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4 - Leonardus Lessius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2021

By
Toon Van Houdt
Edited by
Wim Decock  and
Janwillem Oosterhuis
Wim Decock
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Janwillem Oosterhuis
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
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Summary

In 1640, the Society of Jesus proudly, if somewhat defensively, celebrated the centennial anniversary of its official recognition by Pope Paul III. In order to make a lasting contribution to the anniversary, the Dutch-Flemish Province was asked to compose a commemorative volume, the copious, lavishly illustrated Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu, in which the many impressive achievements of the order and its more illustrious members were duly highlighted. One of them was the Flemish Jesuit Lenaert Leys or, to use the Latinate name under which he gained international fame during his lifetime, Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623). After his studies at Louvain, Douai, and Rome, Lessius was appointed professor of scholastic theology at the Jesuit college of Louvain in 1585. From 1600 onwards, he was released from most of his teaching and other obligations to focus as much as possible on writing and publishing learned treatises, beginning with the encompassing work On Justice and Right and the Other Cardinal Virtues (De iustitia et iure ceterisque virtutibus cardinalibus), which grew out of his previous lectures on the Secunda Secundae of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.

Type
Chapter
Information
Great Christian Jurists in the Low Countries , pp. 64 - 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Recommended Readings

Decock, Wim. ‘Lessius and the breakdown of the scholastic paradigm’. Journal of the History of Economic Thought 31.1 (2009): 57–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Decock, Wim. ‘In defense of commercial capitalism: Lessius, partnerships and the Contractus Trinus’. Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Research Paper Series, nr. 4 (2012).Google Scholar
Decock, Wim. Theologians and Contract Law. The Moral Transformation of the Ius Commune (ca. 1500–1650). Leiden; Boston: Brill/Nijhoff, 2013.Google Scholar
Decock, Wim. ‘Law of Property and Obligations. Neoscholastic Thinking and Beyond’. In The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, edited by Pihlajamäki, Heikki, Dubber, Markus D., and Godfrey, Mark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Decock, Wim and De Sutter, Nicholas. On Sale, Securities, and Insurance. Leonardus Lessius. Grand Rapids, MI: CLP Academic, 2016.Google Scholar
Grabill, Stephen J. ‘Leonard Lessius and the Prehistory of Economics’. Journal of Markets & Morality 10.2 (2007): 257–259.Google Scholar
Rai, Eleonora. ‘The “Odor of Sanctity”. Veneration and Politics in Leonard Lessius’s Cause for Beatification (Seventeenth–Twentieth Centuries)’. Journal of Jesuit Studies 3 (2016): 238–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schefold, Bertram, ed. Leonardus Lessius’ De iustitia et iure. Vademecum zu einem Klassiker der Spätscholastischen Wirtschaftsanalyse. Düsseldorf: Handelsblatt, 1999.Google Scholar
Schefold, Bertram. ‘Cameralism as an intermediary between Mediterranean economic thought and classical economics’. In The Dissemination of Economic Ideas, edited by Kurz, Heinz D., Nishizawa, Tamotsu, and Tribe, Keith. Cheltenham, MA: Edward Elgar, 2011.Google Scholar
Van Houdt, Toon. Leonardus Lessius over lening, intrest en woeker. De iustitia et iure, lib. 2, cap. 20. Editie, vertaling en commentaar. Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1998.Google Scholar
Van Houdt, Toon. ‘“Lack of Money”. A reappraisal of Lessius’ contribution to the scholastic analysis of money-lending and interest-taking’. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 5.1 (1998): 1–35.Google Scholar
Van Houdt, Toon. ‘Tradition and renewal in late scholastic economic thought: The case of Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623)’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28.1 (1998): 51–73.Google Scholar
Van Houdt, Toon. ‘Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623): politiek en moraal, recht en religie’. In Een nieuwe wereld. Denkers uit de Nederlanden over politiek en maatschappij, 1500–1700, edited by Erik, De Bom Antwerp: Polis, 2015.Google Scholar
Van Houdt, Toon, with Decock, Wim. Leonardus Lessius: traditie en vernieuwing. Antwerp: Lessius Hogeschool, 2005.Google Scholar

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