Tuesday, August 18, 2026

It is the 18th of August 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

If you are listening to this show, there is a good chance you believe that there is something about Christian history and biography that transcends a “good story” but is edifying and encouraging. Even if, as I’ve been told sometimes, you’re really just listening for the benediction at the end, there is something about the witness of other Christians- both like us and sometimes very much not like us that can help give our lives meaning.

 

I begin with all of this because today is the birthday of a man of some importance to this show… we might even call him Jean Bolland, the patron saint of the Christian History Almanac (if we Protestants did the patron saint thing… more on that in a minute).

 

Jean Bolland’s life itself is not exactly the stuff of an exciting CHA episode. We know little about him except that he was born in August of 1596- could be the 13th, could be the 18th. Born in the Spanish Netherlands, he would join the Jesuits, and in 1629 he was chosen to take over the project of his colleague Héribert Rosweyde. Rosweyde had noted that the printing press had exacerbated the age old problem the church had in verifying and cataloging the stories of Christians past. Not only the printing press, but the Reformation itself had caused problems with the popular devotion to saints (after all, the Protestants could use some of the more outrageous tales and practices to mock the excesses of the Medieval church). Rosweyde’s modest contribution was the beginning of a single collection of the lives of the saints. In 1607 it ran about 90 pages and was a list of saints collected from local libraries. Rosweyde had tried to untangle some of the discrepancies in stories and weed out the obviously fanciful.

 

In 1629, when Jean Bolland took over the project, it became the massive text it is today. Bolland's own life- after becoming a Jesuit was one of traveling to libraries and collecting whatever texts he could find. But he was not satisfied to just prepare a list, he wanted to take Rosweyde’s critical approach to transform “hagiography” into a science (Hagiography is literally: the writing about saints, but often used in the sense of uncritical acceptance of fabulous tales).

 

Jean Bolland would transform the roughly 90 pages of Rosweyde into a project that is today over 60,000 pages. This would be called the Acta Sanctorum or the “Acts of the Saints,” and it included notes and commentary to distinguish the legendary from the verifiable. He would set the project around the liturgical year with the dates of the saints' deaths as the organizational principle. He would die before they got out of February, but his followers, today called the “Bollandists,” have continued to keep the project alive. As you might imagine, there were critics of this new “scientific” approach, but Bolland and his followers weren’t trying to debunk the saints. The science of history was developing; the explosion of new universities and libraries and manuscripts provided sources, and the question of “what is true and knowable about the past” was given new tools and possibilities.

 

It was at this same time that the Roman Catholic church would formally take over the process of sainthood- it had begun in the Middle Ages, but thanks to the Bollandists (in part), the church created a system for verification.

 

The project of the Bollandists, formalized by Jean Bolland, is alive on this show- albeit in an audio and Protestant manner. And so we remember Jean on his birthday- perhaps this day in 1596 with a quote from an article by Joachim Schaefer, “Heilige für Protestanten?” In which he quotes Hans-Martin Barth, who wrote The Protestant saint is the courageous sinner who, trusting in God’s forgiveness in Christ, dares even to make a wrong decision. He does not shrink from responsibility when he may find himself on slippery social ground; he can afford to take risks. The saint in the Reformation sense is, above all, a witness to God’s gracious, liberating presence.”

 

The lives of the faithful in the past are worth telling not just because they are interesting in their own right but because they are a witness to the ultimate “holy one” and martyr.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Romans 11, Paul on the mystery of Jews and Gentiles in the kingdom of God:

22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:

“The deliverer will come from Zion;
 he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

27 And this is my covenant with them
 when I take away their sins.”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 18th of August 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who isn’t sure what to think about St. Drogo- the patron saint of coffee roasters and unattractive people… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose least favorite saints play in New Orleans and always complain about that one play in the playoffs in 2018- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.