Description
This is the history of the publication of Delehaye’sLes légendes hagiographiques, “a manifesto for critical hagiography”, and of the many difficulties which the author had to face, coming from both the authorities of the Society of Jesus and the Holy See. These events are placed in the broader context of the history of the Bollandists themselves and of the turn of the 20th century. More than 300 documents from various archives are here published for the first time. The study confirms that the antimodernist repression had already started before the end of Leo XIII’s pontificate and continued still long after Pius X’s death.
