Hippolyte Delehaye (
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
August 19, 1859 –
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the de facto capital city of the European Union and the largest urban area in Belgium...
April 1, 1941) was a
BelgianThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
Jesuit who was a
hagiographic scholarHagiography is the study of saints. A hagiography, from the Greek and , refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though...
and an outstanding member of the
BollandistThe Bollandists are an association of scholars - originally all Jesuit, but now including non-Jesuits -- philologists and historians -- who since the early seventeenth century have studied hagiography and the cult of the saints in Christianity. Their most important publication has been the Acta...
s, who established critical editions of texts relating to the Christian
saintSaints, individuals of exceptional holiness, are significant in many religions, particularly Christianity.-General characteristics :Though the term is mostly used for Christians considered holy or virtuous, many religions use similar concepts to elevate people worthy of respect, e.g. see Hindu...
s and
martyrA martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce a belief, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s that were based on applying the critical method of sound archaeological and documentary scholarship to the texts. This critical approach encountered difficulties, within the Jesuit Order, within the Holy Office and among "integralist" opponents of critical approaches.
He joined the Jesuit Order in 1876 and became a fellow of the
Société des Bollandistes named for the 17th century hagiographic scholar
Jean BollandJean Bolland was a Jesuit and hagiographer. Bolland compiled five volumes of the Lives of the Saints called Acta Sanctorum, which was continued by others, called after him Bollandists. Born in Julémont, near Liège in 1596, Bolland died in Antwerp aged 69 in 1665....
in Brussels, 1892.
Hippolyte Delehaye (
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
August 19, 1859 –
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the de facto capital city of the European Union and the largest urban area in Belgium...
April 1, 1941) was a
BelgianThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
Jesuit who was a
hagiographic scholarHagiography is the study of saints. A hagiography, from the Greek and , refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though...
and an outstanding member of the
BollandistThe Bollandists are an association of scholars - originally all Jesuit, but now including non-Jesuits -- philologists and historians -- who since the early seventeenth century have studied hagiography and the cult of the saints in Christianity. Their most important publication has been the Acta...
s, who established critical editions of texts relating to the Christian
saintSaints, individuals of exceptional holiness, are significant in many religions, particularly Christianity.-General characteristics :Though the term is mostly used for Christians considered holy or virtuous, many religions use similar concepts to elevate people worthy of respect, e.g. see Hindu...
s and
martyrA martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce a belief, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s that were based on applying the critical method of sound archaeological and documentary scholarship to the texts. This critical approach encountered difficulties, within the Jesuit Order, within the Holy Office and among "integralist" opponents of critical approaches.
He joined the Jesuit Order in 1876 and became a fellow of the
Société des Bollandistes named for the 17th century hagiographic scholar
Jean BollandJean Bolland was a Jesuit and hagiographer. Bolland compiled five volumes of the Lives of the Saints called Acta Sanctorum, which was continued by others, called after him Bollandists. Born in Julémont, near Liège in 1596, Bolland died in Antwerp aged 69 in 1665....
in Brussels, 1892. He was an editor of the
Bibliotheca Hagiographica GraecaThe Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca is a collection of Bollandist hagiographic publications. It was mostly devoted to the study of and acted as a repertory of Greek hagiographies...
(1895) a repertory of Greek hagiographies, and of the
Analecta Bollandiana, which was subjected to Roman censorship 1901-27, and in 1912 became the President of the Bollandists.
His major publications, works of method and synthesis that are of general use to historians, are:
- Les Légendes hagiographiques, Brüssels 1905, 1906 (translated by V. M. Crawford, 1907, reprinted 1998), 1927. A 1955 French edition was translated by Donald Attwater, The Legends of the Saints (Fordham University Press, 1962).
- Les Origines du culte des martyrs, 1912
- Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires, 1921
- Sanctus. Essai sur le culte des saints dans l'antiquité, 1927
Other important works, with more restricted focus, are:
- Les versions grecques des Actes des martyrs persans sous Sapor II, 1905
- Les Légendes grecques des saints militaires, 1909
- A travers trois siècles: L'Oeuvre des Bollandistes 1615 à 1915, 1920 (translated in 1922)
- Les saints Stylites, 1923
- Martyrologium Romanum ... (Propylaeum ad Acta SS. Decembris), 194 A commentary on the Roman martyrology, of which Delehaye was the chief editor.
- Cinq leçons sur la méthode hagiographique, 1934.
Posthumous collections of fugitive pieces were published in 1966 as
Mélanges d'hagiographie grecque et latine and in 1991 as
L'ancienne hagiographie byzantine: les sources, les premiers modèles, la formation des genres, the previously unpublished texts of lectures delivered in 1935..
A biography by Brigitte Waché was published in 1992.