- Jean Gamans
Jean Gamans (born
8 July 1606 , atAhrweiler (according to other sources at Neuenahr, about two miles from Ahrweiler; there does not appear to exist any documentary evidence to show that he was born at the little town of Eupen, as stated in the "Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus"); d. at the College ofAschaffenburg nearFrankfort ,25 November 1684 ) was a GermanJesuit hagiographer .Life
He entered the Society of Jesus at
Trier on 24 April, 1623, having studied the humanities for five years and philosophy for two years atCologne , where he had received the degree of Master of Arts. After making hisnovitiate , he devoted several months to a revision of his philosophical studies, and subsequently, from 1626, spent five years teaching in the college ofWürzburg , conducting his pupils through the five classes which comprised the complete course in humanities.He then studied theology for a year at
Mainz (1631), after which, the houses of his province of the Upper Rhine being suppressed during the intervention bySweden in theThirty Years' War , he continued his theological studies for three years atDouai , where he was ordained priest on 26 March, 1633. These studies having come to an end in 1634, he discharged for several years the duties of chaplain to the land and naval troops in Belgium and Germany. We find him mentioned under this title (Castrensis) in the catalogue of the Flandro-Belgian province for 1641 as being attached to the professed house atAntwerp , where he made his profession of the four vows on 26 December of the same year.He lived here with the first two
Bollandists ,Jean Bolland andGodefroid Henschen . He became an active collaborator. He was then atBaden-Baden , where he resided for some time in order to direct the studies of the young princes of theHouse of Baden . He was undoubtedly there in 1641, and 1649. At the end of this latter year he resided in a missionary capacity atEttlingen nearKarlsruhe . Here we lose all sight of him until 1681, when he was attached to the College of Aschaffenburg near Frankfort, where he died 25 November, 1684.Works
For more than thirty years, it is stated in the death notice inserted in the Annual letters of the College of Aschaffenburg for that year, he was so immersed in the hagiographical researches which he had undertaken in behalf of his associates at Antwerp that he devoted to them even the hours of the night, taking only a short rest on the floor or a strip of matting. His name occurs often in the "
Acta Sanctorum " at the head of documents transcribed by his hand, and of commentaries written entirely by him (cf. "Bibl. des écriv. de la C. de J", sv. "Gamans").A large number of surviving papers of this description were in the manuscript collection of the early Bollandists preserved at the
Royal Library of Brussels and in the modern Bollandist library. Most of his papers, dispatched to the Bollandists after his death, were in fact lost when the vessel bearing them sank in theMain River . Gamans had also collected a mass of material for a "Metropolis Moguntina", which he wished to compose on the model of the "Metropolis Salisburgensis" published byHund in 1582, and also for a history of the grand ducal House of Baden. As many as eight manuscripts of the latter work are known to exist.
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