BAUNY, ETIENNE. — French Jesuit and moralist, born at Mauzon (Ardennes) in 1564, died at Saint-Pol-de-Léon on 3 December 1649. He entered religious life in 1593 and for many years was professor of moral theology and cases of conscience at the Collège de Clermont in Paris.
He published moral works in Latin and French: Somme des péchés qui se commettent en tous états (Paris 1630, several reprints); Pratique du droit canonique au gouvernement de l'Eglise (there 1633); De Sacramentis ac personis sacris, theologia moralis, part 1 (there 1640); part 2 (there 1642); De censuris ecclesiasticis (there 1639–42); De contractibus (there 1695). The two works in French and the first part of the De Sacramentis were placed on the Index (16 September 1640); the French works were also condemned by the Assembly of the French clergy (1641). With this condemnation began the Jansenist offensive against the alleged laxism of the Jesuits. Pascal ridicules him, together with Escobar, in the fourth of his Provinciales, applying to him the motto: «Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi». B., who personally led an austere life and was a zealous, demanding spiritual director, nevertheless expressed certain propositions that no moral theologian could uphold today.