THE BOLLANDISTS
~ Part I ~
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| Acta sanctorum, January volume, published in 1643 |
The Bollandists were an association of ecclesiastical scholars engaged in editing the Acta Sanctorum. This work is a great hagiographical collection begun during the first years of the seventeenth century, and continued to our own day. The collaborators are called Bollandists, as being successors of Bolland, the editor of the first volume. Although Bolland has given his name to the work, he is not to be regarded as its founder.
The idea was first conceived by Heribert Rosweyde (died at Antwerp, 1629). He entered the Society of Jesus in 1588 and explored the libraries of the numerous monasteries scattered through Hainault and French Flanders. He copied with his own hand a vast number of documents relating to church history in general, and to hagiography in particular, and found in the old texts contained in the manuscripts coming under his observation quite a different flavour from that of the revisions to which many editors, notably Lippomano and Surius, then the latest and most celebrated, had believed it necessary to subject them. Rosweyde thought it would be a useful work to publish the texts in their original form. His superiors, to whom he submitted his plan in 1603, gave it their hearty approval, and allowed him to prepare the projected edition, without, however, relieving him of any of the occupations on which he was expending his prodigious activity. Under the title: "Fasti sanctorum quorum vitae in belgicis bibliothecis manuscriptiae", he gave in a little volume, published by the Plantin press at Antwerp.
Cardinal Bellarmine, to whom Rosweyde sent a copy of his little volume, could not forbear exclaiming after he had read this programme: "This man counts, then, on living two hundred years longer!" He addressed to the author a letter, the original of which is preserved in the present library of the Bollandists, signed, but not written by the hand of Bellarmine, in which he intimates in polished but perfectly plain language that he regarded the plan as chimerical. Rosweyde was nowise disconcerted by this. From various other sources he received encouragement, enthusiastic praise, and valuable assistance. The new enterprise found an especial protector, as generous as he was zealous and enlightened, in Antoine de Wynghe, abbot of the celebrated monastery of Liessies in Hainault. Venerable Louis of Blois, whose third successor de Wynghe was, seemed to have bequeathed to him his affectionate devotion to the sons of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. However, for several years his superiors, without ceasing to encourage him in the pursuit of his project, were forced through the necessity of filling vacant offices, to lay upon him duties which did not leave him the absolutely indispensable leisure. He set this forth clearly himself in the memorandum addressed to them in 1611, in response to their inquiry as to how he was progressing with the preparation of his volumes. At the time of Rosweyde's death, then, which took place in Antwerp in 1629, not a page was ready for the printer. Moreover, the superiors of the order, on their part, hesitated to have the work carried on by another. For more than twenty years, however, Rosweyde had been extremely active; he had secured access to a quantity of manuscripts and had enlisted the co-operation of many learned men who had manifested the keenest interest in his undertaking; thanks to their assistance, he had collected many manuscripts and books relating to the lives of the saints; in a word, he had aroused an eager interest in his compilation, so great and so universal that it was necessary to satisfy it.
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| Father John van Bolland (Johannes Bollandus) |
Father John van Bolland (died at Antwerp, 1665) was at this time prefect of studies in the college of Mechlin, and had charge of a congregation composed of the principal people of the city. It was called the "Latin Congregation", because all the exercises, sermons included, were conducted in that language. His family either took their name from, or gave it to, the village of Bolland, near Julemont. The superior of the Belgian province of the Society of Jesus bade him examine the papers left by Rosweyde, and report to him his opinion as to what it was advisable to do with them. Bolland went to Antwerp, familiarised himself with the manuscripts, and, while admitting that the work was still merely a rough and faulty draft, gave reasons for believing that without an undue expenditure of labour it might be brought to a successful completion. He even showed himself disposed to take charge of the work. Bolland was removed from the college of Mechlin and attached to the Professed House at Antwerp, to be director of the Latin Congregation and confessor in the church, and with the charge of preparing, in his leisure hours (horis subsecivis) the Acta Sanctorum for publication.
Happily, he had not the least idea, any more than had the provincial, of all the undertaking involved. He fancied that he could finish it by his own unaided efforts, and that after the completion of the work proper and the preparation of historical, chronological, geographical, and other tables, as announced by Rosweyde, he could complete the publication by adding to it a comprehensive collection of notices of holy persons who flourished in the Church subsequent to the fifteenth century, but have not been honoured with a public cult. "And after all that is done", he wrote in his general preface, at the beginning of the first volume of January, "if I still have any time to live, I shall lend a charm to the leisure hours of my old age by gathering the ascetical doctrine found in the teachings of the saints recorded in this work." And nevertheless, he began by outlining a plan of quite another vastness from that of Rosweyde, whose programme had already appalled Bellarmine. Rosweyde had confined his quest of original texts to the libraries of Belgium and the neighbouring regions. He had not gone beyond Paris to the south, or Cologne and Trier to the east.
Bolland made appeal to collaborators, either Jesuits or others, residing in all the different countries of Europe. Then Rosweyde had proposed to publish at first only the original texts, without commentaries or annotations, relegating to the last volumes the studies intended to enable one to appreciate their value and to throw light on their difficulties. Bolland recognised at once how defective this plan was. So he decided to give in connection with each saint and his cult all the information he had been able to find, from whatever sources; to preface each text with a preliminary study destined to determine its author and its historical value, and to append to each notes of explanation for the purpose of clearing away difficulties. The duties of the various offices filled by Bolland, added to the formidable correspondence imposed on him by his research into documents and other sources of information concerning the life and cult of the saints to be treated in the work, together with the answers to the numerous letters of consultation addressed to him from all parts, concerning matters of ecclesiastical learning, left him no leisure for the discharge of his duties as hagiographer.
