Stephanus Baluzius, Epistola altera in duo Lactantii loca (ad Henricum de Noris)

To the most distinguished man Enrico de Noris, Augustinian, Étienne Baluze of Tulle,

sends very many greetings.

When two years ago a man most devoted to you and to me and to our common studies, and likewise most learned, Antonio Magliabechi, had sent me your work, most learned man, in which you elucidated the Pisan Cenotaphs of Gaius and Lucius Caesar, I had resolved to write to you about the controversy which I see between us

to have arisen on account of certain obscure words of Paul the jurist; yet in such a way that I should submit that whole matter to your judgement. But since at that time I was much occupied in publishing the first volume of my Councils, and was therefore suffering from a want of leisure, I was compelled to abandon that plan of mine, or at least to put it off to another time. Meanwhile that great patron and supporter of my studies, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, departed from among the living; and at his fall, I confess, my mind was so cast down and overthrown by grief that, while I sought refuge and solace in my books, I thought of nothing less than of putting on the show of a playful contest; and so I lost even the very memory of that debate of ours which I mentioned a little before. It was recalled, however, on the occasion of a letter which that friend of ours sent me on the 15th day before the Kalends of February of this year, and which I received rather late, namely on the 18th day before the Kalends of April. For, mentioning in it a new work put out by you, which he promises to send, he awakened the memory of the Cenotaphia Pisana and of your dispute with me. I come forward, therefore, at last as the advocate, such as I am, of a cause which, as I think, is good, intending to plead it before you, most learned sir, and to have you, I say, as judge, whom I previously found an adversary. For I need have no fear under such a judge; who, besides being my friend, just and firm in the right, will alone sustain three persons, as Cicero used to say of himself, with the greatest fairness of mind: his own, the adversary's, and the judge's.

These, then, are the words of Paul in the editions published by the printers, which are now worn by the hands of the learned: "A child of one year is lost who dies on the last day of the year. And the usage of speech declares that this is so. 'Before the tenth day of the Kalends', 'after the tenth day of the Kalends'. For by neither expression are eleven days signified."

I interpreted this passage in my Annotations on Lactantius's book On the Deaths of the Persecutors in such a way as to judge that the same day is signified by the two modes of speech adduced by the jurist. You, on the contrary, most distinguished sir, think that by the former mode the ten days which precede the Kalends must be understood, and by the latter the ten which follow the same Kalends, that is, the tenth day of the following month. Now although Rebuffus wrote that this question has more subtlety than usefulness, and Budaeus and Alciatus thought that Paul wished by this riddle rather to play with and detain the reader than to teach him, and so it might seem useless to search further into the true sense of those words, I shall nevertheless endeavour, according to the small measure of my strength, to show what the jurist meant to say, and at the same time I shall confirm my opinion on the words of Lactantius.

From of old there were two readings of the words of Paul in which the whole difficulty lies, and which have crucified the most learned men. For some codices have: "For by each expression alike the eleventh day is signified"; others, on the contrary: "For by neither expression is the eleventh day signified." The former reading, which Paul of Middelburg, Valla, Budaeus, Alciatus, Rebuffus and Denis Godefroy embraced, rests on the authority of old manuscript copies, of which one belongs to the Royal Library and the rest to the Colbertine; with these agrees also the codex of Germain Colladon cited by the same Godefroy. The other, which Cujas, Antonio Agustín, Marcello Francolino and Denis Petau preferred to follow, has as its supporters two old books of the Royal Library, of which one once belonged to Aymar Ranconet, a most learned man; nor have I found it elsewhere. Whether the authority of the Florentine Pandects supports it we shall see later. Meanwhile let us weigh both readings, namely the affirmative and the negative, as some have called them.

