points of courtly details, and adopted _en bloc_ the laws of James
II., which were published as his own by Peter IV., King of Arragon, A.D.
1344. Thence they passed over to the United Kingdom of Castile and
Arragon, and so may have easily found their way to England; for surely,
if a naturally ceremonious people like the Spaniards needed instruction
on such matters from the Majorcans, how much more must colder northerns
like ourselves. This incident illustrates the special opportunities
possessed by the Bollandists for consulting ancient documents, which
otherwise would most probably have been lost for ever. Their manuscript
of those Majorcan laws seems to have been originally the property of the
legislator himself. When King James was dispossessed of his kingdom, he
fled to Philip VI. of France, seeking redress, and bearing with him a
splendid copy of his laws as a present, which his son and successor John
in turn presented to Philip, Duke of Burgundy. After lying there a
century it found its way to Flanders, in the train of a Duchess of
Burgundy, and thus finally came into the possession of the Antwerp
Jesuits.

Again, the study of the Bollandists throws light upon the past history
and present state of Palestine. Thus the indefatigable Papebrock,
equally at home in the most various kinds of learning, discusses the
history of the Bishops and Patriarchs of Jerusalem, in a tract
preliminary to the third volume for May. But, not content with a subject
so wide, he branches off to treat of divers other questions relating to
Oriental history, such as the Essenes and the origin of Monasticism, the
Saracenic persecution of the Eastern Christians, and the introduction of
the Arabic notation into Europe. On this last head the Bollandists
anticipate some modern speculations.[10] He maintains, on the authority
of a Greek manuscript in the Vatican, written by an Eastern monk,
Maximus Planudes, about 1270, that, while the Arabs derived their
notation from the Brahmins of India, about A.D. 200, they only
introduced it into Eastern Europe so late as the thirteenth century.
Upon the geography of Palestine again they give us information. All
modern works of travel or survey dealing with the Holy Land, make
frequent reference to the records left us by men like Eusebius and
Jerome, and the itineraries of the "Bordeaux Pilgrim," of Bishop
Arculf, A.D., 700, Benjamin of Tudela, A.D. 1163, and others. In the
second volume for May, we have pre