HOCEDEZ, EDGARD. — Jesuit theologian, born in Ghent on 1 July 1877, died at Fayt-lez-Manage (Belgium) on 5 September 1948. He entered religious life at Tronchiennes (1895) and was directed toward historical studies; he seemed destined for a career as a Bollandist, but suddenly, after his priestly ordination (1907), he was sent to India as a professor of theology at Kursenog (1908–12). Returning to his homeland for health reasons, he resumed the same teaching at Louvain, and during the First World War at Hastings (1914–18), deepening his study of questions of apologetics and 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 war broke out, he remained permanently in Louvain.
His extensive and varied production is difficult to classify; rather, it follows the various stages of his life. He began with several studies in the Analecta Bollandiana on s. Giovanni da Capistrano, the b. Antonio da Rivoli, the b. Venturino da Bergamo, and the b. Urbano V. India, he published several articles on the De fide orthodoxa of s. Giovanni Damasceno and a truly valuable essay on the Augustinian conception of the Sacrament in the Recherches de science religieuse (10 [1919], pp. 1–29). During the years in which he directed the Nouvelle revue théologique, he published there noteworthy articles on the Eucharistic doctrine of p. De la Taille and on many dogmatic and moral questions.
Among his studies in medieval scholarship are: Richard de Middleton, in the Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense (Louvain 1925), and Agidii Romani theoremata de esse et essentia, in Museum Lessianum (ibid. 1930); in addition, several articles in Gregorianum (on Enrico di Gand and Pietro di Auvergne) and in Mélanges Mandonnet (on Egidio Romano), as well as 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 for his Histoire de la théologie au XIXe siècle, which absorbed all his activity during his final years: before his death he published the third volume, Le règne de Léon XIII (1878–1903) (Brussels–Paris 1947); the first, Décadence et réveil de la théologie 1800–21 (ibid. 1949), was published posthumously. The second, which treats the period from the condemnation of Lamennais to the First Vatican Council, is awaited. This work, rich in information, fair in its judgments, and lucid in expression, reveals the author’s historical-theological maturity.