Martin de Barcos

Martin de Barcos (1600–1678), was a French Catholic priest and theologian of the Jansenist School.

Barcos was born at Bayonne, a nephew of Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the commendatory abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Cyran in the Duchy of Berry, who sent him to Belgium to be taught by Cornelius Jansen. When he returned to France he served for a time as tutor to a son of Robert Arnauld d'Andilly and later, in 1644, succeeded his uncle as the owner of the abbey. He did much to improve the abbey; new buildings were erected, and the library much enhanced.

Unlike many commendatory abbots of his day, however, who scarcely ever saw the monasteries over which they held authority, Barcos became an active member of the abbey, became a priest in 1647, and gave himself up to the rigid asceticism preached by his sect. He died there.

Barcos' ties with Du Vergier and Arnauld and, through them, with the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, soon brought him to the front in the debates about Jansenism. He collaborated with his uncle in the Petrus Aurelius and with Arnauld in the book on Frequent Communion.

Of Barcos' own treatises, some bear on authority in the Church and some on the then-much mooted questions of grace and predestination. To the first class belong (1) De l'autorité de saint Pierre et de saint Paul (1645), (2) Grandeur de l'Église de Rome qui repose sur l'autorité de saint Pierre et de saint Paul (1645). (3) Éclaircissements sur quelques objections que l'on a formées contre la grandeur de l'Église de Rome (1646). These three books were written in support of an assertion contained in the book On Frequent Communion, namely: "St. Peter and St. Paul are the two heads of the Roman Church and the two are one". This theory of dual church authority, implying an equality of the two apostles, was condemned as heretical by Pope Innocent X in 1674 (Denzinger, Enchiridion, 965).

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