A similar epoch was made, as early as 1572, by the Grammar of Father Emmanuel Alvarez, _De Institutione Grammatica Libri Tres_, a work adopted by the _Ratio_, then republished in editions so numerous as to baffle all calculation, translated either entire, or in part, into thirteen languages; while one portion, well-known in our times as a "Latin Prosody," is credited to divers authors or publishers.[167] The latest editions of this Grammar, issued in different languages, are of the last twenty-five years. This era of development in grammar superseded the subtleties and metaphysical abstractions of mediæval methods.[168] In history, not to mention the voluminous James Sirmond, whose researches among original sources were made before the sixteenth century had closed, Father Denis Petau (Petavius), early in the following century, composed his great work on Chronology, laying down the exact basis in this respect for Universal History, both sacred and profane.[169] Geneva and Holland alike reproduced the work. Labbe's publications on ancient and modern History and Chronology, the greater part of his eighty works being upon these subjects, with several abridgments and geographical adjuncts; Father Buffier's "Practical History," which was published for the schools in 1701, and then rapidly went through divers editions, to be supplemented in 1715 by his "Universal Geography," his treatise on the Globe and his Maps, all of which went through some scores of French, Italian and Dutch editions; these and other works of the kind indicate the line of pedagogical development going on at the same time in the various colleges. Hence, the "New Elements of History and Geography for the use of the Scholars of the Collège Louis-le-Grand," which was an abridgment of Buffier's book, could say, with some propriety, on its first page: "How great has been the carelessness of an age, otherwise so judicious and cultivated as ours, in not having as yet made the science of History and Geography an essential part of the education of youth? The public and posterity will perhaps be grateful to the College of Louis-le-Grand, for having shown in this regard an example, which ought to do honor to our time."[170] Thus the same resources were at the service of Jesuit education as, in the general literary world, helped to form the Jesuit historians: Mariana, historian of Spain; Damian Strada, of the War in the Netherlands; Balbin, of Bohemia; Naruszewicz, of Poland; Katona, of the Kings of Hungary; Damberger, of the Middle Ages; Francis Wagner, of Leopold I; G. Daniel, historiographer royal of France.