Thus, after five years at Antwerp, he was forced to admit that the work was almost where Rosweyde had left it, except that the mass of material which the latter had begun to classify was notably augmented; as a matter of fact it was more than quadrupled.
Meanwhile, eager desire for the appearance of the hagiographical monument announced by Rosweyde almost thirty years previously grew apace in the learned and the religious world. There was nothing left for Bolland but to admit that the undertaking was beyond his individual strength and to ask for an assistant. The generous Abbot of Liessies, Antoine de Wynghe, effectually supported his demand by volunteering to defray the living expenses of the associate who should be assigned to Bolland, as the Professed House at Antwerp, which depended on the alms of the faithful for its support, could not pay a man to do work which was not strictly in the field of its ministrations.
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| Godfrey Henschen (Godefridus Henschenius) |
The assistant chosen, doubtless at Bolland's suggestion, for he had been one of his most brilliant pupils in the humanities, was Godfrey Henschen (died 1681), who had entered the Society of Jesus in 1619. He was assigned to his former master in 1635 and laboured at the publication of the Acts Sanctorum up to the time of his death in 1681, forty-six years later.
Twenty-four volumes had then appeared, of which the last was the seventh volume of May. He had, moreover, prepared a great amount of material and many commentaries for June. It may be safely said that the Bollandist work owes its final form to Henschen. When he arrived at Antwerp, Bolland had succeeded in putting into good order the documents relating to the saints of January, and had found a publisher in the person of John van Meurs. Doubtless for the purpose of trying Henschen, he bade him study the acts of the February saints, leaving him every latitude as to the choice of his first subjects and the manner of treating them. Bolland then gave himself entirely to the printing of the volumes for January. It was well under way when Henschen brought to Bolland the first fruits of his activity in the field of hagiography. They were studies for the history of Saint Vaast and that of Saint Amand, printed later in the first volume of February under date of February sixth.
Bolland was absolutely astonished, and possibly somewhat abashed, by the great scope and solidity of the work which his disciple had to show him. He himself had not dared to dream of anything like it. His preliminary commentaries on the acts of the various saints of January were practically confined to designating the manuscript where the texts he was publishing had been found, to annotations, and a list of the variants in the various copies and the previous editions. The commentaries and annotations of Henschen solved, or at least tried to solve, every problem to which the text of the Acts could give rise, in the matter of chronology, geography, history, or philological interpretation, and all these questions were treated with an erudition and a method which could be called absolutely unknown hitherto. Bolland at once admitted the superiority of the new method and desired Henschen, despite the reluctance occasioned by his humility and the profound respect in which he held his master, to review the copy already in press. He held it back for a considerable time to enable his colleague to make the additions and corrections he judged necessary or advantageous. The pages containing the material for the first six days of January had already come from the press; the pages which seemed most defective to Henschen were replaced by revises. His hand is more clearly apparent in the following pages, although he persisted in employing a reserve and watchfulness which sometimes seems to have cost him an effort, in order to avoid too marked a difference between Bolland's commentaries and his own.
Papebroch, in his notice on Henschen printed at the beginning of the seventh volume of May, points out as particularly his the toil expended on the acts of Saint Wittikind, Saint Canute, and Saint Raymond of Pennafort on the seventh of January; of Saint Atticus of Constantinople and Blessed Laurence Justinian on the eighth; of Saints Julian and Basilissa on the ninth. Bolland, in his general preface to the first volume of January, did not fail to tell what he owed to his excellent collaborator. He then insisted that in the volumes of February and the following ones, Henschen's name should be on the title-page as prominently as his own and, moreover, that in the course of these volumes all commentaries from the pen of Henschen should be signed with his initials, claiming, doubtless not without some foundation, that he received a great number of letters relating to articles written by his colleague, which caused him difficulty. The two volumes of January, containing respectively, if we take into account the various tables and preliminary articles, the first, 1300 pages, the second, more than 1250, appeared in the course of the same year, 1643.
They aroused in the learned world positive enthusiasm, which is easily understood when we consider how far the new publication surpassed anything of the kind known up to that time: the Golden Legend, Guido Bernardus, Vincent of Beauvais, Saint Antoninus of Florence, Peter de Natali, Mombritius, Lippomano, and Surius. There was another marked difference when, fifteen years later, in 1658, the three volumes for February were published, showing a notable improvement over those for January. Congratulations and warm encomiums came from every side to testify to Bolland and his companion the admiration aroused by their work. The encouragement was not only from Catholics. Learned Protestants of the foremost rank did not hesitate to praise highly the truly scientific spirit which marked the new collection. Among others who had been heard from even before the publication of the February volumes, was the celebrated Gerard Vossius. The editors had the satisfaction of seeing added to all these approbations that of Alexander VII, who publicly testified that there had never been undertaken a work more useful and glorious to the Church. The same pontiff and, at his suggestion, the General of the Society of Jesus, Goswin Nickel, immediately invited Bolland to Rome, promising him a rich harvest of materials. The invitation was equivalent to a command, though for that matter this literary journey was of too great advantage to the work in hand for Bolland to do anything but gladly accept it. Finding, however, that he was too much enfeebled by recent illness to stand the fatigues of the journey, and that, moreover, it was necessary for one of the editors to remain in Antwerp, the centre of correspondence, he easily obtained permission from the Father General to send in his place Henschen, who was already favourably known through his collaboration in volumes published.
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
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