BAILLET, ADRIEN. - French historian and hagiographer, b. at Neuville-en-Hez near Beauvais, on 13 June 1649, d. on 21 Jan. 1706 in Paris. He studied at the college of Beauvais, where he was later a professor (1672-76). Ordained a priest (1676), he was assigned for a short time to the care of souls until he was appointed librarian to the advocate-general de Lamoignon in Paris (1680), a post he held until his death and in which he was able to satisfy his insatiable taste for study.
His best-known bibliographical work: Jugements des savants, sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs (Paris 1685-1686), which in the author's original plan was to comprise six parts, stopped at the first. Through his Vie de M. Descartes (Paris 1691) he had occasion to be informed by friends and family members of the philosopher. Of his other numerous publications (in part posthumous), we recall only: De la dévotion à la sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû, (Paris 1693, 1696; Tournay 1712), where the author, on the contrary, not only [wrote] against true or alleged abuses, but also denied the Immaculate Conception and the bodily Assumption into heaven; the work was placed on the Index in 1694 and in 1701 «donec corrigatur»; and Les vies des Saints... avec l'histoire des autres fêtes de l'année (3 vols. in-fol., Paris 1701, and ed. in 12° there 1701 and 1704). In 1739 an ed. of 10 vols. appeared in Paris, of which the last contains Chronologie et topographie des Saints, a work published earlier together with others in Paris in 1703 in-fol., and in 5 vols. in 12°. Le Vie dei Santi for the months Jan.-Aug. were placed on the Index in 1709 and 1714 because of the many errors and the author's rationalist hypercriticism, who, although not a Jansenist, showed certain sympathies for the sect.
BIBL: L. Moreri, Grand Dict. hist., II, Basel 1732, p. 26; Hurter, IV, coll. 917-21; J. Carreyre, s. v. in DHC, VI, coll. 253-55 (with copious bibliography). Livario Oliger