for new materials; and to illustrate all the lives hitherto published or unpublished, by explaining obscurities, reconciling difficulties, and shedding upon their darker details the light of a more modern criticism. Rosweid's fame was European in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and his proposal attracted the widest attention. To the best judges it seemed utterly impracticable. Cardinal Bellarmine heard of it, and proved his keenness and skill in literary criticism by asking what age the man was who proposed such an undertaking. When informed that he was about forty, "Ask him," said the learned Cardinal," whether he has discovered that he will live two hundred years; for within no smaller space can such a work be worthily performed by one man," an unconscious prophecy, which has found in fact a most ample fulfilment; for death snatched away Rosweid before he could do more towards his great undertaking than accumulate much precious material; while more than two hundred years have elapsed, and yet the work is not completed.

After the death of Rosweid, the Society of Jesus, which now regarded the undertaking as a corporate one, entrusted its continuation to Bollandus. He was thirty-three years of age, and had distinguished himself in every branch of the Society's activity as a teacher, a divine, a scholar, and an orator. In this last capacity, indeed, it was his duty to address Latin sermons to the aristocracy of Antwerp, a fact which betokens a much more learned audience than now falls to any preacher's lot. He was a wise director of conscience too, a sphere of duty in which the Jesuits have always delighted. A story is told illustrating his skill in this direction. One of the highest magistrates of the city, being suddenly seized with a fatal illness, despatched a messenger for Bollandus, who at once responded to the call, only however to find the sick man in deepest trouble, on account of the sternness with which he had exercised his judicial functions. He acknowledged that he had often been the means of inflicting capital punishment when the other judges would have passed a milder sentence in the belief that he was rescuing the condemned from greater crimes, which they would inevitably commit, and securing the salvation of their souls through the repentance to which their ghostly adviser would lead them prior to their execution. Bollandus at once perceived that he had to deal with the over-scrupulous conscience of one who had striven, according to his light, to do his duty. He therefore produced his breviary, and proceeded to read and expound the hundred and first psalm, "I will sing of mercy and judgment; " making such a very pertinent application of it to the magistrate's case, as led him to cry out with tears, "What comfort thou hast brought me, Father! now I die happy." A consideration of these numerous and apparently inconsistent engagements may not be without some practical use in this age. Looking at the varied occupations of Bol

landus and his fellows, and at the massive works which they at the same time produced, who can help smiling at the outcry which the advocates for the endowment of research, as they style themselves, raised some time ago against the simple proposal of the Oxford University Commission, that well-endowed professors should deliver some lectures on their own special subjects? Such a practice, they maintained, would utterly distract the mind from all original investigation of the sources. Such certainly was not the case with the Bollaudists, who yet could make time carefully-far more carefully than most modern historians-to investigate the sources of European history. But then the Bollandists were real students, and had neither lawn tennis nor politics to divert them from their chosen career.

Bollandus again is a healthy study for us moderns in the triumph exhibited by him of mind over matter, of the ardent student over physical difficulties. His rooms were no pleasant College chambers, lofty, commodious, and well-ventilated; on the contrary the apartments where the volumes commemorating the saints of January saw the light were two small dark chambers next the roof, exposed alike to the heat of summer and the cold of winter, in the Jesuit House at Antwerp. In them were heaped up, for such is the expression of his biographer, the documents accumulated by his Society during forty years. How vast their number must have been is manifest from this one fact that Bollandus possessed upwards of four hundred distinct Lives of Saints, and more than two hundred histories of cities, bishoprics, and monasteries in the Italian language alone, whence our readers may judge of the size of the entire collection which dealt with the saints and martyrs of China, Japan, and Peru, as well as those of Greece and Rome.

