GIBIEUF, GUILLAUME. - Oratorian theologian, b. at Bourges in 1585 (?), d. at Paris on 6 June 1650. He held important offices in the Oratory of Cardinal Bérulle, who appointed him vicar general in 1625 and visitor of the Carmelite nuns in France; he had notable relations with Descartes, Mersenne, St Cyran, and Gainsenius.
His books: *La vie et les grandeurs de la très sainte Vierge Marie* (Paris 1637), *Cathéchèse de la manière de la vie parfaite* (ibid. 1637), faithfully reflect the principles of Berullian spirituality and earned him a notable place among the mystical writers of the “French school.” But G.’s greatest importance lies in his *De libertate Dei et creaturae* (ibid. 1630), where he proposes a new solution to the question of the harmony between free will and divine concurrence. The novelty, which provoked a bitter controversy with the Jesuit theologians F. Annat and Th. Raynaud, consists in the notion of free will as a faculty which, by freeing itself from the slavery of created things, participates in the infinity of God, and in the consequent definition of freedom as the “fulness” of the soul. To such freedom the lack of “active indifference” does no harm, since this is rejected as a non-essential and indeed defective element; for the will to be free, that metaphorical and participated “immensity” deriving from union with the infinite is necessary and sufficient. This doctrine, inasmuch as it excludes freedom of indifference, paved the way for Jansenius, who found in the book “des grandes ouvertures” and discussed it in the *Augustinus* (III, 7, 16).
G.’s influence on Descartes is more uncertain, despite Descartes’ assertion that he fully accepts G.’s doctrine (cf. the letter to Mersenne, April 1641); it seems to be limited to the Neoplatonic and Augustinian elements present in G. and in the philosopher.