BAILLET, ADRIEN. - French historian and hagiographer, b. at Neuville-en-Hez near Beauvais, 13 June 1649, d. in Paris, 21 Jan. 1706. He studied at the college of Beauvais, of which he later became professor (1672-76). Ordained priest in 1676, he was briefly engaged in parochial work before being 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 indulge his insatiable appetite for study.
His best-known bibliographical work is the Jugements des savants, sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs (Paris 1685-1686), which, in the author’s original plan, was to comprise six parts but remained unfinished at the first. For his Vie de M. Descartes (Paris 1691) he was able to draw on information supplied by the philosopher’s friends and family. Of his numerous other publications (some posthumous), we mention only: De la dévotion à la sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû (Paris 1693, 1696; Tournay 1712), in which the author not only opposed real or supposed abuses but also denied the Immaculate Conception and the bodily Assumption of the Virgin; the work was placed on the Index in 1694 and in 1701 “donc corrigatur”; and Les vies des Saints... avec l'histoire des autres fêtes de l'année (3 vols. fol., Paris 1701, and ed. 12° ibid. 1701 and 1704). In 1739 a Paris edition of 10 vols. appeared, the last containing Chronologie et topographie des Saints, a work first published together with others in Paris in 1703 fol., and in 5 vols. 12°. The Lives of the Saints for the months January-August were placed on the Index in 1709 and 1714 because of the many errors and the hypercritical rationalism of the author, who, though not a Jansenist, showed certain sympathies for the sect.