BALUZE, ETIENNE French scholar, was born at Tulle on Nov. 24, 163o, and died in Paris on July 28, 1718. The works which place him in the first rank of the scholars of his time are the Capitularia Regum Francorum (1674; new edition enlarged and corrected in 178o) ; the Nova Collectio Con ciliorum (16 7 7) ; the Miscellanea (16 I 5 ; new edition revised by Mansi, 1761-64) ; the Letters of Pope Innocent III. (1682) ; and, finally, the Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, But he was unfortunate enough to take up the history of Auvergne just at the time when the Cardinal de Bouillon, inheritor of the rights, and above all of the ambitious pretensions of the La Tour family, was endeavouring to prove the descent of that house in the direct line from the ancient hereditary counts of Auvergne of the 9th century. The documents forged to support the cardinal's claim by Jean le Bar deceived many great scholars, but were declared spurious by the courts in 1704. Nevertheless, in two works published in 1705 and in 1709 Baluze made use of the forged documents. Baluse was deprived of his appointments and compelled to leave Paris, though he was allowed eventually to return.
The history of the forgeries committed in the interests of the house of Bouillon forms a curious and instructive episode in the history of French scholarship in the time of Louis XIV. It is to be found in the Manuel de diplomatique by A. Giry ; and above all in a note to the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon by M. de Boislisle (vol. xiv. pp. . The bibliography of Baluze's researches has been made by M. Rene Fage (1882, 1884) and his Life told by M. Bmile Fage (1899) . To these we must add an amusing book by G. Clement-Simon, La Gaiete de Baluze; documents biographiques et litteraires (1888) . Baluze's will has been published by M. Leopold Delisle (Bibliotheque de l'Ecole de Chartes, 1872) ; his papers are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal (Revue his torique, t. xcviii. p. 309) . See also the article by Arthur de Boislisle in the Revue des questions historiques for Oct. 1908. (C. BEM.)