The affirmative is held, as I said, by eight old copies of the Royal and Colbertine Libraries. And in the Royal one marked 4673 it reads thus: "For by either expression alike the eleventh day is signified." But the Colbertine codices

numbered 524, 529, 2608 have: "For the eleventh day is signified equally by either expression." Codex 743: "The eleventh day is signified equally by either expression." Codices 397 and 461: "For the eleventh day is signified by either expression." Finally codex 583: "The 11th day is signified by either expression." On the other hand, in the Royal codex numbered 4672 it is written: "For the eleventh day is signified by neither expression." And in the one which belonged to Aymar Ranconet, thus: "For the eleventh day is signified by neither expression." Here it must be pointed out that above the line of this last codex it was written in ancient times that elsewhere utro is read for neutro; and this reading comes nearer to the one which the Florentine codex presents, in which you yourself also testify that it is read thus: "For eleven days are signified by neither expression."

It must now be investigated whether that reading of your codex is a good one, and whether it supports the negative [reading], as some think, or whether it ought rather to be brought back to the one which so many old copies present. At first sight indeed that codex of yours, beyond dispute the oldest of all that are extant today, seems to show that the eleventh day before the Kalends is signified by neither of these modes of speaking, as is also written in the Royal books, and as Antonius Augustinus says he read in yours; and so it must be judged to confirm the reading which they call negative. But if we consider that what that most learned man Nicolas Rigault observed on Tertullian is very true, namely that the most false readings are sometimes upheld by the authority of old books, and if moreover we set on the other side the agreement of so many old codices which present the affirmative reading, it will be rightly and deservedly permissible to doubt whether one must hold to this copy of yours, or rather embrace the reading which the remaining codices present, which cannot be denied to have been taken from more ancient copies. Nor perhaps will he go astray who thinks that in yours neque was written by mistake for aeque; just as, in the Fragment of Saint Ambrose reported in the acts of the first Synod of Ephesus, codices 1363 and 1600 of the Colbertine library and the most ancient copies of the old Latin version of the same synod have Nec ipsa littera, in place of what is read in the editions of the Works of the same Saint Ambrose, Haec ipsa littera, and in Marius Mercator and in the Contian edition of the same Synod, Et ipsa littera, as I pointed out recently while I was revising that same ancient version.

Moreover, who could bring himself to believe that Paul, a weighty jurist, wished to use a negation to confirm a matter which above all needed affirmative proof? For what had to be proved was that he is deemed a yearling who dies on the last day of the year, whether that day is beginning or completed. Wishing therefore to show this by a comparison, the Jurist says that in the same way in which the same day is signified, whether you say "before the tenth [day] of the Kalends" or "after the tenth of the Kalends", that is, whether before the day is completed or after it is completed, in the same way he must be deemed a yearling who dies on the last day of the year, whether that day is completed or is not completed. Further, when learned men interpreted these words, "Before the tenth day of the Kalends", in such a way as to teach that they signify a thing done before the tenth day was completed and finished, they gave us a lesson that we should interpret these words, "After the tenth day of the Kalends", of the tenth day of the Kalends itself, but as completed and finished. Since, however, these two modes of speaking were used by the people promiscuously and indifferently, it came about through custom that the same day was understood by either expression in such a way that whatever had been done within the twenty-four hours of day and night was considered just as if it had been done at any hour of daylight, as the same Paul teaches in book XIII, To Sabinus: "By Roman custom," he says, "the day begins at midnight and ends at the middle part of the following night. Therefore whatever is done in these twenty-four hours (that is, two half-nights and the daylight in between) is just as if it had been done at any hour of daylight." Censorinus confirms this, chapter 23, whose

I transcribe [his] words: "The Romans," he says, "considered the day to run from midnight to midnight. Evidence of this is given by the public rites, and also by the auspices of the magistrates: if any of these is performed before the middle of the night, it is assigned to the day which has passed; but if anything is done after midnight and before daylight, it is said to have been performed on the day which follows that night. The same is shown by the fact that those who are born within these twenty-four hours, from midnight to the next midnight, have the same birthday."

