Jean Bolland
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bolland compiled five volumes of the Lives of the Saints called Acta Sanctorum, a series which was continued by others, called after him Bollandists.
Life
He was born in Julémont, now a part of Herve near Liège in 1596; the village of Bolland is nearby. He became prefect of studies in the college of Mechlin. Before making his theological studies he had taught belles-lettres in the three higher classes of the humanities at Ruremonde, Mechlin, Brussels, and Antwerp. The superior of the Belgian province of the Society of Jesus told him to examine papers left by Heribert Rosweyde.
Bolland made two conditions for taking on the hagiographical project: that he should be free to modify the plan of Rosweyde as he understood it; and that Rosweyde's materials should be set apart in a place of their own for the exclusive use of the new director of the undertaking. The provincial, Jacques van Straten, accepted the conditions, and 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 the Acta Sanctorum for publication.
He began by outlining a more ambitious plan. Rosweyde had confined his quest of original texts to the libraries of Belgium and the neighbouring regions. Bolland made appeal to collaborators, either Jesuits or others, residing in all of Europe. Rosweyde had proposed to publish at first only the original texts, without commentaries or annotations, but Bolland 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 of its author and its historical value, and to append to each notes of explanation After five years at Antwerp, there was more material by a factor of about four. Bolland asked for an assistant, who was supported by the Abbot of Liessies, Antoine de Wynghe, who was Godfrey Henschen (b. at Venray in Limburg, 1601; d. 1681); he had entered the Society of Jesus in 1619. He was assigned in 1635 and laboured at the publication of the Acta 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 also 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, John van Meurs. Henschen started on the February saints, and Bolland gave himself to the printing of the volumes for January.
Bolland died in Antwerp aged 69 in 1665.
