PEETERS, PAUL. - Jesuit, hagiographer and orientalist, of the College of the Bollandists, b. at Tournai on 20 Sept. 1870, d. at Brussels on 18 Aug. 1950.
Having entered the Society of Jesus on 14 Sept. 1887, he immediately showed a singular facility in learning languages; indeed, even before his theological studies, he taught the classical languages and Hebrew and taught himself Armenian and Russian. He became a priest in 1901 and, having completed his studies, spent some time in Syria, both for his health and to learn Arabic there. In 1905 he was attached to the College of the Bollandists, where for more than 45 years he devoted himself to extensive and profound research and to numerous hagiographic publications concerning Georgia (St. Romanus, Porphyry of Gaza, Hilarion of Iberia, Serapion of Zarzma, St. Nino, etc.), Armenia (St. Soušanik martyr, Gregory the Illuminator, etc.), Persia (St. Eleutherius-Guhištazad, St. Simeon archbishop of Seleucia, the Passional of Adiabene, St. Golindouch martyr, etc.), Syria (Sts. Simeon Stylites the Elder and the Younger, St. Thomas of Emesa), Egypt and Byzantium. In 1930 he was chosen as consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites for the historical section; in 1933 a member of the Royal Belgian Academy; in 1941 he succeeded Fr. H. Delehaye as director of the Bollandist College; in 1942 he was appointed a member of the Roman Academy of Archaeology. In 1946 the University of Strasbourg conferred on him an honorary doctorate in theology; in 1947 the University of Louvain his degree in philology and Oriental history. How highly he was esteemed in the world of scholars is shown by the two volumes of the Mélanges P. P., offered to him for his eightieth birthday.
A complete bibliography is given by Anal. Bolland., 69 (1951), pp. XLVIII-LIX and comprises 160 items, most of them articles published in Anal. Bolland. and in many other journals of specialized scholarship. Of the separate works, the following deserve to be noted: Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis, Brussels (Beirut) 1910; Evangiles apocryphes, 2 vols., Paris 1911-14; Histoires monastiques géorgiennes, ibid. 1922; L'oeuvre des Bollandistes, Brussels-Paris 1942; Figures bollandiennes contemporaines, ibid. 1948; Orient et Byzance. Le tréfonds oriental de l'hagiographie byzantine, Brussels 1950; Recherches d'hist. et de philologie orientales, 2 vols., ibid. 1951. He also contributed abundantly to the Acta SS. Novembris, III, IV, V, and to the volumes of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum and the Martyrologium Romanum.
Bibliography
Celestino Testore