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  • De Rosweyde aux Acta Sanctorum: La recherche hagiographique des Bollandistes à travers quatre siècles: Actes du Colloque international (Bruxelles, 5 octobre 2007)
  • Mary Kathryn Robinson
De Rosweyde aux Acta Sanctorum: La recherche hagiographique des Bollandistes à travers quatre siècles: Actes du Colloque international (Bruxelles, 5 octobre 2007). Edited by Robert Godding, Bernard Joassart, Xavier Lequeux, and François de Vriendt. [Subsidia Hagiographica, Vol. 88.] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 2009. Pp. xviii, 354. €75,00. ISBN 978-2-873-65022-3.)

The Society of the Bollandists commemorated the 400th anniversary of the publication of Fasti Sanctorum quorum Vitae in Belgicis Bibliothecis manuscriptae by Héribert Rosweyde with an international colloquium in Brussels on October 5, 2007. This event brought together current Bollandists and scholars from secular and religious European academic institutions and libraries. The papers presented at this gathering and published in this volume examine the work of Rosweyde and its impact on scholarship and history.

In 1607, Rosweyde published the Fasti Sanctorum as the blueprint and first production for his plan to compile histories of all the saints of the Catholic Church. To respond to Protestant criticisms of the cult of the saints, he meticulously scrutinized the sources on the saints’ lives and attempted to provide factual details and critical analysis on these men and women. After Rosweyde died, leaving his project unfinished, Jean Bolland assumed the challenge; and the group of scholars, known as the Bollandists, over the next four centuries, published the results of their labors in the Acta Sanctorum.

The papers chosen for presentation at the colloquium and inclusion in this volume represent the broad scope of the work of Rosweyde and the Bollandists, and the implications of their research for the study of history. After the opening remarks delivered by Monsignor Cesare Pasini, the prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Sofia Boesch Gajano puts hagiography in general within the historical context of Renaissance Humanism and the Reformation. The next three articles deal with Rosweyde’s work, especially his Fasti Sanctorum. Robert Godding addresses Rosweyde’s conception and methodology for hagiographic research and includes reprints of the Jesuit’s letters illustrating these. The Fasti Sanctorum contain lists of saints that Rosweyde projected would be included in his subsequent volumes, and Xavier Lequeux and Michael Lapidge examine Rosweyde’s inclusion of Eastern Christian saints and saints from the British Isles in the Fasti Sanctorum.

The following two papers concern the Acta Sanctorum, the publication of the saints’ lives accomplished by the Bollandists after Rosweyde’s death. The present Bollandist, François de Vriendt, examines the importance of the engravings from the Acta Sanctorum to the study of iconography. François Dolbeau from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris delivers a superb assessment of the manuscript sources for the Acta Sanctorum. At the end of his paper, he publishes lists of the locations of these manuscripts, a very useful summary for scholars of religion from late antiquity through the early-modern period. [End Page 362]

The remaining papers address the legacy of Rosweyde and the Bollandists from the seventeenth century to the present. Bart Op de Beeck’s paper, “De Bollandistenbibliotheek tijdens het ancien régime,” describes the fate of the Bollandists’ library after the suppression of the Jesuits and during the turmoil of revolution and war in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He also includes a detailed list of the manuscripts and printed materials that came into the Bollandists’ possession as the result of the suppression of religious houses at that time. Bernard Jossart’s paper and the conclusion by Jacques Dalarun argue that over four centuries of unwavering devotion to their commitment to critical hagiographies makes the work of the Bollandists relevant in the modern world.

The work of the Bollandists encompasses more than the ambitious task of providing hagiographies backed by historical sources following the methodology of their founders. It also includes sharing their materials and works for scholarly and spiritual benefit. This compilation of papers celebrates the way in which the Bollandists have fulfilled these goals from their proto-founder Rosweyde to the present.

Mary Kathryn Robinson
Lourdes College
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