Another Citation Examination

It's time again to take a look at another quote that gets posted around the Internet.

"All names which in the Scriptures are applied to Christ, by virtue of which it is established that he is over the church, all the same names are applied to the Pope." -Robert Bellarmine, On the Authority of Councils, Volume 2: 266.

An alternate version of this is:

"All names which in the Scriptures are applied to Christ, by virtue of which it is established that He is over the church, all the same names are applied to the Pope." -On the Authority of the Councils, book 2, chapter 17

This is therefore used to claim (either by implication or by the person posting it explicitly making the claim) that all the names, including things like "Son of God", are applied to the pope. Unlike many of these sorts of quotes, however, a citation is provided, and actually a decent enough one, particularly the latter (far too many of these sorts of copied and pasted quotes would just say something like "Bell. 2.17"). This means it can be looked up.

However, even in the context of the above quote, this seems a bit exaggerated--Bellarmine does specify the titles are "by virtue of which it is established that He is over the church". In other words, it is only those titles that are in question, not all titles. So even before looking it up, this is a questionable quote to attack Bellarmine or Catholicism with. But what about in context?

The work is in Latin. However, someone has recently published an English translation. I am using "De Controversiis Tomus III On the Church, containing On Councils, On the Church Militant, and on the Marks of the Church" which was published in 2017 and was translated by Ryan Grant. The applicable chapter begins on page 205, which is also where the quote is found, which here is translated as "It is proven from reason, and founded in the scriptures; for all the names which are given to Christ in the Scriptures whereby it is certain that he is above the Church, all the same are attributed to the pope."

But what are the names in question? Well, first, for a bit of context, this chapter is entitled "The Supreme Pontiff is absolutely above a Council" and he is arguing about how the pope is of higher authority than a general council of the church. All ellipses and italics are in the work being quoted. Here is the applicable portion, typed up as best as I can:

"It is proven from reason, and founded in the scriptures; for all the names which are given to Christ in the Scriptures whereby it is certain that he is above the Church, all the same are attributed to the Pope. First, Christ is the householder in his house, which is the Church, the Pope in the same house is the supreme steward, i.e. in the place of Christ the householder: Who is a faithful steward, and prudent, whom the Lord constituted above his household, etc." (Luke 12:42) Here, by steward, or oeconomon, as it is in the Greek text, the Fathers understand a Bishop. Ambrose, as well as Hilary and Jerome (in cap. 24 Matth., where a similar sentence is contained) understand this passage in the same way. And although the Fathers do not speak expressly about the Roman Bishop, nevertheless, without a doubt the teaching of that Scripture is: as particular Bishops are supreme stewards over their Churches, so the Roman Bishop is in the universal Church. Wherefore, Ambrose, on 1 Timothy 3. That you would know how you ought to be preserved in the house of God, etc., he says: "The Church is called the house of God, whose ruler today is Damasus." And Chrysostom, in lib. 2 de sacerdotio, near the beginning, cites this passage: "Who is a faithful servant," etc., explaining that it is about Peter.

However, the supreme steward is over the household, and he cannot be judged and punished by it, as is clear from the same passage, for the Lord says: "whom the Lord constituted over his household ... But if the servant would say in his heart: 'the master delays his coming', and would begin to strike the servants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and be drunk, the Master will come on a day in which he hopes not, and divine him and place his lot with the infidels." There you see the Lord saves that servant for his judgment and does not consign him to the judgment of the household. The use of all household teaches the same thing; for there is no household in which it would be lawful for inferior servants to punish even when gathered together, or expel the steward, even if he were the worst, for it pertains to the Lord of the household alone.

The second name of Christ is shepherd, "I am the good shepherd, etc." He shares the same with Peter in the last chapter of John: "Feed my sheep." It is certain, however, that a shepherd is so in charge of the sheep that he cannot be judged by them."

The third is "head of the Body of the Church," (Eph. 4:15-16), and he shares the same with Peter, as we have it in the Council of Chalcedon, act. 3, where the legates pronounce sentence against Dioscorus, and in the epistle of the Council to Leo. Moreover, that the head would be ruled by the members and not rather rule them is against nature, just as also it is against nature for the members to cut off their head when it is gravely sick.

