Cardinal Bellarmine, to whom Rosweyde sent a copy of his little volume, could not forbear exclaiming after he had read this programme: "This man counts, then, on living two hundred years longer!" He addressed to the author a letter, the original of which is preserved in the present library of the Bollandists, signed, but not written by the hand of Bellarmine, in which he intimates in polished but perfectly plain language that he regarded the plan as chimerical. Bellarmine suggested that Rosweyde focus his efforts on those saints not already published by Surius.