Antoine Pagi

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Antoine Pagi (born March 31, 1624 in Rognes , † June 5, 1699 in Aix-en-Provence ) was a French Catholic church historian . He was the most famous improver of the Annales ecclesiastici of the Italian Cardinal Baronius and, through his careful and severe criticism, made the information of it all the more useful for historical and chronological purposes.

Life

Born in 1624 in Rognes in Provence , Antoine Pagi was educated in the Jesuit college in Aix-en-Provence and, at the instigation of his uncle, Antoine Barrau, general of the Franciscan conventuals, entered this order in 1641, in which he was promoted to provincial at the age of 29 and held this dignity four times.

Pagi's next religious duties, sermons, could not escape his historical studies, for which he showed great talent from his youth. When he found a column that was once erected in Fréjus in honor of Emperor Aurelian , he first undertook chronological research to determine the Roman calendar according to consulates and wrote a dissertatio hypatica (Lyon 1682), in which he uncovered the confusion caused by the use of the consul name of Pages of the Roman emperors had emerged. He researched the individual cases when emperors also adorned themselves with the consul's name, and brought out six reasons for doing so: At the beginning of the government, at its five or ten year jubilee celebrations, around zealots at the separation of the empire, or the sons, if they were declared Caesars to serve as colleagues at the start of major wars, at triumphs, and at the celebration of the secular games . Italian scholars, especially Father Noris, disagreed on some points, whereupon Pagi led a scholarly argument.

Pagi gained his real fame through his painstaking and brilliant criticism of the annals of Baronius. The state of France at that time favored such an undertaking against the center of Roman church history; the struggles for the Gallican freedom of the church ignored any other consideration. Nevertheless, Pagi, perhaps out of conviction, never went into the refutation of dogmatic points, such as Isaac Casaubonus and the Zurich scholar Johann Heinrich Hobtius , or the fight against the political views of Baronius, against which Melchior Goldast , as defender of the German Empire, had come out; but the real point at which Pagi felt at home and achieved great things is the chronology, although he did not avoid additions and corrections to the story itself. The era, which he followed, he calls the Greco-Roman, as after the operation Dionysius the Little , by setting the birth of Christ to the year 5493 after the creation of the world, and claims significant because advantages over that of Scaliger followed Julian era to have. As a sample of his improvements in chronology, e.g. For example, it can be stated that he proves to the Baronius that in the first two and a half centuries AD, with the exception of Emperor Decius (249 AD), he set the fact two years too early, since he started the era with the year 44 instead of 46 Julian bill began. Around the middle of the third century, the confusion increased until 280, the fifth year of the emperor Probus , when Baronius missed the right time calculation in the third year. Pagi proves the violent pranks, whereby the annals of the correct calculation soon run ahead, soon lag behind it.

In the first edition of his investigations, Pagi did not follow the annals themselves, but rather the extract of Spondanus from them, which was more convenient and more common for use; thus appeared the criticism of the first four centuries of the annals (Paris 1689). However, sales did not meet expectations so much that the sequel did not appear in France. Meanwhile, the encouragement of experts, especially Cardinals Casanate and Noris , allowed Pagi to continue and complete his work. The Gallican clergy had approved the work in 1685, and the undivided applause, which he enjoyed, gave him strength to make improvements to it even in the sick bed. He died on June 5, 1699 at the age of 75 in Aix-en-Provence. His nephew François Pagi took over the editing of his work . It was published in full at Geneva in four volumes in 1705, and now adapted to the text of Baronius himself.

Works

  • Dissertatio hypatica seu de consulibus caesareis ... , Lyon 1682
  • Edition of the Sermones de Sanctis et Diversis of Saint Anthony of Padua , Avignon 1685 (with a defense of the aforementioned writing inserted in the preface)
  • Dissertation sur le consulats des empereurs romains in the Journal des Savants Nov. 1688 (also a defense of his views)
  • Critica historico-chronologica in universos annales ecclesiasticos em. et rev. Caesaris Card. Baronii , Geneva 1705; 2nd edition Geneva 1724

literature

personal data
SURNAME Pagi, Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Catholic Church Historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1624
PLACE OF BIRTH Rognes
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 1699
Place of death Aix-en-Provence