Our mission today

Saints are inspirational, though some may belong more to the realm of folklore or even invention. For twenty centuries they have been influencing our world, our culture and our thinking in ways few people realise. The early martyrs whose exploits sustained generations of readers, the great mystical writers, pilgrimages and the trade in relics, accounts of prodigious healings and other miracles: the saints have inspired innumerable writers and artists, their very names identify towns and villages all over Europe and America, their patronage still inspires feasts and processions everywhere.

For almost four centuries the Bollandists have been at the forefront of hagiographic research.  Our team of experts, now both Jesuit and lay, is dedicated exclusively to the critical study of Greek, Latin, Oriental and modern hagiographic sources as well as to the history of the saints and their cults in all their aspects.  The laboratory of that research is a unique library specialized in that field.