The scope of the work is unlike that of other Catholic encyclopedias. It is not exclusively ecclesiastical, for it records all that Catholics have done not only in behalf of charity or morals, but also in the intellectual, and artistic development of mankind. Hence, while covering the whole domain of dogmatic and moral theology, ecclesiastical history and liturgy, it has succeeded in giving its readers information on art, architecture, archæology, literature, history, travel, language, ethnology, etc., such as cannot be found in any other encyclopedia in the English language. Only the most eminent writers have been asked to contribute to it, and hence its articles can be cited as the most recent exposition of the matters discussed. It appeared with amazing rapidity, the whole series of sixteen volumes being completed in nine years. To it is added an extra volume entitled "The Catholic Encyclopedia and its Makers," which consists of photographs and biographical sketches of all the contributors.
The encyclopedia has proved to be an immense boon to the Church in America. The chief credit of the publication is generally accorded to Father John Wynne, who is a native of New York. It was he who conceived it, secured the board of editors, and, as his distinguished associate, Bishop Shahan, declared with almost affectionate eagerness at a public session of the faculty and students of the ecclesiastical seminary of New York: "it was he who encouraged and sustained the editors by his buoyant optimism in the perilous stages of its elaboration." This information may be helpful abroad to show that the Society in America is doing something for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The apostolic character of the work is further enhanced by the fact that funds are being established in various dioceses to enable each seminarian to become the personal owner of the entire set from the very first moment he begins his studies. The effect of such an arrangement on the ecclesiastical mind of the century is inestimable. It is also being placed by the Knights of Columbus and by rich Catholics in battleships and the United States' military posts, as well as in civic libraries and club houses.
The first catalogue of Jesuit writers was drawn up by Father Ribadeneira in 1602-1608. Schott and Alegambe continued the work in 1643, and Nathaniel Bacon or Southwell, or Sotwel, as he was called on the Continent, published a third in 1676. Nothing more, however, was done in that line by the old Society, and it was not until the twenty-first congregation, at which Father Roothaan presided, that a postulatum was presented asking for the resumption of this valuable work. Something prevented this from being done for the time being, and it was not until 1853 that the work was undertaken by the two Belgians, Augustine and Aloys de Backer.
Up to 1861 a series of seven issues appeared, but as by that time the number of names had increased to ten thousand, a new arrangement had to be made, and in 1869 the work appeared in three large folios. In 1885, on the death of Augustine de Backer, Charles Sommervogel took up the work. Providentially he was well equipped for the task, for although he had been continually employed at other tasks, sometimes merely as a surveillant in a French college, he had contrived to publish in 1884 a "Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymeset pseudonymes des religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus." He began by recasting all that his predecessors had done, and it was only after four years that he had published the first volume. Others, however, followed in quick succession, and in 1900 the ninth volume appeared. The tenth volume, an index, was unfinished at the time of his death, but has since been completed by Father Bliard. Besides his articles in the "Etudes," he had also put into press a "Table méthodique des Mémoires de Trévoux," in three volumes, a "Bibliotheca Mariana S. J." and a "Moniteur bibliographique de la Compagnie de Jésus." He had intended to publish a revised edition of Carayon's, "Bibliographie historique," but was prevented by death.
As far back as 1658, Pope Alexander VIII did not hesitate to declare that "no literary work had ever been undertaken that was more useful or more glorious" than the "Acta Sanctorum" of Father Bollandus and his associates, nor did the learned Protestants of those days refrain from extolling the scientific spirit in which the work was being conducted. The "Acta," which began in the middle of the seventeenth century and which is still going on, reads like a romance. The account of it by De Smedt tells us how the first writers had only a garret for a library, and were forced to pile their books on the floor; how Cardinal Bellarmine denounced the work as chimerical; how the Carmelites were in a rage because Papebroch denied that Elias was the founder of their order; how the Spanish Inquisition denounced the work and condemned the thirty volumes as heretical, and how finally it reached its present status.
The Bollandists did not immediately feel the blow that struck the rest of the Society of Jesus in 1773. Indeed, the commissioners announced that the government was satisfied with the labors of the Bollandists and was disposed to exercise special consideration in their behalf. In 1778 they removed to the Abbey of Caudenberg in Brussels, and the writers received a small pension. In 1788 three new volumes were published. Meantime Joseph II had succeeded Maria Theresa, and the sky began to darken. On October 16, 1788, the government decided to stop the pension of the writers, and their books and manuscripts which the official inspectors denounced as "trash" were ordered to be sold. After a year, the Fathers made an offer to the Premonstratensian Abbot of Tongerloo to buy the books and manuscripts for what would be equivalent now to about $4,353; the money, however, was to be paid to the Austrian government and not to the owners of the library. Happily the writers found shelter in the monastery with their books and, though the Brabantine Revolution disturbed them for a time, they continued at their work unmolested until 1794, when they issued another volume.
It was fortunate that they had succeeded in putting that volume into print, for that very year the French invaded Belgium and both Premonstratensians and Bollandists were obliged to disperse. Some of the treasures of the library were hidden in the houses of the peasants, and others were hastily piled into wagons and carried to Westphalia, with the only result that could be anticipated — the loss of an immense amount of most valuable material; a certain number of the books were returned to the abbey, and left there in the dust until 1825. As there was no hope, at that time, of the Bollandists ever being able to resume their work, the monks disposed of most of the library treasure at public auction, and, what was not sold, was given to the Holland government and incorporated in the library of the Hague. The manuscripts were transported to Brussels and deposited in the Burgundian Library. They are still there.
In 1836 a hagiographical society in France under the patronage of Guizot and several bishops proposed to take up the work of the Bollandists and an envoy was sent to purchase the documents from the Belgian government. The proposition evoked a patriotic storm in the little country, and a petition was made to the minister of the interior, de Theux, imploring him to lose no time in securing for his native land the honor of completing the work, and to entrust the task to the Jesuit Fathers, who had begun it and carried it on for two centuries. The result was that on January 29, 1837, the provincial of Belgium appointed four Fathers who were to live at St. Michel in Brussels. The government gave them an annual subsidy of six thousand francs, but this was withdrawn in 1868 by the Liberals and never restored, though the Catholics have been in control since 1884.
There are more than one hundred volumes to the credit of the writers up to the present time, sixty-five of which are huge folios. What they contain may be learned from the most competent of all authorities, Charles de Smedt, the Bollandist director, who wrote the most complete and scientific account of the Bollandist collection for the Catholic Encyclopedia. It is sufficient to state that in the opinion of the most distinguished and capable scholars in the field, the work of the later Bollandists is in no wise inferior to the work of their illustrious predecessors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In reviewing a recent publication of a Bollandist work, the scholarly "American Historical Review" (July, 1920) has this to say: "It is to be hoped that a more widely diffused knowledge of what the Bollandists have been doing for human learning, historical and literary, may bring American aid to fill the gaps in their resources caused by the devastations of war. It is a pleasure to know that the Princeton University Press intends to issue an English translation of Father Delehaye's admirable book, which gives an account of the labors of the Bollandists from 1638 down to the present day."