MASSOULIÉ, ANTONIN

Dominican theologian who participated in the controversies on physical premotion and quietism; b. Toulouse, Oct. 28, 1632; d. Rome, Jan. 23, 1706. After his education in the humanities, he entered the Order April 21, 1647, and studied in the Dominican schools at Toulouse and Bordeaux. He earned his doctorate at Toulouse. He refused the episcopate but held office in the Order as provincial of Occitania (1679); prior of the Novitiate General in Paris (1684–87); visitator general of the priories in Alsace (1687); and socius to the master general until his death. During four pontificates Massoulié served as consultor to papal commissions investigating the questions of philosophical sin, quietism, and chinese rites. He was inquisitor general at Toulouse (1693), and a consultor of the Holy Office. He was called upon to examine the Maximes des Saints (1697) of Fénelon, upon which he passed an unfavorable judgment.

In his two-volume work, Divus Thomas sui interpres de divina motione et libertate creata (v.1) and De divinis auxiliis (v.2) Massoulié sought to prove that physical premotion was not the invention of bÁÑez but was true thomism, and to disprove the accusation that Thomism was Jansenistic. He wrote three treatises against quietism: Traité de la véritable orasion (1697), Traité de l'amour le Dieu (1703), and Méditations de St. Thomas sur les trois voies (1678). His unpublished manuscripts rest in the Casanatense Library, Rome, where he had been appointed the first professor of St. Thomas in 1701.

Bibliography: c. raysson, Vie du V. P. Antonin Massoulié Dominicain (Paris 1717). a. touron, Histoire des hommes Illustres de l'ordre de St. Dominique, 6 v. (Paris 1743–49) 5:751–773. j. quÉtif and j. Échard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum 2.2:769–770, 827–829.

[j. j. haladus]