BARRY, PAUL du. – French spiritual writer, born at Leucate in 1587; he became a Jesuit in 1605, and was a preacher, rector, and provincial; he died at Avignon in 1661. He belongs to the small group of Jesuit writers who followed in the footsteps of s. Francesco di Sales.
Some of his writings, such as Le Paradis ouvert à Philologie par cent dévotions à la Mère de Dieu (Lyons 1636) and L'année sainte ou l'instruction de Philologie (ibid. 1641), were attacked, for example, by the Jansenists, on account of their minute practices of Marian devotion. Indeed, they are not lacking in traces of exaggeration or affectation, but their substance is orthodox, with austere demands of virtue.
Pensez-y bien ou moyen court, facile et assuré pour se souter (Lyons 1645), centred on the thought of death, was reprinted and translated several times.