The fourth is husband, or bridegroom (Ephesians 5:25), "Men, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for it, etc." The same agrees with Peter, for in the general Council of Lyons, as it is found in c. Ubi periculum, de electione, in Sexto, the Council speaks on the election of a Roman Pontiff: "Let a useful provision make haste for the necessary things of the whole world, for a suitable bridegroom to speedily be given to the Church." But it is against the Apostle in Ephesians 5:25 as well as against the order of nature that the bride would be in charge of the bridegroom, and not rather subject."

After this, Bellarmine moves onto other arguments on why he believes popes are above councils, but the above is everything concerning titles. I did have to type the above up manually so I apologize if I made any typos. Whatever one thinks of the above arguments, it is abundantly clear that Bellarmine's statement of applying the names refers only to the specific titles above: Householder/steward, shepherd, head of the Body of the Church, and husband/bridegroom. Trying to turn this quote into some kind of claim that it was Bellarmine claiming the Pope held titles like "savior" or "God" is just silly when one reads him in context (or, quite frankly, even out of context).

The Council of Mâcon and Women

Supposedly, there was a church council in Mâcon (I'll write Macon for simplicity) which debated whether women had souls or whether women were human (depending on the source). The supposed year this council occurred also depends on the source; I've seen 581, 584, and 585 given. Some who refer to it go even further with this claim and assert that women were declared human by only one vote.

Naturally, sources are virtually never given for this claim. The actual decrees of the council are available at the link in Latin, and while my Latin is rudimentary, as far as I can tell there is no mention of any issue of women's souls or humanity at all.

So what is the truth? Well, it's made up; there wasn't debate about whether women were human or whether women had souls to begin with, much less vigorous debate decided by a single vote. This article (also available here) called "The Myth of Soulless Women" from the magazine First Things goes into some depth about it. See also here, a similar article by the same author. The short version is that the whole thing comes down to a misunderstanding of an account of a council (which may not have even been the Council of Macon). This account comes from Gregory of Tour's work "A History of the Franks" and is found in Book 8 Chapter 20. From the 1927 translation by O.M. Dalton (volume 2, page 345), we see:

"At this council there was a certain bishop who defended the opinion that women could not be included under the general description ‘man’; but he accepted the reasoning of his brethren, and said no more. Their arguments were as follows: The holy book of the Old Testament teaches that in the beginning, when God created man, He created them male and female, and called their name Adam, which, being interpreted, means earthly man; even so He called the woman Eve; of both He used the word ‘man’. And the Lord Jesus Christ is therefore called Son of man, because He was the Virgin’s son, which is to say, the son of a woman. To her He said, when He was about to change the water into wine: ‘ Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ and that which follows. They brought other convincing testimony, and there this matter rested."

And that's it! A simple question about the meaning of a word; this was much more a matter of grammar than theology. One has to stretch a lot to make it into a question of whether women were human or had souls. Even worse for those who try to claim it was settled by one vote (or was even a contested question), what is actually described is one bishop brought up the subject, the other bishops explained how he was wrong, and he accepted it and did not press his case. All of this is well explained in the linked article, which has been online since at least the year 2000 so it is not like the information could not be found, meaning people who propagate this false claim are with even less excuse.

Why does this blog post exist, then, if all the information is already in an online article presently available? Well, there are a few points not mentioned in it I wanted to note. While the above article goes into the original source of this error about a council arguing whether women have souls, it doesn't talk about where the even more inaccurate claim that it was decided by one vote came from. The farthest I have traced that back is a 1973 book called "The Rape of the APE" (APE stands for "American Puritan Ethic") by Allen Sherman, best known for his comedic song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh". While this might not be the original source of the "decided by one vote" claim, it seems to be the one that popularized it. This book makes the following claim on page 181, italics original:

"In the year 584, in Lyons, France, 43 Catholic bishops and 20 men representing other bishops held the Council of Macon, which included the most peculiar debate since the world began, a discussion which, for nonsensical content; surely exceeded the Mad Hatter's tea party. The subject of the debate was a serious world problem of the time: Are women human? After many lengthy arguments, a vote was taken. The results were: 32 yes, 31 no. Women were declared human by one vote."

