to his work on chronology. He boasted that he counted eight thousand mistakes in the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius. Eulogies were pronounced on him by his contemporaries, including Pierre Daniel Huet, Henri Valois, Hugh Grotius, Isaac Voss, F. Clericus, and Henry Noris. His chronological work has long since been surpassed. In his patristic works he had at hand only imperfect editions of the Fathers of the Church. What he wanted had already been outlined by Melchior Cano, in his work De locis theologicis. Pétau's work has been questioned; it may have been inspired, it is said, by a similar treatise of Oregius (Agostino Oreggi, Cardinal), as Zöckler maintains, or by the Confessio catholica of John Gerhard (d. 1627), as conjectured by Eckstein. But the Confessio catholica has a different aim, stated on the first page; there are long historical developments in the sixteen books De Incarnatione Verbi of Pétau. The relationship with Oregius was examined in detail by François Oudin in the Mémoires de Trévoux (July 1718, pp. 109–33). He declares his opinions with full liberty, for example concerning the opinion of Augustine of Hippo on the problem of predestination, or the ideas on the Trinity of the ante-Nicene writers. The work furnished a copious supply of documents. Pétau exaggerates the faults of Scholasticism; but he defends it against the accusations of Erasmus. In the Dogmata, after giving the history of each dogma, he adds the refutation of new errors. In his polemical writings his style was bitter; he was more gentle in discussions with Grotius. The memory of Pétau was celebrated the day after his death by Henri Valois, one of his pupils, and by Leo Allatius in a Greek poem composed at the request of Pope Urban VIII. Legacy A crater on the Moon is named Petavius in his honour. References Dionysius Petavius, Opus de Doctrina Temporum, 1627 Dionisius Petavius, The History of the World or an Account of Time, 1659 Denis Petau. Antonii Kerkoetii Aremorici Animadversorum Liber ad Claudii Salmasii Notas in Tertullianum De pallio, ristampa anastatica dell'edizione 1622 a c. di A. CAPONE, Clioedu, Lecce 2010. 1583 births 1652 deaths People from Orléans University of Paris alumni 17th-century French Catholic theologians 17th-century French Jesuits Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni Clergy from Orléans Writers from Orléans