Heribert Rosweyde
He copied with his own hand a vast number of documents relating to church history in general, and to hagiography in particular, and found in the old texts contained in the manuscripts coming under his observation quite a different flavour from that of the revisions to which many editors, notably the 16th century hagiographers, Lippomano and Surius, then the latest and most celebrated, had believed it necessary to subject them.
His superiors, to whom he submitted his plan in 1603, gave it their approval, and allowed him to prepare the projected edition, without, however, relieving him of other occupations.
At that time Rosweyde was serving as prefect of studies in Antwerp, but was soon sent to St Omer to replace a professor of apologetics who had fallen ill.
Under the title: Fasti sanctorum quorum vitae in belgicis bibliothecis manuscriptiae, he gave in a little volume in 16mo., published by the Plantin press at Antwerp, an alphabetical list of the names of the saints whose acts had been either found by him or called to his attention in old manuscript collections.
This list filled fifty pages; the prefatory notice in which he indicates the character and arrangement of his work, as he had conceived it, takes up fourteen.
He sent Rosweyde a letter, the original of which is preserved in the present library of the Bollandists, signed, but not written by the hand of Bellarmine, in which he intimated that he regarded the plan as chimerical.
The new enterprise found an especial protector in Antoine de Wynghe, abbot of the Liessies Abbey in the now Nord department of France.
His labour was not lost however, as Jean Bolland, entrusted with going through the papers and documents gathered by Rosweyde saw the value of them all and embarked on the vast project identified later with the association of the Bollandists.
Rosweyde apparently commissioned and dedicated to de Wynghe an emblematic work of fifty plates of hermits, engraved by Boetius à Bolswert to designs by Abraham Bloemaert (Sylva Anachoretica Ægypti Et Palæstinæ.
[5] The rest, however, as for instance the Dutch edition of Ribadeneira's Flowers of the Saints (1619, two folio volumes), the General History of the Church (1623), to which he added as an appendix the detailed history of the Church in the Netherlands, both in Dutch; the Flemish lives of St. Ignatius and St. Philip Neri; the Flemish translation of the first part of the Treatise on Perfection, drew his attention completely from what he should have regarded as his principal task.