Yes, that semicolon did come after the word content despite the fact it should be a comma. Absolutely no source is made for this. Indeed, this chapter of the book, which is about various alleged mistreatment of women in the past, is filled with other inaccurate or exaggerated claims, almost all given without any citation whatsoever. Perhaps people should not uncritically take information about history from a man whose main claim to fame was making goofy novelty songs.

It's not as if people didn't know, even back then, that the claim was false. It was pointed out how the Council of Macon never debated the humanity of souls or women back in a 1916 issue of The Atlantic (January 1916, in the letters section).

But perhaps someone would object to the above counterarguments on the part of bias. After all, First Things is Christian magazine. And perhaps the person who wrote the letter to The Atlantic had their own biases also. But the requirement of evidence should be on the side of the person making the claim that there was any serious debate on whether women were human, meaning even if the sources I cited were the most biased people ever, it still wouldn't solve the issue of the lack of any primary source ever offered for the Council of Macron debating whether women are human or have souls.

However, to let the matter be decided hopefully beyond all doubt, let's check a source that cannot be accused of bias of wanting to make Christianity or Catholicism look good in regards to its treatment of women. Specifically, I refer to "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" by Uta Ranke-Heinemann. Now, this book has a lot of problems, making some claims that don't seem backed up by its citations or claims made without a citation I can't find verification for. For example, take this claim from it (page 187) which I have seen repeated online. Referring to Thomas Aquinas, it claims:

"And he knows what this inconvenient situation can lead to: "Because there is a higher water content in women, they are more easily seduced by sexual pleasure" (Summa Theologiae III q. 42 a. 4 ad 5). Women find it all the harder to resist sexual pleasure since they have "less strength of mind" than men (II/II q. 49 a. 4)."

Summa Theologiae III q. 42 a. 4 ad 5 has not the slightest thing to do with women, water content, or sexual pleasure (its topic is about whether it was correct or not for Jesus to leave the writing of the Bible to others). And Summa Theologiae II/II q. 49 a. 4 also says nothing about women either and is discussing the aspects of prudence.

Also, I feel that this review from the New Oxford Review also brings up some valid points, even if it must be accepted that it is from an explicitly Catholic source which is therefore biased. Now, someone can find positive reviews in popular magazines, but actual historians and scholars tend to be less positive. For example, the review of it from the journal "History" concludes:

"[I]f it were presented simply as a personal document it would doubtless command respect. But as supposedly historical argument it is lamentable; the anachronistic assumptions and value-judgements which fill every page would barely gain a pass-mark for a first-year undergraduate essay."
("History" Volume 78, Number 252 (February 1993), pages 65-66)

Okay, so why am I spending a bunch of time criticizing the source I'm citing as evidence? It's because of those problems that it serves as an especially strong source here. "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" is a rather polemical work about poor treatment of women by the church and it is willing to seize onto various questionable claims to argue its thesis. So, what does this work, which has every reason to use the Council of Macon as an example of how poorly esteemed women were by the church, have to say? Here's what it says on page 190-191:

"We may note in passing that as bad as this degrading of women by the Church was, it must be made clear that the worst accusation–that the Church doubted women had a soul or were human at all–is untrue. One often hears and reads that at the second Synod of Mâcon (585) the participants disputed whether women had souls, but that never happened. Souls were not the issue. Gregory of Tours, who was there, reports that a bishop raised the question, "whether woman could be called 'homo." Thus it was a philological question (though raised because of the higher value that men placed on themselves): homo in Latin means "person" as well as "man," as do cognate words in all the Romance languages, and as "man" does in English. The other bishops, Gregory reports, referred the questioner to the story of Creation, which says that God created man (homo), "male and female he created them," and to Jesus' title "Son of Man" (filius hominis), although he was the son of a virgin, and hence the son of a woman. These clarifications settled the issue: the term homo was to be applied to women as well as to men (Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 8, 20)."

