WELCOME!
THE BOLLANDISTS
~ Part III ~
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| Coudenberg's chapel and abbey church, 1695 |
This favourable attitude of the Government resulted, after various tiresome conferences, in the removal, in 1778, of the Bollandists and the historiographers of Belgium, together with their libraries, to the abbey of Caudenberg, at Brussels. Each of the, Bollandists was to receive an annual pension of 800 florins, besides the 500 florins to be given to the community of Caudenberg in payment for their board and lodging. The same indulgence was accorded to Ghesquière in consideration of his office of historian. The results of the sale of the volumes were to be divided between the abbey and the editors on condition that the abbey should take charge of the matter on hand, and provide a copyist to make fair copies of manuscripts for the printers, as well as religious who should be trained under the direction or the elder Bollandists for the continuation of the work. The other half of the profits was to be divided in equal portions among the writers.
The four hagiographers took up their residence at the Abbey of Caudenberg, and with the consent of the abbot adopted two young religious assistants. One of these soon left them to pursue his scientific studies, feeling that he had not the vocation for this work; the other was John-Baptist Fonson, at that time (1788) twenty-two years of age, whose name soon afterwards appeared on the title page as editor. Under this new condition of things there appeared in 1780 Volume IV of October under the names of Constantine Suyskens (died 1771), Cornelius De Bye, John De Bue, Joseph Ghesquière, and Ignatius Hubens, all former Jesuits. In 1786, Volume V appeared, signed with the names of De Bye, De Bue, and Fonson. In the interval between these two volumes the corps of hagiographers had lost, in 1782, the youngest of the Antwerp members, Ignatius Hubens. He was replaced in October, 1784, by a French Benedictine, Dom Anselm Berthod, who voluntarily resigned the high positions he held in his order and those for which he was intended, so that he might devote himself to the learned work which the Imperial Government of Vienna requested him to take up. He was to be engaged upon it only a little more than three years, for he died at Brussels, in March, 1788.
Two new volumes were issued from the royal press of Brussels, to which had been sent all the equipments of the printing establishment which the Bollandists had founded at Antwerp exclusively for their work. The printing expenses as well an those of pensions and indemnities were largely made up to the public treasury by the confiscation of the capital through the sale of their volumes, the collective pension of 2,000 Brabant florins received from the government all through the eighteenth century up to the suppression of the Society, and the liberality of certain benefactors. This capital had grown by 1773 to the sum of 130,000 florins, yielding an annual revenue of 9,133 florins and 18 sous to which were added the results of the sale of the Acta Sanctorum which averaged 2,400 florins yearly.
The Empress Maria Theresa to the very last showed favour to the work of the Bollandists. The same benevolence was not experienced from her successor, Joseph II. The Bollandists now felt the consequences of one of the so-called reforms introduced into the ecclesiastical domain by this imperial philosopher. Among the religious houses suppressed as useless was the Abbey of Caudenberg. The decree of suppression was enforced in May, 1786. The Bollandists were not at first involved in the catastrophe, as they were assigned a dwelling-place and library in a part of the buildings formerly occupied by the college of the Society of Jesus, and were allowed to retain the pensions and privileges granted them in 1778. This was only a short postponement, however, of the complete destruction of the work. Already, in 1784, the Prince von Kaunitz, minister of Joseph II and his chief counselor in the matter of religious reform, had intimated that the Emperor was not content with slow progress of the undertaking, and that for the future he would expect to see the publication of at least a volume a year, so that the work might be entirely finished in ten years. The minister even went so far as to send word to the municipality of Brussels that "he attributed the lack of activity on the part of the Bollandists to their desire to keep up forever [èterniser] the profits accruing from the work, and that if they did not give satisfaction there was nothing to do but suppress the establishment." The accused had no difficulty in justifying themselves. But the Court of Vienna had fully decided to hear no explanation, and in 1788 asked for a report from the Court of Accounts concern the expenses entailed by the work of the Bollandists. The conclusion deduced from this report was that the suppression of this work and that of the historiographers would result in an annual gain to the treasury of two to three thousand florins. The Chamber, moreover, took it on itself to say that there was no advantage to be gained by continuing it. The ecclesiastical commission and commission of studies (one and the same), consulted in its turn, gave a decision to the same effect (October 11, 1788). It said:
The work of the Bollandists is far from completion, and we cannot flatter ourselves at the end is yet in sight. This work has no merit but that of being an historical repertory, filled with an enormous quantity of details, which will always have but slight attraction for real savants. It is astonishing that at the time of the suppression of the Jesuit Order, they should have been successful in interesting the Government in such trash, and that it is such is proved by the scanty profit the Bollandists have derived from their labours. In business parlance, it is a very poor investment, and as it is not better, regarded from a scientific standpoint, it is quite time to put an end to it.
