix ad indicem librorum prohibitorum ordine alphabetico disposita usque ad annum 1696, p. 12. This appendix is published at the end of the Index librorum prohibitorum Innocentii XI Pontificis Maximi, Romae, 1681. Baillet's treatise was condemned once more by the pope in October 1701.

22 According to one of his biographers “Mr. Baillet ne voulut jamais écrire pour … défendre [son ouvrage], quoique ses amis l'en pressassent; Ses intentions êtoient droites et pures, quand il avoit composé un livre, S'il ne reussissoit pas il ne vouloit pas le soûtenir.” See the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, manuscript #5761, pp. 33 ff. The third and last edition of Baillet's treatise was published in 1712 with the title De La Dévotion à la sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû, par M. Adrien Baillet … avec les Avis salutaires de la bienheureuse Vierge Marie à ses dévots indiscrets (traduits par le P. Gabriel Gerberon du latin de Windenfelts), et une Lettre pastorale de M. de Choiseul, évêque de Tournay, sur ces “avis.”

23 See Dominique de Colonia and L. Patouillet, Dictionnaire des livres jansénistes, ou qui favorisent le jansénisme, Anvers, Jean-Baptiste Verdussen, 1755, I, 417.

24 See the letter from Quesnel to du Vaucel dated August 31, 1696 in Un Janséniste en exil; Correspondance de Pasquier Quesnel, I, 410.

25 Encyclopédic méthodique, ou par ordre de matières; par une société de gens de lettres, de savans et d'artistes, Paris, chez Panckoucke; Liège, chez Plomteux, 1784, Volume I, Part 2, p. 521.