This work--which, again, is all about how badly the church treated women, and is willing to engage in questionable arguments to prove that point--still says this claim is totally wrong. That really should clinch it. Maybe you don't trust Fox News because of its conservative bias, or MSNBC because of its liberal bias, but it's exactly because of that bias that if Fox News is defending a liberal from an attack, or MSNBC is defending a conservative from an attack, that's a pretty good sign that the attack in question is without merit. And that's the case here. If even "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" is willing to say this claim is false, that should close the case shut.

Thus, this whole claim about the Council of Macon debating whether women had souls is false, and even more absurd is any claim it was decided by a single vote. Yet people, most distressingly, have propagated this false claim despite there not being evidence for it and without providing any evidence for it themselves. And thus in this way are false claims spread, due to people not bothering to make any attempt at verifying the claims they make.

Examination of a Citation

It feels a little weird to do a post over just one quotation that goes floating around, but sometimes it's worth it. Α claim one can find sometimes on the Internet is the idea that the name "Jesus" comes from Zeus; the argument goes that in the original Greek (where it was Iesous, ιησους), the "sous" came from Zeus as a way to appease pagans. While various others have given reasons why this claim doesn't make all that much sense., there's a specific citation I've seen passed around that supposedly offers evidence of this that I want to take a look at.

This citation can take several different forms, and I'll list several examples of what I've seen:

Some authorities, who have spent their entire lives studying the origins of names, believe that “Jesus” actually means— “Hail Zeus!” For Iesous in Greek is “Hail Zeus.” That is, “Ie” translates as “Hail” and “sous” or “sus” is Zeus. Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend, J.C.J. Melford, 1983, p. 126.

"It is known that the Greek name endings with sus, seus, and sous were attached by the Greeks to names and geographical areas as means to give honour to their supreme deity, Zeus." -Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend Professor J. C. J. Metford

"It is known that the Greek name endings with sus, seus, and sous which are phonetic pronunciations for the chief Greek god of Olympus - were attached by the Greeks to names and geographical areas as means to give honour to their supreme deity, Zeus." -Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend by Professor J.C.J Melfurd (1983, pg 126)

Greek name suffixes transliterated as -sus, -seus and -sous are phonetic pronunciations for the chief Greek god of Olympus—Ζεύς. These suffixes were appended by the Greeks to names and geographical areas as a means to honor their supreme deity, Ζεύς. J.C.J Melfurd. (1983). Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend. p. 126.

Some of these present themselves as quotes whereas others are summaries. One oddity we can see in these is disagreement on how the author's name is spelled; we can see them cited as Melford, Metford, or Melfurd. It is, for the record, Metford.

But we also run into the question of why we should trust this claim simply on the authority of J.C.J. Metford. You see, if his German Wikipedia page is correct (surprisingly, there is no English one), J.C.J. Metford appears to have been a professor of Spanish. Him writing up an encyclopedia of Christian terms already seems out of his area of expertise, much less making statements concerning the origin of Greek names. But honestly, even if Metford knew more about Greek name etymology than anyone else in the world, it ends up not mattering, because the claim made isn't in his work.

One can see page 126 of this work here on the Internet Archive, though you may need to sign up for a free account and check it out to view it, as otherwise only a few pages can be viewed. It was published in 1983, by J.C.J. Metford, and it has the same name as the work being cited. Thus we absolutely know this is the right source. But someone can notice something quite obvious if you look at page 126: The claim about how Greek names ending with sus, seus, or sous coming from Zeus is nowhere to be found. Heck, Zeus isn't mentioned at all on the page. A search for "Zeus" turns up a few matches, but none saying anything like the above. So the whole citation is false! The work doesn't say that!

So much for that claim. The text that supposedly supports this... doesn't. It doesn't say anything at all about names in Greek ending with sous/sus/seus coming from Zeus. Were people just too lazy to look up the source to verify it? It was uploaded onto the Internet Archive back in 2013, so it's been available there for quite some time. And even before it was made available there, it's not a rare book, and is in a ton of libraries on WorldCat. There are multiple libraries within twenty minutes of where I live that have it. This is not a difficult book to check. So the "quote" and related claims about Ditionary of Christian Lore and Legend is nonsense.

