The Contemporary Review, January 1883: Vol 43, No. 1Various
Science
The Contemporary Review, January 1883: Vol 43, No. 1
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
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;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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