The Contemporary Review, January 1883

Such has been the policy of the past. But circumstances have changed, and long-cherished hopes have been disappointed. The effort to reform and strengthen the Turkish empire has failed chiefly because the Sultans have been unwilling or unable to abandon the strictly religious constitution of the Government, and to distinguish between their duties as Caliphs, and their duties as civil rulers over a mixed population of various sects. This failure has led to most unhappy complications in Europe, to the dismemberment of European Turkey, and to a great development of the influence of Russia, the Power most unfriendly to the existence of the Turkish Empire. It is now clear to all the world that Turkey cannot be reformed by a Caliph. In addition to this, the present Sultan, departing from the prudent course of his predecessors, has undertaken to rouse the hostility of Islam against Christendom, and to encourage fanatical outbreaks, not only in Africa, but in Asia as well. As Caliph he is no longer the friendly ally of the Christian Powers, but, as far as he dares, is acting against them. Under these changed circumstances the question must arise whether it is any longer for the interest of England to defend the Caliphate of Constantinople. It is not a question of deposing one Caliph and setting up another. This is not the work of a Christian Power. It is for Mohammedans to settle this question among themselves. If they prefer to continue to recognize the Sultan as Caliph, they should be free to do so. But the policy of England has not hitherto been one of neutrality. It has been the active support of the Sultan. The question now is whether this support should not be withdrawn, and the Arabs made to understand that if they prefer an Arab Caliph at Mecca, England will not interfere to prevent it.

This is a very serious question, and the plan is open to the objection already suggested of the inaccessibility of Mecca. It is also to be considered that the Arabs are more fanatical and more easily excited than the Turks. But, on the other hand, it may be doubted whether the influence of the Shereef of Mecca would be greatly increased by his assuming the title of Caliph. It would not be recognized by the Turks, and Constantinople would be even more opposed to Mecca than it is now. The nature of the new Caliph's influence would be the same that it is now as Shereef of Mecca—a purely moral influence.

Another thing to be considered is the fact that this is only a question of time. Sooner or later this change is sure to come. As the power of the Sultan continues to decline, he will be less and less able to resist the progress of this Arab movement. It is not easy to see exactly what England will gain by postponing this change. Certainly not the friendship of the Arabs. I cannot speak with authority of the feeling in India; but it is understood that Indian Mohammedans sympathize with the Arabs rather than the Turks. I cannot presume to give a decided opinion on this question; but the new responsibilities assumed by the British Government in Egypt, make it one of immediate practical importance. Are the real interests of England with the Turk or the Arab?

THE BOLLANDISTS:

THE LITERARY HISTORY OF A MAGNUM OPUS

The majority of educated people have, from time to time, in the course of their historical reading, come across some mention of the "Acta Sanctorum," or "Lives of the Saints;" while but few know anything as to the contents, or authorship, or history of that work. Yet it is a very great, nay a stupendous monument of what human industry, steadily directed for ages towards one point, can effect. Industry, directed for ages, I have said—an expression, which to some must seem almost like a misprint, but which is quite justified by facts, since the first volume issued by the company of the Bollandists, is dated Antwerp, 1643; and the last, Paris, A.D. 1875. Two hundred and forty years have thus elapsed, and yet the work is not concluded. Indeed, as it has taken well-nigh two centuries and a half to narrate the lives of the Saints commemorated in the first ten months of the year, it may easily happen that the bones of the present generation will all be mingled with the dust, before those Saints be reached who are celebrated on the 31st of December. Some indeed—prejudiced by the very name "Acta Sanctorum"—may be inclined to turn away, with a contempt bred of ignorance, from the whole subject. But if it were only as a mental and intellectual tonic the contemplation of these sixty stately folios, embracing about a thousand pages each, would be a most healthy exercise for the men of this age. This is the halcyon period of primers, introductions, handbooks, manuals. "Knowledge made Easy" is the cry on every side. We take our mental pabulum just as we take Liebig's essence of beef, in a very concentrated form, or as homœopathists imbibe their medicine, in the shape of globules. I do not desire, however, to say one word against such publications. The great scholars of the seventeenth century, the Bollandists, Casaubon, Fabricius, Valesius Baluze, D'Achery, Mabillon, Combefis, Vossius, Canisius, shut up their learning in immense folios, which failed to reach the masses as our primers and handbooks do, penetrating the darkness and diffusing knowledge in regions inaccessible to their more ponderous brethren. But at the same time their majestic tomes stand as everlasting protests on behalf of real and learned inquiry, of accurate, painstaking, and often most critical research into the sources whence history, if worth anything, must be drawn.

