BALUZE

BALUZE, ETIENNE, a writer eminently distinguished by his knowledge of history, ecclesiastical antiquities, and the canon law, was born at Tulle on the 24th of December 1630, being the descendant of a family which had long adhered to the legal profession. He received his elementary education at the place of his nativity, and afterwards prosecuted his studies in the university of Toulouse, where he obtained an exhibition in the College of St Martial. Having finished his course of philosophy, he commenced his attendance in the schools of law; but although he attained to great proficiency in certain departments of jurisprudence, he felt no inclination for the ordinary occupations of a lawyer, and never followed the profession of an advocate. He possessed a natural alacrity of mind, and was capable of the most intense literary exertion; and his life being prolonged beyond the ordinary limits, he successively engaged in many undertakings of great research and of great utility. Before he quitted the university, he appeared in the character of an author. His earliest inquiries related to different subjects of ecclesiastical antiquities; and the reputation which he thus acquired recommended him to the notice of M. de Montchal, archbishop of Toulouse, who granted him access to his library. This prelate was succeeded by M. de Marca, who soon became archbishop of Paris, and who was profoundly skilled in those branches of knowledge which Baluze so long continued to cultivate. In 1656 the archbishop invited him to the metropolis. Here he improved in the good graces of his patron, and even participated in his learned researches. From an individual of so much influence at court, he might naturally have hoped for a competent share of preferment; but before his hopes were realized, the prelate died on the 29th of June 1662.

He speedily found another favourer of his studies in M. le Tellier, afterwards chancellor of France, who, with the view of engaging him in the service of his son the Abbé le Tellier, the future archbishop of Reims, conferred upon him many benefits, of which he retained a grateful remembrance. But, from various causes, the proposed arrangement never took place; and he was next connected with the establishment of M. de Lamothe-Houdancourt, archbishop of Auch. In 1667 M. Colbert offered him the situation of keeper of his library, one of the most magnificent private collections in Europe; and its value, both in manuscripts and in printed books, was greatly augmented by the judgment and zeal of the learned librarian. Having retained his office for some time after the death of Colbert, he resigned it in the year 1700: the library had then descended to the archbishop of Rouen, and he had ceased to find his situation agreeable. He appears to have occupied apartments connected with the library; and we are informed that he now retired to a house belonging to the Scottish College.

In the year 1668, the Abbé Faget published some works of his relation M. de Marca; and, in the life prefixed, he took occasion to state, that when the prelate was at the point of death, he enjoined Baluze to place all his papers in the hands of his son the president. He had in reality committed his manuscripts to the care of Baluze himself, who was therefore greatly offended at this statement, and vented his spleen in different letters. The abbé replied in the same strain, and afterwards inserted their angry correspondence in his collection of Dissertations. The heat which Baluze displayed upon this occasion excited the more surprise, as his disposition was habitually gentle. Of his animosity against Faget he has left a further record in his life of De Marca, prefixed to the treatise De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii.

In 1670 he was appointed professor of the canon law in the Royal College. The canon law had long been taught

in the university of Paris, and there indeed it was long taught to the entire exclusion of the civil law; but this was a new chair which the king was pleased to erect in his favour; and of his high qualifications for such a professorship he has left the most unequivocal proofs. Nor was this the only preferment which his learning procured him. He was appointed a canon of the cathedral of Reims; and in the privilege appended to his edition of Marius Mercator, printed in the year 1684, he is designated "Estienne Baluze, prieur de Beauvais." It may therefore be inferred that he enjoyed a considerable pension from that abbey; nor were such arrangements uncommon at that period of the history of France. He is described as "simple tonsuré;" an expression which denotes that he was not a priest or a deacon, but had only been initiated into one of the lowest of the seven holy orders. In order to recompense M. Martin, who had been the tutor of Colbert's children, that minister had procured him a pension of 2000 livres, payable out of the bishopric of Auxerre; but the conscientious ecclesiastic represented to his patron that he had rendered no services to the diocese of Auxerre, and therefore could accept of no share of its revenues, more especially as a compensation for services which were not of a spiritual, but of a temporal nature. One half of this pension was then bestowed upon Baluze, whose scruples do not appear to have been equally powerful. In 1683 he had published a volume of councils, and it was his original intention to extend the collection to several volumes; but some of the materials which he had prepared could not be much relished at Rome; and as his pension required the sanction of that most corrupt of all courts, he thought it expedient to abandon his design. Of the acts of the council of Basel he had proposed to print a very ample collection; and this was indeed the part of his plan for which the whole had chiefly been undertaken. After an interval of ten years, he published his lives of the popes of Avignon; a work of curious research, which procured him a pension from the crown, and afterwards the office of director of the Royal College, where he succeeded the Abbé Gallois in the year 1700. But the favour of a court is at all times and in all places held by a very precarious tenure. Baluze, who had attached himself to Cardinal de Bouillon, and had been employed in writing the history of his family, was involved in the disgrace which attended this illustrious prelate. He had traced the cardinal's lineage to the ancient dukes of Guienne and counts of Auvergne; and when his patron had retired to a foreign country, the tyranny of Louis XIV. endeavoured to mortify him in the person of his family-historian, who was charged with abetting the cardinal's pretensions to independence. A lettre de cachet removed him from Paris: his place of exile was repeatedly changed, and his residence successively restricted to Rouen, Blois, Tours, and Orleans; nor could he obtain his recall till the year 1713, after the peace of Utrecht: but although he was at length permitted to revisit Paris, he never recovered his two offices of director and professor of the Royal College. Such proceedings as these, which were very far from being uncommon, are sufficiently characteristic of the old despotism of France.

