way closely connected with their persons, clothes, staff, furniture, and especially the instruments of their martyrdom. ^ The names connected with the new (third) series are Joseph van der Moere, Joseph van Hecke, Bossue, Buch, Tinnebroek, etc. By 1858 five new foUo vol- ximes had appeared at Brussels (to the twenty-second of October), so that the whole work now embraces fifty-eight volumes, which cost from two thousand four hundred to three thousand francs. The present BoUandist Ubrary is in the convent of St. Michael in Brussels and embraces in three rooms every Imown biography of a saint, hundreds of the rarest missals and breviaries, hymnals and martyrologies, sacra, mentaries and rituals. A not very correct repiint of the Antwerp original has ap- peared at Venice since 1734. A new edition by Jo. Camandet is now coming out at Paris and Rome, 1863 sqq. Complete copies have become very rare. I have seen and used at different times three copies, one in the Theol. Seminary Library at Andover, and two at New York (in the Astor Library, and in the Union Theol. Sem. Library). Comp. the Prooemium de ratione universa operis, in the Acta Sanc- torum, vol. vi. for Oct. (pubUshed 1845). R. P. Dom Pitra: Etudes sur la Collec- tion des Actes des Saintes, par les RR. PP. Jusuites BoUandistes. Par. 1850. Also an article on the Bollandists by J. M. Neale in his Essays on Liturgiology and Church History, Lond. 1863, p. 89 ff. ' Reliquiae, and rehqua, K^i^ava. VOL. n. — 29 450 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. After the time of Ambrose the cross of Christ also, which, with the superscription and the nails, are said to have been miracu- lously discovered by the empress Helena in 326,' was included, and subsequently His crown of thorns and His coat, which are preserved, the former, according to the legend, in Paris, and the latter in Treves.'* Relics of the body of Christ cannot be thought of, since He arose without seeing corruption, and ascended to heaven, where, above the reach of idolatry and superstition, He is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. His true relics are the Holy Supper and His living presence in the church to the end of the world. The worship of relics, like the worship of Mary and the saints, began in a sound religious feeling of reverence, of love, and of gratitude, but has swollen to an avalanche, and rushed into all kinds of superstitious and idolatrous excess. "The most glorious thing that the mind conceives," says Goethe, "is ' The legend of the " invention of the cross" (inventio s. crucis), which is cele- brated in the Greek and Latin churches by a special festival, is at best faintly implied in Eusebius in a letter of Constantine to the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem (Vita Const, iii. SO — a passage which Gieseler overlooked — though in iii. 25, where it should be expected, it is entirely unnoticed, as Gieseler correctly observes),