From this it seems to me it can be gathered that the Romans, although they began the day from midnight, nevertheless in common speech called "day" that space which lies between the rising and the setting of the sun, that is, the natural day; and that what was done in the earliest morning, or before daylight, they at first called, as Joseph Scaliger observed before me (Scaliger, book 2, On the Emendation of Times), "before the kalends", and what [was done] after the withdrawal of the sun, "after the kalends"; but that afterwards, little by little, the same time was signified by both manners of speaking, because the people, in whose hands lie the judgement, the right and the rule of speaking, then paid no attention to the distinction which formerly, by speaking thus, they drew between the day beginning and the day completed. Thus Cicero, writing to Tiro, whose passage you, most learned sir, have adduced to confirm your opinion, says that he was at Alyzia on the nones of November, and that, setting out from there before daylight, he dispatched this letter on the eighth day before the ides of November (Cicero, book 16, To his Friends, letter 3); and although this could be taken of any hour of the day, it is more natural for us to interpret it of the day beginning, since Cicero writes that he dispatched that letter as he was setting out from Alyzia, which was before daylight. In the same way Seneca relates that the emperor Claudius, who he says began to breathe his last when the sun was hastening to its setting, between the sixth and seventh hour, died on the third day before the ides of October, [the emperor] whom Suetonius writes passed away near daylight, that is, towards the beginning of the natural day. This can also be confirmed from the words of Tacitus, who, after showing that his death was concealed for some time, adds that Nero went out to the cohort at midday of the same day.

Therefore, to return to the point from which we digressed: when the ancients said "Before the tenth of the kalends", "After the tenth of the kalends", they meant by both expressions the tenth day of the kalends, the kalends themselves being counted. This interpretation was drawn also from the reading of your codex by my most learned fellow-countryman Simeon Bosius, who, in his notes on the first of those letters of Cicero which were addressed to Atticus, says that by both manners of speaking the very tenth day of the kalends is signified. Cujacius, on the other hand (Cujacius, book 13, Digest, On the obligation of words), does indeed think that the tenth day is signified by both manners of speaking, yet in such a way that he interprets the tenth day which is called "after the kalends" as the tenth day of the month, which follows after the kalends. In this place, not to conceal anything, Cujacius has in agreement with him an old interlinear gloss of codex 524 of the Colbertine library, in which above these words, "Before the tenth day of the kalends", is written, "that is, preceding the kalends"; and above these, "After the tenth day of the kalends", is likewise written, "That is, following the kalends". But both that ancient glossator and Cujacius himself and others were driven to this interpretation by the obscurity of this passage, because they lacked a similar example, such as is found in Lactantius; had they possessed that example of Lactantius, and considered attentively that it was not the custom among the ancient Romans to attach the days which follow after the kalends to the kalends, but to the nones or the ides, they would never have twisted the sense of the words of Paulus in that way. For if it were permissible to interpret the ancients thus, from conjecture alone, without any example, without authority, I would rather say either that Paulus thought that by both manners of speaking the eleventh day of the kalends was understood, as most of the old copies have, or that the copyist who first wrote out this passage, from whom the rest received it, by mistake put eleventh for tenth, rather than that readers into that

to draw a meaning to which all past antiquity is opposed. For in obscure matters, as the same Paulus teaches, one usually looks to what is more likely, or to what usually happens.

I know that you are accustomed to use a certain passage of Cicero, or rather of M. Coelius writing to Cicero, from which you gather that he divided times into before and after the kalends, because he reports that Pompey said that before the kalends of March he could not decide about Caesar's provinces without injustice, but that after the kalends of March he would not hesitate (Cicero, Letters to Friends 8.8). But since that passage concerns an undetermined and indefinite time, it in no way helps your opinion, nor does it weaken the one which I defend. For no one denies that it can quite properly be said that some matter cannot be done before the kalends but can be done after the kalends. But this does not prove that the days which follow after the kalends were customarily joined with the kalends, so that, for example, things done on the 41st day before the Ides of January could also be said to have been done after the 10th of the kalends of January.

