SOMMERVOGEL, CHARLES. – Jesuit, bibliographer, born in Strasbourg on 8 January 1834, died in Paris on 11 May 1902.
He entered the Order in 1853 and was ordained a priest in 1866; from 1867 he collaborated with the periodical Etudes, of which he was director from 1871 to 1879. But already during his period of studies, following his strong inclination, he had always devoted himself to bibliographical research, with which he had greatly assisted the two brothers Agostino and Luigi de Backer in the first two editions of their Bibliothèque des Ecrivaius de la Compagnie de Jésus (7 vols., Liège 1853–61; 4 vols. there 1869–76), and consequently, upon the death of the last of the two brothers, Agostino, he was appointed their successor. He then undertook to prepare, on a new plan and with greater completeness, the 3rd edition of the Bibliothèque; he spent a decade in Louvain, gathering the greatest quantity of material possible, and as early as 1890 began the new publication in 9 vols.: Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Brussels–Paris 1890–1900). Volume X, already prepared and containing the analytical subject index, was published posthumously under the care of Fr. P. Bliard (Paris 1900), who subsequently also compiled Volume XI (there 1932), containing the author index and the list of works on the Society of Jesus. The work was continued by Fr. I. Juambelz under the title Index bibliographicus S. J. (4 vols., Rome 1938, 40, 41, 53). Other bibliographical works by S., always highly useful, are: Tables méthodiques des mémoires de Trévoux (2 vols., Paris 1864–65); Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes publié de la Compagnie de Jésus (2 vols., there 1884); Moniteur bibliographique de la C. d. J., vols. XIII–XXIII (there 1894–1901).