Binius, Severin
BINIUS, SEVERIN
Editor of conciliar texts; b. Randerath, near Aachen, Germany, 1573; d. Cologne, Feb. 14, 1641. His career was centered in Cologne, where he was rector of the university from 1627 to 1629, and vicar–general of the diocese from 1631 to 1641. He published the histories of socrates, theodoret, sozomen, and evagrius scholasticus (Cologne 1612). In his main work, Concilia generalia et provincialia (4 v., Cologne 1606), he made use of the work of L. surius, A. carafa, and Gracia de Loaisa's 1593 edition of Spanish councils, but he printed no Greek texts. The second edition (9 v., 1618) included Greek texts and made use of the Roman edition of Paul V (1608–12). But Binius abandoned the typographical distinction which had been used in the Roman edition in favor of 17th-century Latin versions of ancient Greek and Latin texts, and the resulting confusion persists to the present. A third edition in 11 volumes appeared in Paris in 1636.
Bibliography: j. b. martin, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, a. vacant et al, 15 v. (Paris 1903–60) 2.1:900–901. a. franzen, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d new ed. Freiburg, 1957–65) 2:483–484.
[b. l. marthaler]