While this post was only concerned with this specific citation, I suppose I should include links to people responding more generally to the claim of the supposed link between the name Jesus and the name Zeus. See here, here, here, here, or here for responses to it from several different sources and viewpoints. (Note: This is not an endorsement in general of any of the websites I point to, only the specific linked pages) 

So the lesson here, as is often the case, is not to just assume that a quote you see online is true. Here we have a bunch of people repeating this supposed claim from this work even though the work doesn't actually have it. All it would take is simply looking at this book (which is not actually that hard to get a copy of, to say nothing of the possibility of just looking at it online) to show it was false, but apparently none of the people who repeated this false claim bothered to do so.

Natural Born Citizens, The Law of Nations, and Emmer de Vattel

There is a claim that the term "natural born citizen" in the US Constitution refers only to people who were children of US citizens, and therefore anyone not born of a citizen--even if they gained their citizenship at birth--is ineligible for the office of the President. Although this argument has been applied to some individuals in the past, it seems to have gotten some attention again due to the claim it applies to Nikki Haley, which is why I'm choosing to make this post now. Much of the information here is actually things I discovered a few years ago when people were making this accusation of Kamala Harris, but given it has been brought up again, it seemed a good time to post the information to the blog. Granted, one can find this information elsewhere, but there seems no harm in adding one more post on it.

That said, the purpose of this post isn't to try to get into the general debate of the term natural born citizen, but rather to examine a specific quote. There is a particular quote that is extremely popular among those who argue this claim that natural born citizens need US citizens for parents, and indeed is normally the main argument usedo. What I allude to is a quote from a French writer named Emmerich de Vattel (or Emmer de Vattel), who is claimed to have stated in his work The Law of Nations that "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens." And so the conclusion is that the usage of "natural born citizen" in the Constitution is supposed to correspond to the quote in question.

As not everyone wishes to read a lengthy post, the short answer is that Vattel never used the phrase natural born citizen at all in this section, nor any French phrase that obviously corresponds with it, and it first showed up in a British translation of his work about a decade after the Constitution was written. So anyone who tries to appeal to Vattel is appealing to something he never actually wrote and is showing themselves to not know what they are talking about. Now it's time for the long answer.

First, let's back up and discuss the basic issue. In Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution, we see the following statement:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

This establishes that anyone who is not a natural born citizen is not eligible to be President (another section specifies these restrictions also apply to the Vice President). This requirement applies to no other office. But what is a natural born citizen?

The normal interpretation is that it simply refers to anyone who gained their United States citizenship at birth and is contrasted with those who gained their citizenship later in life. But an interpretation some have raised is that it refers only to those who gained their citizenship at birth and were the child of a citizen (the specifics of that vary--some claim only one parent being a citizen is required, some claim the father being a citizen is required, and some claim both must be citizens). An alternate argument arriving at the same conclusion is that contrary to the standard interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, people don't automatically become citizens just for being born in the United States. I've written previously about how that claim is wrong and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States regardless of the citizenship of their parent (as well as regardless of whether their parent is legally authorized to be in the United States). However, with United States v. Wong Kim Ark as currently binding precedent that says people born in the United States--at least of parents that are permanent legal residents--some separate the two ideas and say that even if someone has birthright citizenship from being born in the US, it doesn't make them a natural born citizen, which they claim which requires birthright citizenship and to be the child of a citizen.

The main point of evidence raised for this is a quote from Emer de Vattel's work "The Law of Nations", which has the full title of "The Law of Nations: Or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns." This work was originally in French ("Le Droit des gens: ou, Principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des Nations et des Souverains"), and in a translation, the following remark is found in Book 1, Chapter 19, Section 212:

"The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."

If you're familiar with history and have looked carefully at the translation cited (or read my "short answer" a few paragraphs ago), you might have already noticed a major problem with this argument. The Constitution was written in 1787 and then ratified in 1789 or 1790 (it was ratified by enough states to be put into effect in 1789, but it wasn't until 1790 that every state agreed). Yet the translation in question is from 1797, years later; I cannot find any indication that this specific translation predated this year. And to top it all off, it wasn't even an American translation, but a British one.

