Antoine Pagi

Antoine Pagi (31 March, 1624, at Rognes in the Department of Bouches-du-Rhone – 5 June, 1699 in Aix-en-Provence) was a French ecclesiastical historian. After studying with the Jesuits in Aix, he entered the monastery of the Conventual Franciscans in Arles, and made solemn profession on 31 January, 1641. For some twenty-nine years he was elected provincial, an office which he held four times.

Works

He devoted his spare time to the study of history. Discerning numerous chronological errors, and frequently misstatements of facts in the "Annales ecclesiastici" of Baronius, he made it his life-work to correct them and otherwise elucidate the work.

Pagi's first volume was printed during his lifetime (Paris, 1689); the remaining three volumes, reaching till the year 1198, the last year in the work of Baronius, were completed in manuscript shortly before his death. The whole work was edited in four volumes by his nephew François Pagi: "Critica historico-chronologica in universos annales ecclesiasticos em. et rev. Caesaris Card. Baronii" (Geneva, 1705; second ed., 1727). Mansi embodied it in his edition of the "Annales" of Baronius (Lucca, 1736-59). The "Critica" itself is not free of errors.

Other publications

*"Dissertatio hypatica seu de consulibus xsareis" (Lyons, 1682), printed also in "Apparatus in Annales ecclesiasticos" (Lucca, 1740), pp. 1-136;
*"Dissertatio de die et anno mortis S. Martini ep. turonensis" and a few minor treatises in defense of his "Dissertatio hypatica", in which he had set down various rules for determining the consulship of the Roman emperors, and which had been attacked by Cardinal Henry Noris and others.
*He also edited: "D. Antonii Paduani O. Min. sermones hactenus inediti" (Avignon, 1685).

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