BAIL, LOUIS. - Theologian and ascetical writer, born at Abbeville in 1610, died in Paris in 1669. Doctor of the Sorbonne in 1628, he was curate at Montmartre and in 1661 was elected superior of the two monasteries of Port-Royal in Paris and Port-Royal des Champs, though received by the nuns with hostile distrust. Immediately he undertook their official visitation, subjecting the religious to very severe interrogations regarding their doctrines, and concluding with a favorable testimony concerning their orthodoxy and regularity.
The work that brought him great fame is La Théologie affective ou s. Thomas en méditations (4 vols., Paris 1638-50; many reprints; the latest, revised, annotated and updated, in 12 vols., Montrejeau 1903-1906), in which, following the Summa of St. Thomas, he expounds its articles in the form of affective meditations. This corresponded to the sentiment of pious people of the 15th-16th centuries, who, weary of the arid scholasticism of the time, desired a theological Summa that would fill souls with more affections and make them know Jesus Christ with piety and unction. Of his many other works, the following deserve mention: Les consolations du coeur affligé tant par les peines corporelles que par les peines spirituelles (Paris 1661), which consists of 36 consolations appropriate to as many trials of life; original is the 18th on children who die without Baptism, for whom one should not lament as if they were damned to hell; the 19th on the thorns of marriage; the 20th on maidens who do not find a husband, because many of those married must “put a good face on a bad fortune”; De Beneficio Crucis (ibid. 1653) against Jansenism; Sapientia foris praedicans (ibid. 1666), a collection of traits from various orators up to the 17th century, accompanied by notes on each; Summa Conciliorum (2 vols., ibid. 1645).