Bollandus was summoned to his life's work in 1629. He at once entered upon a vigorous pursuit of fresh manuscripts in every quarter of the globe, wherein he was mightily assisted by the organization of the Jesuit Society, and by the liberal assistance bestowed upon his undertaking by successive abbots of the great Benedictine Monastery of Liessies, near Cambray, specially by Antonius Winghius, the friend and patron, first of Rosweid, and then of Bollandus. Indeed, it was the existence and rich endowments of those great monasteries which explains the publication of such immense works as those of Bollandus, Mabillon, and Tillemont, quite surpassing any now issued even by the wealthiest publishers among ourselves, and only approached, and that at a distance, by Pertz's "Monumenta" in Germany.

New material was now poured upon him from every quarter, from English Benedictines even and Irish Franciscans; though indeed, as regards the latter, Bollandus seems to have cherished a wholesome suspicion as to the genuineness of many, if not most, of the Irish legends. But Bollandus, though he worked hard, and knew no other

enjoyment save his work, was only human. He soon found the labour was too great for any one man to perform, while, in addition, he was racked and torn with disease in many shapes; gout, stone, rupture, all settled like harpies upon his emaciated frame, so that in 1635 he was compelled to take Henschenius as his assistant. This was in every respect a fortunate choice, as Henschenius proved himself a man of much wider views as to the scope of the work than Bollandus himself. Bollandus had proposed simply to incorporate the notices of the Saints found in ancient martyrologies and manuscripts, adding brief notes upon any difficulties of history, geography, or theology, which might arise. To Henschenius was allotted the month of February, He at once set to work, and produced under the date of Feb. 6, exhaustive memoirs of SS. Amandus and Vedastus, Gallic bishops of the sixth and eleventh centuries whose lives present a striking picture of those troubled times, amid which the foundations of French history were laid. Henschenius scorned the narrow limits within which his master would fain limit himself. He boldly launched out into a discussion of all the aspects of his subject, discussing not merely the men themselves, but also the history of their times, and doing that in a manner now impossible, as the then well stored, but now widely scattered muniment rooms of the abbeys of Flanders and Northern France lay at his disposal. Bollandus was so struck with the success of this innovation that he at once abandoned his own restricted ideas, and adopted the more exhaustive method of his assistant, which of course involved the extension of the work far beyond the sixteen volumes originally contemplated. The first two volumes appeared in 1643, and the next three, including the "Saints of February," in 1658. About this time the reigning Pontiff, Alexander VII., who had been the life-long friend and patron of Bollandus, pressed upon him, an oft-repeated invitation to visit Rome, and utilize for his work the vast stores accumulated there and in the other libraries of Italy. Bollandus had hitherto excused himself. In fact, he possessed already more material than he could conveniently use. But now that larger apartments had been assigned to him, and proper arrangements and classifications adopted in his library-due especially to the skill of Henschenius-he felt that such a journey would be most advantageous to his work. As, however, he could not go in person, owing to his infirmities, which were daily increasing, he deputed thereto Henschenius and Daniel Papebrock, a young assistant lately added to the Company, and destined to spend fifty-five years in its service. The history of that literary journey is well worth reading. The reader, curious on such points, will find it in the "Life of Bollandus," prefixed to the first volume of the "March Saints," chap. xiii.—xx. Still more interesting, were it printed, would be the diary of his journey kept by Papebrock, now preserved

