United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Father Thomassen, of the Oratory, in his treatise on the Celebration of Festivals, speaks of a miraculous event which occurred in the sixth century, and which is reported by Bollandus, and he adds: "These sorts of miracles are by no means articles of faith, but nevertheless, they are not to be rejected by sage and considerate persons. Upon reading the works of St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St.
Bollandus, who was the first seriously to lay his hand to the great work called after him, was a Belgian Jesuit. He had got through January and February in five folio volumes, when he died in 1658. Under the auspices of his successor, Daniel Papebroch, March appeared in 1668 and April in 1675, each in three volumes.
And the miracles that have been done there, not to speak of Norway and Christendom elsewhere, in his name, were numerous and great for long centuries afterwards. Visibly a Saint Olaf ever since; and, indeed, in Bollandus or elsewhere, I have seldom met with better stuff to make a Saint of, or a true World-Hero in all good senses.
Nevertheless, the critics of our days, finding nothing impossible to or unworthy of God in the large collection of Colgan and other Irish antiquarians, express their surprise at their exclusion from that of Bollandus. No one at least will refuse to concede that, true or not, the facts related in those lives are always provocative of piety and redolent of faith.
Did they not suggest to Bollandus and his fellows the thought whose realization has immortalized them? In tasks such as these were the Irish emigrant monks of the time employed. There was yet another class of involuntary Irish exiles those shipped to the " plantations" of America, to the 11 tobacco" and 11 sugar" islands, to Virginia and Jamaica, but principally to the Barbadoes.
The learned Jesuits, the continuators of Bollandus, show, by the precision of their researches, that they are sincere lovers of truth, but we do not see that they endeavor to diminish the number of miracles: "They have no idea of taking them for fictions; nothing astonishes them in the lives of the friends of God, provided it be well attested."
Ursula's story and all similar legends which could not be upheld by the authority of the Acta Sanctorum. This remarkable historical work, initiated by Bollandus at the time, endeavoured to weed out from the lives of the saints most of the popular anecdotes which had inspired mediæval artists.
Word Of The Day