PONCELET, ALBERT. - Jesuit, hagiographer, b. at Liège on 30 Aug. 1861, d. at Montpellier on 19 Jan. 1912.
Having entered the Order in 1878, he was definitively attached in 1895 to the College of the Bollandists, with whom he had already previously done his training. A methodical writer, an impeccable editor, of rigorous and open intelligence and tireless industry, he collaborated on the 2nd vol. of November of the Acta SS. (Brussels 1894) with a small number of brief commentaries: whereas in the 3rd vol. (ibid. 1910) his part is far more considerable: worthy of note: De s. Willibrordo, episcopio Trajectensi et Frisonum apostolo (pp. 414-500); De s. Leonardo confessore nobiliacensi (pp. 139-200); De s. Engelberto, archiep. Coloniesi et martyre (pp. 623-84). He collaborated extensively on vols. VI-XXI (1887-1912) of the Anal. Boll., where each year he also published some monograph devoted to descriptions of the Latin hagiographic holdings of the public and private libraries of Austria, France, Germany, Italy; in separate volumes he gave the catalogues of the libraries of Rome (Brussels 1909) and of the Vatican (ibid. 1910); he revised, completed and reworked the Biblioteca Hagiographica Latina, left to him in draft by Fr. C. De Smedt, who had conceived its design, adding to it a first supplement (2 vols., ibid. 1901); and then republishing this in a 2nd edition, renewed and remade (ibid. 1911). He had begun the journey through Italy to catalogue the hagiographic manuscripts of the capitular libraries, when death overtook him at Montpellier.
Bibliography2 works
Celestino Testore