*

n the Burgundy Library at Brussels, and numbered 17,672. Twentynine months were spent in this journey, from the middle of 1659 to the end of 1661. Bollandus accompanied his disciples as far as Cologne, where they were received with almost royal honours. After parting with their master, his followers proceeded up the Rhine and through Southern Germany, making a very thorough examination of the libraries, to all of which free access was given; the very Protestant town of Nuremberg being most forward to honour the literary travellers, while the President of the Lutheran Consistory assisted them even with his purse. Entering Italy by way of Trent, they arrived at Venice towards the end of October, where they found the first rich store of Greek manuscripts, and whence also they despatched by sea to Bollandus the first fruits of their toil. From Venice they made a thorough examination of the libraries of North-east Italy, at Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Bologna; whence they turned aside to visit Ravenna, walking thither one winter's day, November 18-a journey of thirty miles-and Henschenius, be it observed, was now sixty years of age. They spent the greater part of the year 1661 at Rome, at Naples-where the blood and relics of St. Januarius were specially exhibited to them, an honour only conferred on kings and their ambassadors and amid the rich libraries of the numerous abbeys of Southern Italy. But even when absent from Rome their work there went on apace. They enjoyed the friendship of some wealthy merchants from their own land, who liberally supplied them with money, enabling them to employ five or six scribes to copy the manuscripts they selected; while the patronage of two eminent scholars, even yet celebrated in the world of letters, Lucas Holstenius and Ferdinand Ughelli, backed by the still more powerful aid of the Pope, placed every library at their command. The Pope, indeed, went so far as to remove, in their case, every anathema forbidding the removal of books or manuscripts from the libraries. Lucas Holstenius, in his boyhood a Lutheran, in his later age an agent in the conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden, and one of the greatest among the giants of the black-letter learning of the age, rated the Bollandists and their work so highly that, at his decease, which took place while they were in Rome, he used their ministry alone in receiving the last sacraments of the Roman Church. Encouraged and supported thus, the Bollandists economized and utilized every moment. They were in the habit of rising before day to say their sacred offices; and then prosecuted,

• Henschenius was a man of great physical powers. He always delighted in walking exercise, and executed many of his literary journeys in Italy on foot, even amid the summer heats. Ten years later, when close on seventy, he walked on an emergency ten leagues in one day through the mountains and forests of the Ardennes district, and was quite fresh next day for another journey. He was a man of very full complexion. According to the medical system of the time, he indulged in blood-letting once or twice a year.

with their secretaries, their loved work till ten or eleven o'clock at night. When leaving Rome they were enabled therefore to send to Bollandus, by sea, a second consignment of three chests of manuscripts, in addition to a large store which they carried home themselves.

On their return journey they visited Florence and Milan, spending more than half a year in these libraries, and then proceeded through France to Paris, where they met scholars like Du Cange, Combefis, and Labbe. They finally arrived at home December 21, 1661, to find Bollandus in a very precarious state of health, which terminated in his death in 1665. The life of Bolland is a type of the lives led by all his disciples and successors. Devout, retired, studious, they gave themselves up, generation after generation, to their appointed task, the elders continually assuming to themselves one or two younger assistants, so as to preserve their traditions unimpaired. And what a work was theirs! How it dwarfed all modern publications! Bollandus worked at eight of those folios, Henschenius at twenty-four, Papebrock at nineteen, Janningus his successor at thirteen; and so the work went on, aided by a subsidy from the Imperial House of Austria, till the suppression of the Jesuits, which was followed soon after by the dissolution of the Bollandists in 1788. Their library became then an object of desire to many foreigners, who would undoubtedly have purchased it, had it not been for the opposition of the local government, and of several Belgian abbeys. It was finally bought by Godfrey Hermans, a Præmonstratensian abbat, under whose auspices the publication of the work continued for seven years longer, till, on the outburst of the wars of the French Revolution, the library was dispersed, part burnt, part hidden, part hurried into Westphalia. At length, after various chances, a great part of the manuscripts was obtained for the ancient library of the House of Burgundy, now forming part of the Royal Library at Brussels, while others of them were reclaimed for the library of the New Bollandists at Louvain, where the work is now carried on. After the dissolution of the old Company, two attempts at least, one in 1801 and the other in 1810-this last under the all-powerful patronage of Napoleon-were made, though without success, to revive the work. Better fortune attended a proposal made in 1838 by four members of the Jesuit Society-viz., J. B. Boone, J. Vandermoere, P. Coppens, and J. van Hecke. Since that time the publication of the volumes has steadily proceeded; we may even hope that the progress of the work in the future will be still more rapid, as the Company has lately added to its ranks P. C. de Smedt, one of the most learned and laborious ecclesiastical historians in the Roman Communion.*

*Since this paper was written the Bollandists have issued a prospectus of an annual publication called "Analecta Bollandiana. From this document we learn that disease and death have now reduced the company very low. De Smedt has had to retire almost as soon as elected.