But Plutarch in the Life of Cicero says that he was born "on the third day of the new Kalends", and Franciscus Fabricius translated this as "after the third day of the kalends of January", because it is established from Cicero himself and from A. Gellius that he was born on the third day before the Nones of the same month. Therefore the third day of the Nones is also the third of the kalends. I admit that the third day of the Nones is the same as the third after the kalends. But although Fabricius interpreted the passage of Plutarch in such a way as to say that Cicero was born after the third day of the kalends of January, this does not harm our case, because Fabricius does not have the authority of antiquity, and so is of no weight for showing that the days which follow after the kalends were customarily joined to the kalends in the reckoning of days. Plutarch, a Greek, spoke in the Greek manner, Cicero and Gellius in the Latin; and I prefer to follow Cicero writing about himself in Latin rather than Plutarch speaking about Cicero in Greek. And yet not even the words of Plutarch themselves greatly favour your opinion, since nothing else can be gathered from them than that Cicero was born on the third day of the new kalends, which had begun, or rather had ended, on the first day of the month of January.

There is also set against us the authority of Gaius the jurist, whose words are these: "After the kalends of January, on the third day, vows are undertaken for the welfare of the emperor." By this manner of speaking, as you rightly observe, the third day of the Nones of January is understood. But this objection I have already answered in the disputation on Cicero's birthday, and it is certain besides that these words of Gaius do not bear on this controversy of ours. For he does not say "after the third of the kalends of January", as he would have had to say in order to support your opinion, but "after the kalends of January, on the third day". And this we readily concede to be true.

Before I put an end to this disputation of mine, I see that I must return to the last part of the passage of Paulus, which I know well can be set against me even after all that I have said up to this point. For although you grant me that by these two manners of speaking, "before the tenth day of the kalends" and "after the tenth day of the kalends", one and the same day is indicated, it will nevertheless always be true that by neither of them is the eleventh day of the kalends signified; and from this you will gather that the reading which they call negative is the truer. I admit that this difficulty is great, and that it cannot easily be answered. But since it does no harm to our case, but rather seems to confirm it, I have no intention of inquiring into it further; for if we assume the negative reading as true, I think the words of Paulus should be taken in such a way that he seems to have meant that from this it can be gathered that by these two manners of speaking the tenth day of the kalends is understood, as the Romans were accustomed to count, because by neither is the eleventh signified. And thus the negative proposition will be converted into an affirmative one.

I have shown abundantly, unless I am mistaken, what the truer explanation is of the words of Paulus, which have exercised very learned men. But to heap up my proofs, I shall also bring forward the authority of Lactantius; and just as I once used the testimony of Paulus to show that the discrepancy in the words of Lactantius implies no inconsistency, so now I shall use the words of Lactantius to prove that there is no contradiction in the words of Paulus. For since the language of both is entirely equal and alike, it is plain that they borrow light from each other, and that what is obscure in one of them can be made clearer with the help of the other. Lactantius, then, says in the fourth book of the Divine Institutes, ch. 10, that Christ was fastened to the cross by the Jews "before the tenth day of the kalends of April"; but in the book On the Deaths of the Persecutors, that He was tortured by the same Jews "after the tenth day of the kalends of April". You, however, most distinguished sir, hold that the sense of these manners of speaking is different, and that by the former the twenty-third of March should be understood, by the latter the tenth of April. But I ask you whether it is probable that Lactantius, a learned and erudite man, wrote things contrary to and contradicting himself; especially since in his age it was commonly believed that Christ suffered on the tenth day of the kalends of April, and no one up to then had written that He suffered on the tenth of April? I do not think that anyone can resist this argument, since it is very strong and very sound, and so I believe it can be affirmed without any risk that Lactantius meant to express entirely the same thing by these two manners of speaking, namely that Christ was fastened to the cross on the twenty-third day of the month of March. And if this is so, as it certainly is, it is now established that the words of Paulus too must have one and the same sense, and that by the former and the latter manner the tenth day which precedes the kalends must be understood, in no way the tenth which follows the kalends.

These things, most learned sir, I have pleaded before you in defence of my opinion with as much brevity as I could. It will henceforth be for your judgement, as I said at the beginning, to decide what should be thought about this whole matter; and in your kindness you will call me back to the road by showing me what is truer, if perhaps you find that I have overstepped the boundary of truth. Meanwhile farewell, and always love me, who am most devoted to your name.

At Paris, on the 4th day before the Ides of April, 1684.