Bajus,

Bajus, MICHAEL (properly, De Bay), a great Catholic theologian in the 16th century, was born in 1513 in Hainault. He studied at Louvain, became professor of Theology there in 1551, and went as a deputy to the Council of Trent in 1563. He was a devoted student of St Augustine, and his theology was based on that father's views of divine grace, of sin, and of the absence of merit in all good works. His assertion of the inability of the human will, left to its own freedom, to do anything but sin, with his application thereof to the dogma of the immaculate conception, soon drew on him the accusation of heresy. Seventy-six of his propositions were condemned by a papal bull in 1567. He submitted, but was supported by his university, which appointed him its chancelor in 1578. Meanwhile he maintained a long controversy with the Jesuits, and in 1587 denounced thirty-four of their theses as Pelagian and immoral. He died December 16, 1589. He may be regarded as the predecessor of the Jansenists. See Linsenmann, Michael Bajus (Tüb. 1867).