HOCEDEZ, EDGARD. - Jesuit theologian, b. at Ghent on 1 July 1877, d. at Fayt-lez-Manage (Belgium) on 5 Sept. 1948. A religious at Tronchiennes (1895) and directed toward historical studies, he seemed destined for the career of a Bollandist, but suddenly, after his priestly ordination (1907), he was sent to India as a professor of theology at Kurseong (1908-12). Having returned to his homeland for reasons of health, he took up the same teaching at Louvain, and during the First World War at Hastings (1914-18), devoting himself deeply to questions of apologetics and of the history of theology. From 1921 to 1926 he was director of the Nouvelle revue théologique of Louvain. From 1928 to 1940 he divided his theological teaching between Louvain and the Gregorian University, in Rome. When the war broke out, he remained definitively at Louvain.
His extensive and varied output is difficult to classify; it rather follows the various phases of his life. He made his debut with various studies in the Analecta Bollandiana on St. John of Capistrano, the blessed Anthony of Rivoli, the blessed Venturino of Bergamo, the blessed Urban V. After his return from India he printed various articles on the De fide orthodoxa of St. John Damascene and a truly precious essay on the Augustinian conception of the Sacrament, in the Recherches de science religieuse (10 [1919], pp. 1-29). In the years when he directed the Nouvelle revue théologique, he published there valuable articles on the eucharistic doctrine of Fr. De la Taille and on many dogmatic and moral questions.
Among his studies in medievalism may be remembered: Richard de Middleton, in the Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense (Louvain 1925), and Agidii Romani theoremata de esse et essentia, in Museum Lessianum (ibid. 1930); furthermore several articles in the Gregorianum (on Henry of Ghent, Peter of Auvergne) and in the Mélanges Mandonnet (on Giles of Rome), and the valuable collection of texts Quaestio de unico esse in Christo a doctoribus saec. XIII disputata, in Textus et documenta (Rome 1933). Around 1937 he conceived the plan of his Histoire de la théologie au XIXe siècle, which absorbed the whole activity of his last years: before dying he printed the third volume: Le règne de Léon XIII (1878-1903) (Brussels-Paris 1947); posthumous is the first: Décadence et réveil de la théologie 1800-21 (ibid. 1949). The second is awaited, in which the period from the condemnation of Lamennais to the Vatican Council is treated. This work, rich in information, fair in its judgments, limpid in its wording, shows the author's historical-theological maturity.
Bibliography
Antonio Piolanti