Strengthened by this advice, the "Government Council" notified the Court of Accounts by a despatch dated 16 October, 1788, that it had decided to put a stop to the work of the "Acta Sanctorum", and that in consequence, beginning from that date, no more payments should be made to the Fathers De Bye, De Bue, Fonson, Ghesquière, and Cornelius Smet (a former Jesuit, associated first with Ghesquière in the publication of the "Analecta Belgica and later enrolled among the Bollandists) of the annual pension of 800 florins which had been assured them. It would be decided later what be done with the printing outfit and the other effects of the suppressed establishment. These spoils comprised the library of the Bollandists and the copies of the volumes already published which they had in stock. This involved no slight annoyance. Once the series was abandoned, it would be difficult to find a purchaser for these works, and they wished to realise as much money as possible from them. It was decided to ask the Bollandists themselves to undertake the sale of these effects for the benefit of the public treasury. The Bollandists willingly accepted the charge, hoping to keep intact the treasures of their library and thus to ensure, in a certain measure, the resumption of the work, if not at once, at least in the near future.
Cornelius de Bye, who had been especially commissioned to conduct the sale, turned first to Martin Gerbert, the learned abbot of the monastery of Saint Blasius in the Black Forest. On behalf of the Government commissioners he named a purchase price for the library and such of the published volumes as remained unsold, and offered to come to Saint Blasius for some months in order to train some of the young religious of the abbey for the work of publishing the Acta Sanctorum. His letter, dated November 11, 1788, remained unanswered, whether as a result of dispositions little favourable to the Society of Jesus, such as had been more than once manifested by this famous abbot, or whether, already absorbed by many important works, he felt he could not think of undertaking yet another entirely new.
In November and December, 1788, the Congregation of Benedictines of Saint-Maur, in France, of its own accord made advances to the officials of the Imperial Government of Vienna for the acquisition of the Bollandist library, with a view to continuing the publication. This attempt was equally void of result. It was with the abbey of the Premonstratensians of Tongerloo that arrangements were finally concluded. By a contract signed on May 11, 1789, the Government transferred to the abbey the Bollandist library and the Bellarmine Museum, together with the furnishings appertaining to them, and the volumes already printed and the printing equipment. In return, the abbey was to pay the government for the libraries 12,000 Brabant florins and for the other things 18,000 florins. Half of the latter sum was turned over to the three hagiographers, De Bye, De Bue, and Fonson. Moreover, the abbey agreed to pay a yearly salary to these three as well as to Ghesuière and Smet.
The Bollandists were scarcely established in their new home when the Brabantine Revolution broke out. Nevertheless, they continued their labours and in 1794 published the sixth volume of October, signed with the names of Cornelius De Bye and James De Bue, former Jesuits, John Baptist Fonson, ex-Canon of Caudenberg, Anselm Berthod the Benedictine, and Siard van Dyck, Cyprian van de Goor, and Matthias Stalz, Premonstratensian canons.
The same year Belgium was invaded by French troops and reunited to the great Republic. Ecclesiastical goods were confiscated, priests and religious hunted like criminals, the Premonstratensians of Tongerloo and the Bollandists whom they harboured forced to disperse, and the work of the Bollandists actually suppressed. Part of the treasures of the library were concealed in the homes of neighbouring peasants, and the rest, hastily piled into wagons, were taken to Westphalia.
When the storm of persecution had somewhat abated, an attempt was made to collect these scattered effects. Naturally many of them were lost or destroyed. The remainder were restored to the abbey of Tongerloo, where they were undisturbed until 1825. Then, as all hope of resuming the Bollandist work seemed lost, the canons of Tongerloo disposed of a great number of the books and manuscripts by public sale. Such as remained were given to the government of the Netherlands, which hastened to incorporate the volumes into the Royal Library of The Hague. The manuscripts seemed destined to a like fate, but as a result of earnest solicitations they were deposited in the Library of Bourgogne, Brussels, where they still remain.
Nevertheless, the idea of resuming the publication of the Acta Sanctorum had never been entirely abandoned in Belgium. The prefect of the department of the Deux Nèthes (province of Antwerp), in 1801; the Institute of France, with the Minister of the Interior of the French Republic as a mediator, in 1802; and lastly, in 1810, the Baron de Tour du Pin, Prefect of the Department of the Dyle (Brussels), at the request of the incumbent of the same important office, then the Count de Montalivet, applied to such of the former Bollandists as were still living, to induce them to resume their task once more. But the attempts were futile.
