LAUNOY, Jean de. - Gallican theologian, born at Valdecic (Picardy) on 21 Dec. 1603, died in Paris on 10 March 1678. In 1636 he graduated in Paris and was ordained priest. Professor at the Sorbonne, he was deprived of his chair for criticising the condemnation of A. Arnald. Highly esteemed for his extraordinary activity, in matters of faith his anti-traditional tendency confined him to the margins of orthodoxy.
About 80 are his works, of which about thirty deal with Ireland. The complete edition was edited by Granet (10 vols., Geneva 1731-33). L. was an opponent of papal infallibility, of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption of the Virgin. With regard to Penance he was a contritionist and in his famous treatise: Regia in matrimonium potestas (Paris 1674), he considered Christian marriage a mere civil contract, subject by its own right only to the authority of the State, going so far as to maintain that by « Ecclesia », the Council of Trent (sess. XXIV, can. 4) meant the secular princes. As regards Grace and Predestination, he accused St Augustine of novelty and opposition to the other Fathers. He attacked the primitive Christian traditions of France (the coming of St Lazarus to Provence, the evangelisation of Paris by St Denis the Areopagite) and the ancient monastic privileges (the scapular of Carmel). In this field his conclusions agree with those of modern critics, which explains the reference to his name in the middle of the 20th century.