Although this persecution commenced when he had nearly attained the age of eighty, it did not quench his literary ardour; for, during his exile, he employed himself in preparing an edition of the works of St Cyprian, which was published after his death. His constitution had never been vigorous, but the sobriety and regularity of his habits enabled him to reach a mature and healthy old age; and, according to the expression of Nicéron, he lived with pleasure

and died with resignation.¹ He died on the 28th of July 1718, in the eighty-eighth year of his age; and his remains were interred in the church of St Sulpice. A person who had lived so long in the midst of learned dust, without either wife or children to blow it aside, could not well be without his share of peculiarities. He was not entirely exempted from caprice, and his testament exhibited this caprice in no very amiable light; his relations and domestics were almost totally forgotten, and the bulk of his property was bequeathed to a woman who appears to have had no claim upon him. Some scholars, who have collected libraries with much labour and at great expense, are inclined to cherish an anxious wish that they should be preserved entire; but, on the contrary, he was desirous that his library should be sold in detail, lest any one individual should be put in possession of those literary treasures which he himself had gradually amassed. This collection consisted of 10,799 articles, including more than 1500 manuscripts, together with 115 printed books which he had interspersed with annotations. The manuscripts were added to the Royal Library.

Baluze was a man of great learning and research in those departments to which he had devoted his chief attention; and his publications have in an eminent degree elucidated various branches of law, history, and antiquities. His merits are perhaps more conspicuous as an editor than as an author. He was particularly conversant with ancient manuscripts; and being likewise possessed of much erudition and critical skill, he has published valuable editions of many ancient monuments. If his labours had not extended beyond the Capitularia Regum Francorum, his name would always have been mentioned with respect by lawyers and historians; but some of his other publications greatly illustrate the history of the middle ages; nor must we forget the light which they reflect upon the history of the canon law, and upon the writings of the Latin fathers.

Of the principal works which he published in a separate form we shall subjoin a catalogue, interspersed with a few brief notices.

6. Servati Lupi, Presbyteri et Abbatis Ferrariensis, Opera. Paris. 1664, 8vo.

7. S. Agobardi, Archiepiscopi Lugdunensis, Opera; item Epistolæ et Opuscula Leidradi et Amulonis Arch. Lugd. notis illustrata. Paris. 1666, 2 tom. 8vo.

8. Concilia Galliae Narbonensis, cum notis. Paris. 1668, 8vo.

9. S. Cæsarii, Arlatensis Episcopi, Homiliæ xiv. notis illustrata. Paris. 1669, 8vo.

10. Petri de Marca, Archiepiscopi Parisiensis, Dissertationes tres: Stephanus Baluzius in unum collegit, emendavit, notis illustravit, et appendicem adjecit actorum veterum. Paris. 1669, 8vo.

11. Reginonis Abbatis Prumiensis libri duo de Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis et Religione Christiana; accessit Rhabani Archiepiscopi Moguntini Epistola ad Heribaldum Episcopum Antissiodorensen, cum notis. Paris. 1672, 8vo.

12. Antonii Augustini, Archiepiscopi Tarracensis, Dialogorum libri duo, de Emendatione Gratiani, cum notis. Paris. 1672, 8vo.—Gratian, as the learned reader is sufficiently aware, was the compiler of the Decretum, one of the constituent parts of the Corpus Juris Canonici. His work is not without errors and inconsistencies, which are discussed with a considerable degree of freedom by the very distinguished archbishop of Tarragona; and his text is ably illustrated in the annotations of Baluze. The text and the notes were soon afterwards republished by another eminent canonist. "Ant. Augustini, &c. libri duo. Gerh. von Mastricht, J. C. edidit iterum, recensuit, in hanc formam digessit, et Stephani Baluzii suasuit notas in eundem et Gratianum, item in fine Orationem Andr. Schotti, de Vita et Scriptis Auctoris, adjecit." Duisburgi ad Rhenum, 1677, 8vo.

13. Petri Gallandi Vita Petri Castellani, Magni Franciæ Eleemosinarii, edente cum notis Stephano Baluzio, qui etiam duas ejusdem Castellani Orationes, habitas in Fumere Regis Francisci I., adjecit. Paris. 1674, 8vo.