There was a translation of The Law of Nations available in English prior to this one, but it renders this passage differently:

"The natives, or indigenes, are those born in the country of parents who are citizens."

The phrase "natural born citizens" is not found here, only "indigenes". Consulting multiple printings of translations prior to 1797, they all render it as the above. Translations printed in 1760, 1787, and 1793 all use the word "indigenes" (note that as these are older printings, sometimes the s looks like an f). This is the translation that Americans would have therefore been familiar with; and this even continues after the 1797 translation was published, as the Supreme Court case The Venus from 1814 shows. While not really relevant to the question of natural born citizens, the opinion says:

Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says

"The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights."

The translation used above is taken from the earlier translation, not the 1797 one. The writers of the Constitution, and the general American public, could simply not have been aware of a usage of "natural born citizen" in a translation that hadn't existed yet and apparently was not well known in America for a while even afterwards.

At this point the reader is probably wondering what the original French said. Did it use the French version of "natural born citizen" or something similar? It says the following:

"Les Naturels, ou Indigènes sont ceux qui sont ceux qui sont nés dans le pays, de Parens Citoyens."

The word "Indigènes" is what was translated as "natural born citizen" in the later translation and "indigenes" in the earlier one. Examining dictionaries, one finds that it means native or indigenous person. This does not seem a match at all for natural born citizen, and it is hard to believe that the Constitution writers and ratifiers were trying in any way to invoke Vattel with such a phrase.

So the idea that the writers of the Constitution were invoking Vattel when they wrote "natural born citizen" falls flat. That wasn't how it was translated in English at the time, and even if they were looking at the French, "natural born citizen" isn't the association one would normally end up with for "Indigènes".

Someone could, I suppose, try to argue that the translator believed that natural born citizen meant being born in a country with a citizen father, and use that to advance the claim for that being the meaning of natural born citizen. The problem is, we have no idea who translated it (it is uncredited as far as I can tell) and thus no reason to believe they had any special insight into the subject. Even worse, that's not the argument people make about the Law of Nations and natural born citizen; virtually everyone I've seen who invokes The Law of Nations as evidence for this meaning never argues on the basis of the translator, but claims that Vattel was the one who used the term, or at least that the Constitution's framers were influenced by the English translation. As has been shown quite decisively, that claim is completely false.

Thus, Vattel's work is of little if any help in deciding the definition of natural born citizen; people should look elsewhere for what this term means. The point of this post was to correct the error regarding Vattel rather than offer a general argument on the meaning, but I would be remiss to not at least mention what seems a much more promising quote on the subject. Namely, one from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, an extremely influential treatise on law that would have been familiar to any English speaking lawyer (in America or Britain) at the time. In Book 1, Chapter 10, he writes:

"The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it."

So to him, a natural-born subject is born within the country, and those that are not are aliens. Later on in the same chapter he discusses cases where children born abroad are also natural born subjects in cases where their parents were in allegiance to the king, which would not of direct importance to this post is at least of tangential importance. However, following that discussion, he gives this quote:

"The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien."

Although in these quotes the term "subject" is used rather than "citizen," after the Revolutionary War people were obviously no longer subjects of the king, but rather citizens of the United States. This being the source and therefore definition for natural born citizen is highly plausible, particularly concerning there as far as I can tell was virtually no debate or questions on what the term meant when they were putting the Constitution together. Even if someone thinks this isn't the origin, it's certainly far more plausible than the idea that they somehow got the term "natural born citizen" out of Vattel despite the applicable translation not being published yet, and the translation that was published at the time used "indigenes".

So in conclusion, the idea that "natural born citizen" is restricted to children of citizens because Vattel supposedly said that was what the term means is simply ridiculous. Vattel never used that phrase, he used the French term "indigènes" which is not an obvious match for natural born citizen, and the English translation that rendered it as such wasn't even done until after the Constitution was written and ratified. If someone wants to instead appeal to an unknown British translator a decade later as evidence that this was the understanding of the term, that is certainly their right. But no one should claim that Emmer de Vattel used the phrase, because he didn't, and those who make such a claim end up looking silly in doing so.