Baron, Vincent

, a learned father of the Romish church, and a monk of the Benedictine order, was born at Martres in the diocese of Rieux in Gascony, and entered into the order of the preaching friars at Toulouse in 1622. He taught divinity several years with applause in the convent of the same city, and was made prior there; as he was likewise at Avignon, and in the general novitiate of the suburb of St. Germain at Paris. He was definitor for his province in the general chapter held in 1656, in which he presided at the theses dedicated to pope Alexander VII. which gained him the esteem of all the city and his whole order. He was present at the assembly, in which the pope ordered the definitors and fathers of the chapter to be told, from him, that he was extremely grieved to see the Christian morality sunk into such a deplorable relaxation, as some of the new casuists had reduced it to, and that he exhorted them to compose another system of it, which should be conformable to the doctrine of St. Thomas. This was what engaged father Baron to undertake the works which he wrote upon that subject. He was again chosen provincial; and afterwards sent by the father general as commissary to Portugal, upon important affairs, which he managed with such success, that the queen, the court, and all the monks gave testimony of his merit by a public act. He returned to Paris to the general novitiate, and died there, Jan. 21, 1674, aged seventy years. Besides several Latin poems, which he left as instances of his capacity in polite literature, he published the following works: 1. “Theologia Moralis,” Paris, 1665, in 5 vols. 8vo, and again in 1667. 2. “Libri Apologetici contra Theophilum Rainaudum,” Paris, 1666, in 2 vols. 8vo. 3. “Mens sancti Augustini & Thorn ae de Gratia & Libertate,” 1666, 8vo. 4. “Ethica Christiana,” Paris, 1666, 2 vols. 8vo. 5. “Responsio ad Librum Cardense,” ibid, in 8vo. 6. “L'Heresie Convaincue,” Paris, 1668, 12mo. 7. “Panegyriques des Saints,” ibid. 1660, '4to. The first two volumes of his Moral Theology were prohibited. It relates to the principal points in dispute between the Dominicans and Jesuits. ¹