Buck, Victor de

BUCK, Victor de. - Jesuit, b. at Oudenaarde (Belgium) on 24 April 1817, d. at Brussels on 23 May 1876; he entered the Society of Jesus in 1835. Having completed his course in philosophy, from 1840 to 1845 he was assigned to the reconstituted college of the Bollandists. After completing his theology at Louvain, in 1850 he returned among the Bollandists, to whom he devoted for his whole life every power of his acute and profound intellect and of his most happy memory. His hagiographic work began in 1845 in vol. VII of the October Acta Sanctorum with 16 learned commentaries; it continued during his theological course with an extensive work in defense of the regulars attacked by a professor of Louvain; it went on in vols. IX-XIII of the October Acta and in very numerous doctrinal publications on various subjects, among them the reunion of the Churches (Anglican and Russian) and other disputed fields. His relations with Anglicans and liberal Catholics caused him grave bitterness through strong accusations, which he was able to dispel. He had no lesser difficulties over the valuable work De phialis rubricatis quibus martyrum romanorum sepulcra dignosci dicuntur observationes (Brussels 1855), that is, the ampullae containing a reddish sediment that were said to indicate in the catacombs the tomb of a martyr (v. AMPOLLE DI SANGUE). He, while admitting that the ampullae containing true blood could be signs of martyrdom, demonstrated that many did not contain blood but another liquid, such as remains of eucharistic blood or of an oblation. The various accusations of which he was the victim did not shake the confidence of his superiors, who summoned him to Rome to the Vatican Council as a theologian.

Agostino Tesio