Baronius

Baronius, CÆSAR, a great Catholic ecclesiastical historian, born at Sora, in Naples, 30th August 1538. Coming to Rome at nineteen, he was one of the first pupils of St Philip Neri, and attached himself to his congregation of the Oratory, of which he afterwards became superior (1593). Here, by long and severe study, he laid the foundation of his fame. The immediate occasion of his great work was the necessity of replying to the Protestant historical work known as the Magdeburg Centuries. His object was to prove that the Church of Rome was identical in doctrine and constitution with the Christian Church of the 1st century. This he did in his Annales Ecclesiastici a Christo nato ad annum 1198 (12 vols. 1588-93). Honours were now showered upon his head. He became confessor to the Pope, apostolical prothonotary, cardinal in 1596, librarian of the Vatican Library, and would have been elected pope on the death of Clement VIII. in 1605 but for the opposition of the Spaniards, who were indignant at him for his treatise, Tractatus de Monarchia Siciliae (in vol. xi. of his great history), in which he argued against Spain's claim to Sicily. He died June 30, 1607, and was canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622. The best edition of the Annales is that edited by Mansi (38 vols. Lucca, 1738-59), which contains Pagi's Critica. Odoricus Raynaldus wrote a continuation down to the year 1565 (9 vols. 1646-76). A new edition of the work, with the continuations of Raynaldus and others, is that of A. Theiner (37 vols., Bar le Duc, 1864-83), who himself wrote a continuation for the years 1572-85 (Rome, 3 vols. 1857). Amongst other works of Baronius, his publication of the Martyrologium Romanum deserves to be noticed (Rome, 1586, and often reprinted).