EIUSQUE INTER MORTALES VICARIO
URBANO OCTAVO
ROMANO PONTIFICI.
It was no exaggeration of the fact when Père Paul Oliva, afterwards elected father-general of the Jesuits, thus addressed Père Henschen: “Your reverence and your coadjutor are dwelling, in your every thought and with your pen, in the church in heaven.” The success of the January volumes was from the first assured, and went on increasing after the publication of the February saints, in three volumes, followed in 1658. Pope Alexander VII., the reigning pontiff, recorded his opinion that “a work more useful to the church of God or more glorious for her had never been accomplished, or even begun, by any one.” About the same time a second coadjutor was taken into the work in Père Daniel Papebroch, S.J., a native of Antwerp. His family was originally from Hamburg, but at the Reformation his father removed to Antwerp, where Daniel was born in 1628. At the end of the usual studies he entered the Society of Jesus in 1646, three of his brothers eventually following his example. Père Papebroch was ordained in 1658, and called from the chair of philosophy at Antwerp to assist PP. Bolland and Henschen in the Acta. After the February volumes appeared the pope invited the Bollandist Fathers to Rome. Père Bolland himself was too infirm to accept the invitation, but his younger coadjutors went instead of him. They left Antwerp July 22, 1660, old Père Bolland accompanying them as far as Cologne. Their literary tour, which lasted about two years and a half, was eminently successful. They visited monasteries and libraries without number all over Germany, Italy, and France; every door, every drawer was thrown open to them. Hundreds of precious documents were copied by them and for them; their library and museum were enriched, beyond the expectation of the most sanguine, with manuscripts and books; with missals, breviaries, martyrologies, sacramentaries, rituals, graduals, antiphonaries, and other similar works of many various rites or “uses,” such as the Mozarabic in Spain, the Ambrosian at Milan, the Sarum in England, and its Aberdeen daughter in Scotland. When at its best this library possessed some twelve thousand volumes, and in value and rarity is believed to have surpassed either the Barberini in Rome or the Mazarine in Paris—collections especially noted for their pre-eminence in similar works.
Père Bolland, who was now approaching his seventieth year, survived the return of his coadjutors from their tour only a few months. To the last he took part in the work of the museum, while the fervor of his regular and holy life seemed to increase. The 29th of August, 1665, was the last day he visited the working-room, but on a proof-sheet being put into his hand he was forced to lay it aside and retire to bed. He lingered about a fortnight, and then expired, after receiving all the sacraments of the dying. In his life and in his death, as well as with his indefatigable pen, he proved how well he had studied the saintly models he had been for upwards of thirty years daily contemplating.[[155]]
The next issue of the Acta, in three volumes, comprising the saints for March, appeared in 1668, the joint work of PP. Henschen and Papebroch. It was memorable for more reasons than one. With it began one of the customs of the Bollandists, to open a new volume with a biographical notice of any of their number who had died since the issue of the last. The first volume for March opened with an Eloge of Père Bolland, accompanied by an excellent engraving of his fine head, taken from a portrait of him executed by Fruytiers, a pupil of Rubens. The first difficulty that beset the undertaking arose from passages in the same volumes, in which a favorite opinion of the Carmelite Order, that their founder and first general was the prophet Elias, was quietly ignored. Not only had Baronius and Bellarmine anticipated the Bollandist view of the question, but it had already been taken for granted by two preceding authors belonging to the Carmelite Order itself. The Flemish Carmelites, however, took umbrage at Père Papebroch’s opinion, and a quarto volume soon afterwards appeared in opposition, the first in a tolerably long series of publications resulting from this curious controversy.[[156]] The Bollandists took no notice of their opponents until the publication of the saints’ lives for April, in three volumes, in 1675, afforded an opportunity of repeating and confirming their view of the actual origin of the order in question in the twelfth century of the Christian era. The Flemish Carmelites again asserted the more ancient origin; and when it was known in 1680 that three volumes of the May saints’ lives were about to appear, containing the life of another Carmelite saint, the order addressed an unusual request to Père Papebroch that a copy of the life might be shown them before publication. After some difficulty the Bollandist forwarded a copy to his father-general in Rome to be shown to the general of the Carmelites there. For a long time no answer was returned; three of the May volumes were ready; the bookseller was impatient; and Père Papebroch was on the point of leaving home for Westphalia. He therefore permitted the volumes to be issued for sale. He had hardly gone when Père Henschen received an order from Rome to suppress the life of St. Angel, and despatched it to Père Papebroch. But by this time many copies of the Bollandist May lives had got into circulation; it was too late to attempt the suppression of the life in question, and his father-general accepted Père Papebroch’s apologies. The result was another large volume from a Carmelite pen. Up to this time the dispute had been restricted to the Flemish province of the Carmelites, but in 1682 its area was extended to France by the casual discovery of an opinion favorable to the Bollandist view, expressed by Ducange, the illustrious archæologist, in a private letter to a friend. The provincial of the Flemish Carmelites next called on Pope Innocent XI. to interpose his authority in the matter; and Père Janning, a younger member of the Bollandist body, was sent to Rome to watch the proceedings. In 1690, two-and-twenty years after the dispute began, Père Papebroch was summoned to the tribunal of Pope Innocent XII., who referred the matter to the Congregation of the Index. Rome, however, did not move fast enough for Carmelite zeal. The Acta were denounced, 1691, before the Spanish Inquisition as a work originating within the dominions of the Catholic king. Four years later a decree of the Inquisition condemned the March, April, and May volumes of the Acta as “containing erroneous propositions, scenting of heresy, dangerous to faith, scandalous, impious, offensive to pious ears, schismatical, seditious, presumptuous, offensive,” etc., etc.
