es 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 balusters (_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, ETIENNE (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. Leopold 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 College 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