DE SMEDT, CHARLES

DE SMEDT, CHARLES. — Belgian Jesuit and historian, born at Ghent on 6 April 1833; he entered the novitiate in 1851 and was ordained a priest in 1863. Professor of ecclesiastical history at the Society’s college in Louvain, and for several years a collaborator of Les Etudes, he joined the Bollandists in 1877; he assumed their direction in 1882 and retained it, notwithstanding a three-year tenure as rector of the Brussels college (1900–1902), until his death, which occurred in Brussels on 4 March 1911.

As a professor, D. S. had written an Introductio ad historiam ecclesiasticam criticem tractandam (Ghent 1876, together with a volume of Dissertationes selectae). Subsequently, he brought together in a volume, Principes de la critique historique (Liège–Paris 1883), several articles published shortly beforehand in Etudes, which brought about a salutary revolution in the world of ecclesiastical history through their firm, measured, and serene condemnation of the erroneous methods—often more apologetic than historical—that prevailed there. In the Bollandist work itself, D. S.’s influence was decisive. Restored, somewhat hastily, in 1837, the learned society was passing through a manifest crisis, not only because of the deaths of several of its best members, but also because, notwithstanding the work of certain exceptional men such as Vittorio De Buck, it had not yet properly established its position in relation to the progress of the historical and philological sciences. D. S. renewed its methods, both in the selection and philological presentation of the published texts and in the use of all the resources of the auxiliary disciplines. The new method was affirmed in the first three November volumes of the Acta SS. published during his presidency and was continued in those that followed. In the very year in which he assumed the direction, D. S. added to the imposing volumes of the Acta

un organo periodico più maneggevole, gli Analecta Bollandiana (1882 sgg.) ed intraprese poco dopo la compilazione sistematica d'una serie, continuata dopo di lui, di cataloghi e repertori di manoscritti agiografici nelle principali biblioteche. Contemporaneamente, il preside aggregava alla società collaboratori di grande valore e dava un forte sviluppo alla biblioteca o « Museum Bollandianum », che trasferiva nel 1906 in un ampia e apposita sede nel « nuovo collegio » dei Gesuiti di Bruxelles.

Oltre alla sua produzione agiografica, il D. S. ha lasciato alcuni contributi alla storia ecclesiastica, come l'opera Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium 1092-1138 (Parigi 1880), la Vie de mgr J.-B. Quinet (Namur 1889) e vari articoli. Alla fine della sua vita, scrisse sotto il titolo Notre vie surnaturelle (2 voll., Bruxelles 1910-11) una esposizione metodica di teologia spirituale di grande chiarezza e sicurezza dottrinale.