That this was a bitter trial to Père Papebroch and his coadjutors cannot be doubted. All the learned men of Europe were on their side, and the Jesuits succeeded in obtaining a subsequent decree of the Inquisition, 1696, permitting the Bollandists to appear and answer the charges; for the former decree had been pronounced in their absence. Upon this Père Papebroch produced a categorical defence of everything laid to his charge, in three volumes (1696-1699). The Carmelites also were quite as busy. Meanwhile, also in 1696, Innocent XII. forbade the disputants to attack each other. The Carmelite general, little satisfied with a neutral decision, petitioned His Holiness to end the dispute by a positive decree. After consulting the Congregation of the Council the pope decided to impose silence on the whole question regarding the origin of the Carmelites, and issued a brief to that effect, dated November 20, 1698. The judgment of the Spanish Inquisition, June 11, 1697, prohibited all the books relating to the dispute, but presumably excluding the Acta themselves; for in 1707 an index of forbidden books, published at Madrid under the authority of the Inquisition, made no mention of the Bollandist lives.
For thirty years, then, Père Papebroch had to bear this unwelcome interruption; and forty years after his death circumstances made it desirable to restate his defence. In 1755 a Supplementum Apologeticum took its place in the Bollandist series, containing all the apologetic volumes published in defence of Père Papebroch’s view in his Carmelite controversy. The successors of the early Bollandists had a noble opportunity, and used it nobly, to bury all former rancors, in the first volume of their revived work, in 1845, and the fifty-fifth of the series. The Life of St. Teresa, the great Carmelitess, occupies nearly the whole of its seven hundred folio pages—the largest scale on which any one life had hitherto been executed by the Bollandists. It was the solitary work of its author, Père Vandermoere, and was illustrated by drawings of places in Spain connected with the saint, and engraved in the highest style of art.
Père Henschen lived to see the first three May volumes issue from the press in 1680, and the following year closed his useful life, of which forty-six years had been devoted to work as a Bollandist. Père Papebroch was now at the head of the work, and had for his assistants PP. Janning and Baert. It went steadily on, and before his death, in 1714, Père Papebroch saw five volumes of the month of June, and of the series twenty-four, completed. For five years preceding his death he was nearly blind, and when it occurred he had reached the age of eighty-seven. This second founder of the great series was the author of several other important works, such as the Annals of the City of Antwerp and the Acta Vitæ Scti. Ferdinandi Regis Castillæ.
It would protract our sketch beyond all reasonable limits if we were to follow the progress of the great work, during the sixty years following Père Papebroch’s death, with as much detail as we have hitherto given. Let it suffice to say that it was prosecuted by fifteen Jesuit fathers in succession in addition to those already named; and when the work was suspended in 1773, the year in which the Society of Jesus was for the time suppressed, fifty volumes of the Acta had appeared, and the fiftieth was the third of the month of October. The plan of the work had indeed grown and expanded since Rosweyd estimated its contents at twelve volumes, since Bolland found two sufficient for the month of January, February, March, and April had each of them occupied three, August six, June and July seven, May and September eight. The chief sources relied upon for the heavy expenses of such a work were at first the gifts of private persons, bishops, abbots, and others, the patrimony of Père Papebroch and his sister forming no inconsiderable item in the account. Afterwards the sale of the volumes ensured a limited annual profit; and in 1688 the court of Vienna granted the fathers a pension, but burdened with the condition that subsequent volumes should each of them be dedicated to some member of the imperial house. Hence, after that date, every volume bears at the head of it an engraved portrait of an emperor or empress, of an archduke or archduchess. The Bollandists also enjoyed a certain revenue from their monopoly of the sale of classical books in the Jesuit colleges of Belgium.