BARON, VINCENT

Dominican theologian and preacher; b. Martres, Haute-Garonne, France, May 17, 1604; d. Paris, Jan. 21, 1674. Baron was born of a prominent family, and from his earliest years he showed clear signs of genius and integrity. At age 17, he left the Jesuit college at Toulouse and entered the Dominican convent of St. Thomas in the same city. He made his religious profession there on May 16, 1622 and went on to complete his philosophical and theological studies. As early as 1634 he was first professor in his priory and conventual doctor at the University of Toulouse. In time he came to be considered one of the leading theologians of France.

In addition to teaching, he delivered courses of Lenten sermons in the principal churches of Toulouse, Avignon, Bordeaux, and other cities of southern France. At the invitation of the bishops of Languedoc, he preached throughout their dioceses for ten years, laboring to revive the faith of Catholics, to better their morals, and to combat the errors of the Calvinists, with whose ministers he frequently joined in open debate, sometimes in their public synods. He published an abridgment of these controversies under the title L'Hérésie convainçue. Of his sermons to Catholic congregations, we have only those preached at Paris in 1658 and 1659. They were doctrinal discourses and panegyrics of intellectual merit, but composed in the forced style of his age.

From 1630 to 1659 he filled the office of prior in the convents of Toulouse, Rhodez, Castres, Albi, Avignon, and in the general novitiate in Paris. He strove to promote the reforms in study and religious observance inaugurated by Sebastian Michaelis in the first years of the century. Declining the office of provincial in Toulouse, he was sent by the master general in 1660 to make a canonical visitation of the Portuguese houses of the order.

After his return to Paris, he devoted the remaining 14 years of his life to the composition of theological works. His most important productions were written to satisfy the desire expressed by Alexander VII to the Dominicans assembled in a general chapter at Rome in 1656 that they should publish a course in moral theology conformable to the doctrine of St. Thomas, and thus correct the laxity of morals encouraged by certain casuists. These works were Theologiae Moralis adv. Laxiores probabilistas pars prior, Manuductionis ad moralem theologian pars altera, and Theologiae moralis summa bipartita. In these writings, while condemning opinions that seemed too lax and censuring others that appeared too rigorous, he ably defended the system of probabiliorism. He engaged in an extended controversy with Jean de Launoy regarding the authenticity of the Summa theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. Another of his valuable works is Libri V apologetici pro religione, utraque theologia, moribus juribus Ord. Praed.

At the time of his death, he was engaged in writing a complete course in theology to be entitled D. Thomas sui intepres. This work, only half completed and never published, is not to be confused with the one bearing the same title by Antonin Massouli, OP.

Bibliography: p. mandonnet, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris, 1903–1959) 2.1:425–426. j. quÉtif and j. echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum (Paris, 1719–1723) 2.2:655–656. a. touron, Histoire des hommes illustres de l'ordre de Saint Dominique, 6 v., v. 5.

[r. j. rust]