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 independent Baluchistan, N. by Seistan and the central Persian desert, and W. by Kerman. The country has little water and only a small part of it is under cultivation, the remainder being composed of arid, waterless plains, deserts—some stony, others with moving sands—barren hills and mountains. The principal rivers are the Mashkid and that of Bampur which flow away from the sea and are lost in depressions called hamuns. The rivers which flow into the sea are unimportant and dry during the greater part of the year. Persian Baluchistan forms an administrative division of the province of Kerman and is subdivided into the following twenty districts:—(1) Bampur; (2) Serhad; (3) Dizek; (4) Jalk; (5) Sib; (6) Irafshan; (7) Magas; (8) Serbaz; (9) Lashar; (10) Champ; (11) Fannuj; (12) Bazman; (13) Aptar; (14) Daman; (15) Aprandagan; (16) Asfehgeh; (17) Surmij; (18) Meskutan; (19) Pushteh; (20) Makran, the country of the Ichthyophagi, with the subdistricts Kasrkand, Geh, Bint, Dasht, Kucheh and Bahu. The total population of Baluchistan is under 200,000. The province was practically independent until the occupation of Bampur by Persian troops in 1849, and over some of the extreme eastern districts Persian supremacy was not recognized until 1872. BALUE, JEAN (c. 1421–1491), French cardinal and minister of Louis XI., was born of very humble parentage at Angle in Poitou, and was first patronized by the bishop of Poitiers. In 1461 he became vicar-general of the bishop of Angers. His activity, cunning and mastery of intrigue gained him the appreciation of Louis XI., who made him his almoner. In a short time Balue became a considerable personage. In 1465 he received the bishopric of Évreux; the king made him le premier du grant conseil, and, in spite of his dissolute life, obtained for him a cardinalate (1468). But in that year Balue was compromised in the king’s humiliation by Charles the Bold at Péronne and excluded from the council. He then intrigued with Charles against his master: their secret correspondence was intercepted, and on the 23rd of April 1469 Balue was thrown into prison, where he remained eleven years, but not, as has been alleged, in an iron cage. In 1480, through the intervention of Pope Sixtus IV., he was set at liberty, and from that time lived in high favour at the court of Rome. He received the bishopric of Albano and afterwards that of Palestrina. In 1484 he was even sent to France as legate a latere. He died at Ancona in 1491.

BALUSTER (through the Fr. from the Ital. balaustro, so-called from a supposed likeness to the flower of the , or wild pomegranate; the word has been corrupted in English into “banister”), a small moulded shaft, square or circular, in stone or wood and sometimes in metal, supporting the coping of a parapet or the rail of a staircase, an assemblage of them being known as a balustrade. The earliest examples are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing the Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. They do not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans, but early examples are found in the balconies in the palaces at Venice and Verona. In the hands of the Italian revivalists they became features of the greatest importance, and were largely employed for window balconies and roof parapets.

The term “baluster shaft” is given to the shaft dividing a window in Saxon architecture. In the south transept of the abbey at St Albans, England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church. Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts. BALUSTRADE, a parapet or low screen consisting of a coping or rail supported on s (q.v.). Sometimes it is employed purely as a decorative feature beneath the sill of a window which was not carried down to the ground. Sometimes flowing foliage takes the place of the parapet, and sometimes so-called balustrades are formed of vertical slabs of stone, pierced as in the Ca’ d’oro at Venice and the balconies of the minarets at Cairo. BALUZE, ÉTIENNE (1630–1718), French scholar, was born at Tulle on the 24th of November 1630. He was educated at his native town and took minor orders. As secretary to Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse, he won the appreciation of that learned prelate to such a degree that at his death Marca left him all his papers. Thus it came about that Baluze produced the first complete edition of Marca’s treatise De libertatibus Ecclesiae Gallicanae (1663), and brought out his Marca hispanica (1688 f.). About 1667 Baluze entered Colbert’s service, and until 1700 was in charge of the invaluable library belonging to that minister and to his son the marquis de Seignelai. He enriched it prodigiously (see the history of the Colbertine library in the Cabinet des Manuscrits by M. Léopold Delisle, vol. i.), and Colbert rewarded him by obtaining various benefices for him, and the post of king’s almoner (1679). Subsequently Baluze was appointed professor of Canon law at the Collège de France on the 31st of December 1689, and directed that great institution from 1707 to 1710.

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 1780); the Nova Collectio Conciliorum (4 vols., 1677); the Miscellanea (7 vols., 1678–1715; new edition revised by Mansi, 4 vols. f., 1761–1764); the Letters of Pope Innocent III. (1682); and, finally, the Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, 1305–1394 (1693). 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.

As authentic documents in support of these pretensions could not be found, false ones were fabricated. The production of spurious genealogies had already been begun in the Histoire de la maison d’Auvergne published by Christophe Justel in 1645; and Chorier, the historian of Dauphiny, had included in the second volume of his history (1672) a forged deed which connected the La Tours of Dauphiny with the La Tours of Auvergne. Next a regular manufactory of forged documents was organized by a certain Jean de Bar, an intimate companion of the cardinal. These rogues were skilful enough, for they succeeded in duping the most illustrious scholars; Dom Jean Mabillon, the founder of Diplomatics, Dom Thierry Ruinart and Baluze himself, called as experts, made a unanimously favourable report on the 23rd of July 1695. But cardinal de Bouillon had many enemies, and a war of pamphlets began. In March 1698 Baluze in reply wrote a Letter which proved nothing. Two years later, in 1700, Jean de Bar and his accomplices were arrested, and after a long and searching inquiry were declared guilty in 1704. Baluze, nevertheless, was obstinate in his opinion. He was convinced that the incriminated documents were genuine and proposed to do Justel’s work anew. Encouraged and financially supported by the cardinal de Bouillon, he first produced a Table généalogique in 1705, and then in 1709 a Histoire généalogique de la maison d’Auvergne, with “Proofs,” among which, unfortunately, we find all the deeds which had been pronounced spurious. In the following year he was suddenly engulfed in the disgrace which overtook his intriguing patron: deprived of his appointments, pensions and benefices, he was exiled far from Paris. None the less he continued to work, and in 1717 published a history of his native town, Historiae Tutelensis libri tres. Before his death he succeeded in returning to Paris, where he died unconvinced of his errors on the 28th of July 1718. Was he dupe or accomplice? The study of his correspondence with the cardinal gives the impression that he was the victim of clever cheats.

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 Œuvres de Saint-Simon by M. de Boislisle (vol. xiv. pp. 533-558). The bibliography of Baluze’s researches has been made by M. René Fage (1882, 1884) and his Life told by M. Émile Fage (1899). To these we must add an amusing book by G. Clément-Simon, La Gaieté de Baluze; documents biographiques et littéraires