Victor de Buck

Who was Victor de Buck?

Victor de Buck was a Jesuit theologian and Bollandist hagiographer. His family was one of the most distinguished in the city of Oudenaarde. After a distinguished course in the humanities, begun at the municipal College of Soignies and the petit seminaire of Roeselare and completed in 1835 at the college of the Society of Jesus at Aalst, he entered the Society on 11 October 1835. After two years in the novitiate, then at Nivelles, and a year at Tronchiennes reviewing and finishing his literary studies, he went to Namur in September 1838 to study philosophy and the natural sciences.

The work of the Bollandists had just been revived and, in spite of his youth, Victor de Buck was summoned to act as assistant to the hagiographers. He remained at this work in Brussels from September 1840, to September 1845. After devoting four years to theological studies at Leuven where he was ordained priest in 1848, and making his third year of probation in the Society of Jesus, he was permanently assigned to the Bollandist work in 1850. He remained engaged upon it until the time of his death. He had already published in part second of Vol. VII of the October Acta Sanctorum, which appeared in 1845, sixteen commentaries or notices that are easily distinguishable because they are without a signature, unlike those written by the Bollandists.