Driven from Alsace by the marauding bands of Count Mansfeld, he fled to Ingolstadt where he began to study law.

A love disappointment, however, turned his thoughts to the church, and in 1624 he entered the Society of Jesus.

His lectures and poems had now made him famous, and he was summoned to Munich where, in 1638, he became court chaplain to the elector Maximilian I.

In 1654 he was transferred to Neuburg on the Danube, as court preacher and confessor to the count palatine.

A collected edition of Balde's works in 4 vols was published at Cologne in 1660; a more complete edition in 8 vols at Munich, 1729; also a good selection by L. Spach (Paris and Strasbourg, 1871).