Matters rested here until 1836. It was then learned that a hagiographical society had been formed in France under the patronage of several bishops and of M. Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction, and that it especially proposed to itself the resumption of the work of the Bollandists. The chief promoter of the enterprise, Abbé Théodore Perrin, of Laval, came to Belgium the same year, 1836, to solicit the support of the Government and the collaboration of Belgian savants. He did not meet with the reception he had hoped for. On the contrary, it aroused indignation in Belgium that a work which had come to be regarded as a national glory should pass into the hands of the French. The Abbé de Ram, Rector Magnificus of the University of Louvain and member of the Royal Commission of History, expressed this feeling in a letter addressed Count de Theux, Minister of the Interior, urgently imploring him to lose no time in securing for their native land of Belgium the honour of completing the great hagiographical collection, and engaged him to entrust the work to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by whom it had been begun and carried so far in the preceding centuries. The Minister immediately took the field, and conducted negotiations with such energy that by January, 1837, he received from Father van Lil, Provincial of the Society in Belgium, assurance of the appointment by the Society of new Bollandists, with their residence at the College of Saint-Michel at Brussels.
These were Fathers Jean-Baptiste Boone, Joseph van der Moere, and Prosper Coppens, to whom was added in the course of the same year, Father Joseph van Hecke. The provincial, in behalf of these Fathers, asked the privilege of taking home with them from the Library of Bourgogne and the Royal Library, such manuscripts and books as they would need for reference in the course of their work. Both requests were immediately granted. Moreover, an annual subsidy was promised, which was fixed in May, 1837, at 6,000 francs. This subsidy was continued from year to year under the different governments, both Catholic and Liberal, which succeeded to power, until the parliamentary session of 1868, in the course of which the Deputies cut it out of the budget. It has never been re-established.
The new hagiographers began by drawing up a list of the saints whose acts or notices remained to be published, that is to say, those who are honoured in the Catholic Church on the various days of October, November, and December, beginning from October 15, the day at which the work of their predecessors had been brought to a halt. This list was published in the month of March, 1838, with an introduction containing a summary of the history of the Bollandist movement, the announcement of the resumption of the work, and an earnest appeal to all friends of religious learning, imploring their assistance in securing what was felt by the new workers as the most necessary thing for their success, namely, a hagiographical library. This was published under the title of "De prosecutione operis Bollandiani". The appeal was heard. Most of the European governments, many societies of learned men, and several great publishers sent copies of the historical works undertaken by them; private individuals made generous donations of books, often precious and rare volumes that had adorned their libraries. Everywhere, also, on their literary journeys, the Bollandists were accorded the most enthusiastic and flattering receptions.
The first volume published after the resurrection of Bollandism, Volume VII of October, appeared in 1845, containing over 2,000 pages in folio. There followed successively Volumes VIII to XIII of October, and I and II of November, besides the "Propylaeum Novembris", an edition of the Greek Synaxarion called "de Sirmond", with the variants of sixty manuscripts scattered through the various public libraries of Europe.
The author of this article does not consider himself qualified to give an estimate of the work of these later Bollandists, having himself been a member of the body for too long a time. He is able, however, to cite the appreciations of the most distinguished and capable scholars in this field, who testify that the volumes published by the later Bollandists are in no wise inferior to those of their predecessors of the seventeenth an eighteenth centuries.
The reservations made by certain critics in their commendation are generally due to the prolixity of the commentaries, which they think is often excessive, and to the timidity of certain conclusions, which do not seem to them to correspond with what the discussions had led them to expect. Another class of censors reproach the Bollandists for quite the reverse, accusing them of not showing sufficient respect towards what they call tradition, and of being too often hypercritical. The present members of the body are firmly resolved to be on their guard against these contrary excesses, something, indeed, which becomes easier to them as time passes, owing to the constant progress of good scientific methods.
We may be permitted one word, in conclusion, as to what has been done during these latter years towards keeping the work up to the high level of contemporary historical erudition. It has been judged opportune, in the first place, to publish, besides the great volumes of the principal collection itself, which appear at undetermined intervals, a periodical review intended chiefly to make known to the learned public materials recently discovered by the Bollandists or their friends which go towards completing either the Acts published in the volumes already printed or the entire mass of the work.
