Hippolyte Delehaye

Hippolyte Delehaye (August 19th 1859, Antwerp, Belgium - April 1st 1941, Brussels, Belgium) was a Belgian Jésuite, Hagiographe of great reputation and member of the Learned society of the Bollandistes.

First years and formation

Delehaye entered to the Jesuits in 1876 and was ordered priest with Leuwen in 1890. In fact he was professor of Mathématique to the college Holy-Bores with Ghent (Belgium) when it was interested in a very different field. Between 1886 and 1888 it published three articles noticed on the life of the medieval scholastic philosopher Henri of Ghent, the Doctor Solemnis . These articles drew the attention of the president of Bollandistes, the Father Charles De Smedt who called it in Brussels. Under its direction Delehaye prepared an essay on Saint Guibert of Gembloux.

Bollandiste

At the end of its studies, in 1891, it was in charge of the publication of the Acta Sanctorum, the principal and collective work of the company of Bollandistes. Personally its field of specialization was the Byzantine hagiography . In 1895 its first Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca (BHG) appeared, re-examined in 1909 and greeted by the critic like a masterly tool for the study of the old world Helléno-Christian. In 1902 its Byzantine Martyrologe left and three years later (1905) its book on the hagiographic legends . Other erudite publications followed at regular intervals: one will find the list of it below. In 1912 he became the president of Bollandistes and in 1913 was elected corresponding member of the royal Académie of Belgium. In 1918 it was stopped by German to have collaborated in the clandestine press of the Résistance. Condemned to 15 years of forced labors it was released shortly after the Armistice of November 1918. Its work hagiographic began again of more beautiful and with the assistance of Paul Peeters and others it continued the publication of the Acta Sanctorum . In 1925 Bollandistes were with the 4th volume of November of the Calendrier of the saints.

In addition to this work of scale and long-term, Delehaye wrote innumerable articles for specialized magazines, foreign Belgians and, and monographs published in the collection of the Analecta Bollandiana . Historiographe and hagiographal of world notoriety it was elected corresponding many academies and learned society. In 1920 Delehaye was made doctor `Honoris Causa' of the university of Oxford, and into 1920 of that of Leuwen.

Evaluation

As Master in hagiography it was probably equal to his famous predecessor Daniel Papebroch (immediate successor of Jean Bolland) for his intellectual perspicacity and the safety of his critical judgment. He refined the methods of criticism and thus started again the contemporary bollandism.

Works

Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca , Brussels, 1895.
hagiographic legends , Brussels, 1905.
origins of the worship of the martyrs , Brussels, 1912.
Through three centuries: the work of Bollandistes (1615-1915), Brussels, 1920.

passions of the martyrs and the literary kinds , Brussels, 1921.

Sanctus; test on the worship of the saints in antiquity , Brussels, 1927.

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