14. Capitularia Regum Francorum; additæ sunt Marculfi monachi et aliorum Formulae veteres: Stephanus Baluzius in unum collegit, notis illustravit. Paris. 1677, 2 tom. fol.—In a copy of the book he had inserted many emendations and additions; and after an interval of a century appeared "Nova editio auctior et emendatior ad fidem autographi Baluzii, curante Petro de Chiniac." Paris. 1780, 2 tom. fol. This edition is splendidly printed. Of Baluze's preface a translation was published by L'Escalopier de Nouras, under the title of Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois Français. Haye, 1775, 12mo. Another version was published by M. de Chiniac. Paris, 1779, 8vo. It is accompanied with a translation of the life of Baluze, written by himself, and finished by Martin, a bookseller; and likewise with a catalogue of his works, and of the various books in which he had inserted manuscript notes.

15. Miscellanea: hoc est, Collectio veterum Monumentorum, quæ hactenus latuerunt in variis Codicibus ac Bibliothecis. Paris. 1678–1715, 7 tom. 8vo.—A new edition, considerably enlarged, was published by Mansi. Lucæ, 1767, 4 tom. fol.

16. Lucii Cæcili Firmiani Lactantii liber ad Donatum Confessorem de Mortibus Persecutorum: nunc primum prodit opera et studio Stephani Baluzii. Paris. 1680, 8vo.—The work which he thus rescued from oblivion was pub-

lished from a manuscript in the Colbert Library, and it naturally attracted a great degree of attention. This edition was speedily followed by several others; and an English translation was published by Dr Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury.¹ The preface, notes, and other illustrations of Baluze, are to be found in the edition cum notis variorum, published by Paul Bauldri, a French protestant, who was professor of ecclesiastical history in the university of Utrecht. Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1692, 8vo. Various copies of the same edition bear the date of 1693. With respect to the genuineness of this treatise, different opinions have been entertained by learned men; but the claims of Lactantius are satisfactorily stated by Lord Hailes in the preface to his translation: Of the Manner in which the Persecutors died; a Treatise by L. C. F. Lactantius. Edinb. 1782, 8vo.

17. Petri de Marca, Archiepiscopi Parisiensis, Opuscula, nunc primum in lucem edita. Paris. 1681, 8vo.

18. Epistolarum Innocentii III., Pontificis Romani, libri xi. accedunt Gesta ejusdem Innocentii, &c. Paris. 1682, 2 tom. fol.

19. Nova Collectio Conciliorum, cum notis. Tom. I. Paris. 1683, fol.—This was intended as a supplement to the great collection of Labbe; and we have already mentioned the reason which induced the editor to discontinue his labours.

20. Marii Mercatoris Opera: Stephanus Baluzius ad fidem veterum codicum MSS. emendavit, et notis illustravit. Paris. 1684, 8vo.—Marius Mercator lived in the age of St Augustin, and somewhat later; but although his works are of some extent, his name is not mentioned by any ancient writer. "Ante hanc ætatem nostram," says Baluze, "nullus inventus est qui mentionem faceret operum Marii Mercatoris, tamenetsi constet his usos esse quosdam veteres scriptores. Primus eorum notitiam habuit vir doctissimus Lucas Holstenius, Bibliothecæ Vaticanæ prefector." They were first published by Garnier at Paris in the year 1673.

21. Marca Hispanica, sive Limes Hispanicus; hoc est, Geographica et Historica Descriptio Cataluniae, Barcinonis, et circumjacentium Populorum, auctore Ill. V. Petro de Marca. Paris. 1688, fol.

22. Vitæ Paparum Avenionensium. Paris. 1693, 2 tom. 4to.

23. Lettre pour servir de Réponse à divers Ecrits, qu'on a semez dans Paris et à la Cour, contre quelques anciens Titres qui prouvent que Messieurs de Bouillon descendent en ligne directe et masculine des anciens Ducs de Guyenne et Comtes d'Auvergne. Paris, 1698, fol.

24. Histoire Généalogique de la Maison d'Auvergne, justifiée par des Chartres, Titres, Histories anciennes, et autres Preuves authentiques. Paris, 1708, 2 tom. fol.

25. Historiæ Tutelensis libri tres. Paris. 1717, 4to.

26. Bibliotheca Baluziana. Paris. 1719, 8vo. This is described as a publication of "plusieurs pièces manuscrites de ce savant auteur." (Biographie Universelle, tom. iii. p. 298.)

27. S. Cæcili Cypriani, Episcopi Carthaginiensis et Martyris, Opera, ad MSS. codices recognita et illustrata studio et labore Stephani Baluzii. Absolvit post Baluzium, ac præfationem et vitam S. Cypriani adornavit unus ex Monachis Congr. S. Mauri. Paris. 1726, fol.—The monk of St Maur, who completed this last labour of the learned and indefatigable editor, was Prudent Maran. (x.)