St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation

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CHAPTER XIII. – HERESIES OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

ARTICLE II. –  THE ERRORS OF MICHAEL BAIUS

6. Michael Baius disseminates his unsound doctrine, and is opposed.
7. St. Pius V. condemns seventy-nine Propositions of Baius, and he abjures them.
8. Retractation written by Baius, and confirmed by Pope Urban VIII.   



6. Michael Baius was born in Malines, in Flanders, in 1513, was made a Doctor of the University of Louvain, in 1550, and subsequently Dean of the same University. He was a man of learning, and of an exemplary life, but fond of new opinions, which he maintained in his works, published about 1560 (1), and thus he sowed the first seeds of that discord which disturbed the Church in the following century. Some Franciscan Friars thought his doctrines not sound, and submitted them, in eighteen Chapters, to the Faculty of Sorbonne, and that learned body judged them worthy of censure. This only added fuel to the fire, and the party of Baius published an Apology, in opposition to the censures of the Parisian University. Cardinal Commendon, who was then in the Low Countries, sent by the Pope for some other affairs, thought himself called on to interfere, as Apostolic Legate, and imposed silence on both parties, but in vain, for one of the Superiors of the Franciscans punished some of his subjects for defending the doctrines of Baius, and this proceeding caused a great uproar. At last, the Governor of the Low Countries was obliged to interfere, to prevent the dispute from going any further (2).


7. Some time after this Baius was sent by Philip II., as his Theologian, to the Council of Trent, together with John Hessel, and Cornelius, Bishop of Ghent (not Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ipres), all Doctors of Louvain. His opinions were not examined in the Council of Trent, though he had already printed his  works on Free Will, Justification, and Sacrifice. When he returned from the Council, he printed his Treatises on the Merit of Works, the Power of the Wicked, on Sacraments in general, on the Form of Baptism; and hence his opinions were spread more extensively, and disputes grew more violent, so that at last the Holy See was obliged to interfere. St. Pius V. then, in a particular Bull, which begins, ” Ex omnibus affectionibus,” after a rigorous examination, condemned seventy-nine propositions of Baius (in globo) as heretical, erroneous, suspect, rash, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears, but without specifying them in particular, and with this clause, ” that some of them might, in rigour, be sustained, and in the proper sense which the authors had,” or as others explain it, ” that although some of them might be in some way sustained, still the Pope condemns them in the proper and rigorous sense of the authors.”

Here are the words of the Bull : ”Quas quidem sententias stricto coram nobis examine ponderatas, quamquam nonnullas aliquo pacto sustineri possent, in rigore et proprio verborum sensu ab assertoribus intento, hæreticas, erroneas, suspectas, temerarias, scandalosas, et in pias aures offensionem immittentes damnamus.”

The name of Baius was not inserted in the Bull in 1567, nor did Pius command that it should be affixed in the public places, as is customary, but, wishing to act with mildness, consigned it to Cardinal Granveil, Archbishop of Mechlin, then in Rome, telling him to notify it to Baius, and to the University of Louvain, and to punish, by censures or other penalties, all who refused to receive it. The Cardinal discharged his commission by his Vicar, Maximilian Mabillon. The Bull was notified to the University, and accepted by the Faculty, who promised not to defend any more the Articles condemned in it, and Baius promised the same, though he complained that opinions were condemned as his which were not his at all, nor could he be pacified, but wrote to the Pope, in 1569, in his defence. The Pope answered him in a Brief, that his cause had already undergone sufficient examination, and exhorted him to submit to the judgment already passed. This Brief was presented to him by Mabillon, who reprimanded him harshly for daring to write to the Pope, after the sentence had been once given, and intimated to him, that he incurred an Irregularity by the proceeding. Baius then humbled himself, and prayed to be dispensed from the Irregularity. Mabillon answered, that he could not do so till Baius would abjure his errors. He asked to see the Bull, to know what errors he was to abjure. Mabillon said he had not the Bull by him, and prevailed on him there and then to abjure in his hands all his errors. He was then absolved from all censures, without giving any written document, and the matter was private between them (3).


8. After all that, there were not wanting others who defended the opinions of Baius, so after the death of St. Pius V., his successor, Gregory XIII., in his Bull Provisionis Nostrce, expedited in 1579, confirmed the Bull of St. Pius, and published it first in Rome, and then had it presented to the Faculty of Louvain, and to Baius himself, by Father Francis Toledo, afterwards raised to the purple by Clement VIII., who prevailed on Baius to submit quietly, and send a written retractation to the Pope, as follows : ”Ego Michael de Bajo agnosco, et profiteer, me ex variis colloquiis cum Rev. P. Francisco Toledo ita motum, et perauctum esse, ut plane mihi habeam persuasum, earum sententiarum damnationem jure factum esse. Fateor insuper ex iisdem sententiis in nonnullis libellis a me in lucem editis contineri in eo sensu, in quo rcprobantur. Denique declare ab illis omnibus me recedere, neque posthac illas defendere velle : Lovanii 24, Mart. 1580.”

The Faculty of Louvain then passed a law, that no one should be matriculated to the University, unless he first promised to observe the foregoing Bulls. Urban VIII., in the year 1641, in another Bull, which begins, ” In eminenti,” confirmed the condemnation of Baius, in conformity with the two preceding Bulls, and this Bull was received by the Sorbonne (4). Baius died about the year 1590, and, as he was born in 1513, he must have been seventy-seven years of age. The system of Baius and his errors will be seen in the Refutation XII. of this Volume.


(1) Possevin. t. 2, in M. Bajum.
(2) Gotti Ver. Rel. t 2, c. 116; Bernin. sec 16.
(3) Gotti, cit. s. 3, n. 1, 2.