This review was begun under the title of "Analecta Bollandiana" in 1882. At the rate of one volume in octavo a year, it has reached in the present year (1907) the twenty-sixth volume. In volumes subsequent to the sixth there have been inserted, besides unedited documents, various notes bearing on hagiographical matters. Since the publication of the tenth volume, each quarterly issue has contained a "Bulletin des publications hagiogphiques" in which are announcements and summary appreciations of recent works and articles in reviews which concern matters of hagiography. Other auxiliary works have exacted long years of laborious preparation. They are the "Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca" and the "Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina", in which are enumerated under the name of each saint, following the alphabetical order of their names, all documents relating to his or her life and cult written in Greek or in Latin before the beginning of the sixteenth century, together with the indication of all collections and books where they can be found. The first of these collections, which appeared in 1895, numbers 143 pages. (There is now in preparation a new edition notably enlarged.)
The second, issued 1898-99, has 1387 pages. It is hoped that a "Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis" will soon be printed. Moreover, there is a third class of auxiliary works to which the Bollandists of the present generation are directing their activity, and that is the careful preparation of catalogues containing a systematic detailed description (if the Greek and Latin hagiographical manuscripts of various great libraries. A great many of these catalogues have been incorporated in the "Analecta". Such are the catalogues of the Greek manuscripts in the Roman libraries of the Barberini, the Chigi, and the Vatican; the National Library of Naples; the library of the University of Messina, and that of St. Mark's, in Venice; catalogues of the Latin manuscripts in the Royal Library of Brussels (2 volumes), in the libraries of the cities, or of the universities, of Bruges, Ghent, Liège, and Namur, in Belgium; of the municipal libraries of Chartres, Le Mans, Douai, and Rouen, in France; those of the Hague in Holland, and, in Italy, of Milan (the Ambrosian), as well as the various libraries of Rome; also in the private library of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, at Vienna, and that of Alphonsus Wins at Nivelles; and lastly, of the Bollandist Library. Besides the "Analecta", there have appeared the catalogue of the old (before 1500) Latin manuscripts in the National Library of Paris (three octavo volumes, also the tables) and a list of the Greek manuscripts in the same library (compiled in collaboration with M. H. Omont). All these publications, although certainly delaying somewhat the appearance of succeeding volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, have gained for the Bollandists warm words of encouragement and commendation from the greatest scholars.
There is a final detail which may not be without interest. The Bollandists had found themselves greatly hampered in the arrangement of their library at their residence in the Rue des Ursulines at Brussels which they had occupied since the resumption of the work in 1837. During the latter part of 1905 they were transferred to the new College of Saint-Michel on the Boulevard Militaire, where ample and convenient quarters for the library were assigned in the lofty buildings of the vast establishment. The 150,000 volumes contained in their literary museum are most suitably arranged here. A large space was also set apart for historical and philological reviews (about 600), nearly all of which are sent regularly by learned societies, either gratuitously or in exchange for the "Analecta Bollandiana". To class these according to the place of publication and the language chiefly employed in their preparation: 228 are French (a certain number of which are published in Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries than France); 135, German; 88, Italian; 55, English (of which ten are American); 13, Russian; 11, Dutch; 7, Flemish; 7, Spanish; 7, Croatian; 4, Swedish; 3, Portuguese; 2, Irish; 2, Hungarian; 1, Czech; 1, Polish; 1, Rumanian; 1, Dalmatian; and 1, Norwegian. Moreover, there are 9 printed in Greek, 6 in Latin, 4 in Armenian and 1 in Arabic. Finally, a large hall near the library has been set apart, and after October, 1907, it will be thrown open to foreign students who may wish to consult original sources of information likely to assist them in their researches.
The quotations of the Acta Sanctorum refer to three different editions. The first, the original one, commonly called the Antwerp edition, has been sufficiently described in the above article. The volumes of the Antwerp collection were first reprinted at Venice from 1764 to 1770. They reached then to volume VI of September. The main difference between this re-impression and the Antwerp edition lies in the fact that the supplementary additions to sundry commentaries printed by the Bollandists at the end of the single volumes, or of a set of volumes are transposed in the Venetian edition and joined to the commentary to which they refer; hence the contents of each volume are not in close correspondence in the volumes similarly marked in both editions. Moreover, many of the preliminary treatises scattered through the Antwerp collection have been brought together in three separate volumes. But the whole printing teems with typographical blunders. Lastly another reprinting of the Antwerp publication was undertaken by the Parisian editor, Victor Palmé, from 1863 to 1869, and carried on to the tenth volume of October. This edition reproduces exactly, volume by volume, the original one, except for the months of January and June. The two big volumes of January have been divided into three, and in the volumes of June also some changes have been made in the disposition of matter, in order to render the use of them easier to readers. Besides, to each of the volumes of the first four months were added a few unpublished short notes (filling from one to six pages) of Daniel Papebroch, found in his papers and relating to the commentaries printed in the volume.
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
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