Barnes, John

Barnes, John an Englishman, who entered the Benedictine order at Douai partly from fear of the Inquisition. In 1625 he published at Paris a Dissertatio contra Equivocations, which received the approbation of the faculty at Paris. In 1630 his Catholico-Romanus Pacificus appeared at Oxford. His works gave great offense to the ultramontane party, and, at the request of Pope Urban VII, Barnes was sent to Rome by Louis XIII in 1627. He was at once confined in the Inquisition, and, after thirty years of imprisonment, died there. In his Catholico-Romanus Pacificus his design was to induce the pope to receive Anglicans to his communion, without requiring them to acknowledge dependence on the Holy See, until such time as a free and oecumenical council could be convoked to settle all differences — Biog. Univ. 3, 394; Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.