l honours. After parting with their master, his
followers proceeded up the Rhine and through Southern Germany, making a
very thorough examination of the libraries, to all of which free access
was given; the very Protestant town of Nuremberg being most forward to
honour the literary travellers, while the President of the Lutheran
Consistory assisted them even with his purse. Entering Italy by way of
Trent, they arrived at Venice towards the end of October, where they
found the first rich store of Greek manuscripts, and whence also they
despatched by sea to Bollandus the first fruits of their toil. From
Venice they made a thorough examination of the libraries of North-east
Italy, at Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Bologna; whence they turned aside to
visit Ravenna, walking thither one winter's day, November 18--a journey
of thirty miles--and Henschenius, be it observed, was now sixty years of
age.[8] They spent the greater part of the year 1661 at Rome, at
Naples--where the blood and relics of St. Januarius were specially
exhibited to them, an honour only conferred on kings and their
ambassadors--and amid the rich libraries of the numerous abbeys of
Southern Italy. But even when absent from Rome their work there went on
apace. They enjoyed the friendship of some wealthy merchants from their
own land, who liberally supplied them with money, enabling them to
employ five or six scribes to copy the manuscripts they selected; while
the patronage of two eminent scholars, even yet celebrated in the world
of letters, Lucas Holstenius and Ferdinand Ughelli, backed by the still
more powerful aid of the Pope, placed every library at their command.
The Pope, indeed, went so far as to remove, in their case, every
anathema forbidding the removal of books or manuscripts from the
libraries. Lucas Holstenius, in his boyhood a Lutheran, in his later age
an agent in the conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden, and one of the
greatest among the giants of the black-letter learning of the age, rated
the Bollandists and their work so highly that, at his decease, which
took place while they were in Rome, he used their ministry alone in
receiving the last sacraments of the Roman Church. Encouraged and
supported thus, the Bollandists economized and utilized every moment.
They were in the habit of rising before day to say their sacred offices;
and then prosecuted, with their secretaries, their loved work till ten
or eleven o'clock at night. When leaving Rome