ABSTRACT
Jean Bolland was born on 11 August 1596 into a family of modest means in the Flemish village of Bolland in what is now the province of Liège. His name is synonymous with the Acta Sanctorum and with the small group of scholars, the “Bollandists,” whom he organized into a society for a vast enterprise, a new edition of the lives of the Christian saints. This work, the Acta Sanctorum, composed in accordance with the most rigorous standards, was in its inception and its most formative early period the achievement of Bolland and three fellow Jesuits in what is now Belgium, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. The initial impetus to the venture came just after 1600 from the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde; it received its permanent focus and structure a generation later from Bolland; it was then carried forward over the rest of the century by Bolland’s associates Godefroid Henskens (Henschenius) and Daniel Papebroch.
