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.