Jean Bolland (1596-1665), the well-known Flemish Jesuit and hagiographer, was the editor of the first five volumes of the Acta Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints of the Christian Church, 1643-1794).
Born in Julémont, near Liège in 1596, Bolland died in Antwerp aged 69 in 1665.
Bollandists, associations of Jesuits responsible for the collection and publication of the Acta Sanctorum, derived their name from Jean Bolland.
The Acta Sanctorum had been projected by another Flemish Jesuit, Heribert Rosweyde (1569-1629). On his death, his collections were entrusted to Bolland, who continued the work in Antwerp. When the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773, the Bollandist Society moved to the monastery of Coudenberg in Brussels to carry on their work.
The persecutions of Joseph II, Holy Roman emperor, brought about the dissolution of the society. In 1789 the abbey of Tongerlo in Brabant took up the task of carrying on the Acta Sanctorum. After the publication in 1794 of the 53rd volume, however, the upheavals of the French Revolution and the dissolution of the abbey put an end to the work. In 1837 a new Bollandist association of Jesuits was formed under the patronage of the Belgian government, and in 1845 the 54th volume of the project appeared.
A new edition, in 61 volumes, was published in Paris between 1863 and 1867. Since 1882, supplements, with facsimiles of the more valuable manuscripts, have appeared in Paris and Brussels in a periodical, Analecta Bollandiana.
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