I propose in this paper to give an account of the origin, progress, contents, and value of the work of the Bollandists, regarded as the vastest repertory of original material for the history of mediæval times. This immense series is popularly known either as the "Acta Sanctorum" or the Bollandists. The former is the proper designation. The latter, however, will suit best as the peg on which we shall hang our narrative. John Bolland, or Joannes Bollandus as it is in Latin, was the name of the founder of a Company which, more fortunate than most literary clubs, has lasted well-nigh three centuries. To him must be ascribed the honour of initiating the work, drawing the lines and laying the foundations of a building which has not yet been completed. That work was one often contemplated but never undertaken on the same exhaustive principles. Clement, the reputed disciple of the Apostles Peter and Paul, is reported—in the "Liber Pontificalis" or "Lives of the Popes;" dating from the early years of the sixth century—to have made provision for preserving the "Acts of the Martyrs." Apocryphal as this account seems, yet the honest reader of Eusebius must confess that the idea was no novel one in the second century, as is manifest from the well-known letter narrating the sufferings of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne. Space would now fail us to trace the development of hagiography in the Church. Let it suffice to say that century after century, as it slowly rolled by, contributed its quota both in east and west. In the east even an emperor, Basil, gave his name to a Greek martyrology; while in both west and east the writings of Metaphrastes, Mombritius, Surius, Lipomanus, and Baronius, embalmed abundant legends in many a portly volume. Still the mind of a certain Heribert Rosweid, a professor at Douai, a Jesuit and an enthusiastic antiquarian, was not satisfied. Rosweid was a typical instance of those Jesuits, learned and devout, who at a great crisis in the battle restored the fallen fortunes of the Church of Rome. As the original idea of the "Acta Sanctorum" is due to him, we may be pardoned in giving a brief sketch of his career, though he was not in strictness a member of the Bollandist Company.

Rosweid was born at Utrecht, in 1569, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1589, the year when all Europe, and the world at large, was ringing with the defeat of the Armada and the triumph of Protestantism. He studied and taught first at Douai and then at Antwerp, where, also after the manner of the Jesuits, he entered upon active pastoral work, in which he caught a contagious fever, of which he died A.D. 1629. His literary life was very active, and very fruitful in such literature as delighted that age. Thus he produced editions of various martyrologies, the modern Roman, the ancient Roman, and that of Ado; he discussed the question of keeping faith with heretics; took an active share in the everlasting controversy concerning the "Imitatio Christi," wherein he espoused the side of A-Kempis and the Augustinians, as against Gerson and the Benedictines; published the lives of the Eastern Ascetics, who were the founders of modern monasticism; debated with Isaac Casaubon concerning Baronius; and published, in 1607, the "Lives of the Belgic Saints," where we find the first sketch or general plan of the "Acta Sanctorum." The idea of this great work suggested itself to Rosweid while living at Douai, where he used to employ his leisure time in the libraries of the neighbouring Benedictine monasteries, in search of manuscripts bearing on the lives of the Saints. It was an age of criticism, and he doubtless felt dissatisfied with all existing compilations, content as they were to repeat, parrot-like and without any examination, the legends of earlier ages. It was an age of research, too—more fruitful in some respects than those which have followed—and he felt that an immense mass of original material had never yet been utilized. It was at this period of his life he produced the work above mentioned, which we have briefly named the "Lives of the Belgic Saints," but the full title of which is, "Fasti Sanctorum quorum Vitæ in Belgicis Bibliothecis Manuscriptæ." He intended it as a specimen of a greater and more comprehensive work, embracing the lives of all the Saints known to the Church throughout the world. He proposed that it should embrace sixteen volumes, divided in the following manner:—The first volume dealing with the life of Christ and the great feasts; the second with the life of the Blessed Virgin and her feasts; the third to the sixteenth with the lives of the Saints according to the days of the month, together with no less than thirteen distinct indexes, biographical, historical, controversial, geographical, and moral; so that the reader might not have any ground for the complaint so often brought against modern German scholars, that they afford no apparatus to help the busy student when consulting their works. Rosweid's idea as to the manner in which those volumes should be compiled was no less original. He proposed first of all to bring together all the lives of Saints that had been ever published by previous hagiographers; which he would then compare with ancient manuscripts, as he was convinced that considerable interpolation had been made in the narratives. In addition, he desired to seek in all directions 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 Bollandus 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 Bollandists, 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 Home.

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 in the Burgundy Library at Brussels, and numbered 17,672. Twenty-nine 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.8 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, 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. Vandermocre, 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.9