Tradition, Erudition and the Book: Aspects of the Bollandist-Carmelite Controversy, with a Critical Edition of the Pamphlet Novus Ismael (1682 & 1683), Including Translation and Commentary

Abstract

Between 1675 and 1698 more than 60 published works, ranging from ephemera – pamphlets, scurrilous libelli, dialogues, letters and articles – to multi-part volumes in-folio, were printed by the participants in a dispute over the antiquity of the origins of the Carmelite order. Though the broad contours of the quarrel between the Carmelites and Antwerp Jesuits who were their main adversaries is well known, it has yet to be analyzed in any significant detail. The following study undertakes such an analysis, first reconstructing the origins of the quarrel in the religious houses and print shops of Antwerp, next looking at the Carmelite perspective and the "argument from tradition" which buttressed the Carmelites' claims to antiquity, and lastly tracing the history of the "erudition" which allowed the Bollandists -- the Jesuit scholars responsible for that monument of hagio-historiography known as the Acta Sanctorum -- to mount their critique. An appendix presents a critical edition and translation of one of the better-known anti-Bollandist pamphlets, Novus Ismael.