Leonardus Lessius ( nl, Lenaert Leys; 1 October 1554, in

Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

– 15 January 1623, in Leuven) was a Flemish moral theologian from the Jesuit order.

Life

At the age of thirteen the young Leonard won the Brecht scholarship to the University of Leuven. This university is the main place he will be identified with for the next fifty years. In 1567 he matriculated in an arts department called Le Porc (Porcus alit doctos), during the final oral exam he was merited the title of primus. He joined the Jesuits in 1572, and after theological studies in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

under

Francisco Suarez Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...

and

Robert Bellarmine Robert Bellarmine, SJ ( it, Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino; 4 October 1542 – 17 September 1621) was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only 37. ...

, he became professor of

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

at the University of Leuven. In his early teaching years, he was involved in the

predestination Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...

theological debate that was raging in Leuven in 1587–88 (against Baianism). Despite significant persecution and censorship that he receive as a result, Lessius supported the view of free will and predestination developed by

Luis de Molina Luis de Molina (29 September 1535 – 12 October 1600) was a Spanish Jesuit Catholic priest, priest and Scholasticism, scholastic, a staunch defender of free will in the controversy over human liberty and God's grace. His theology is known ...

, which was seen by many theologians at the time as too little conservative position. In 1615 Pope Paul V thanked him personally for the services rendered to the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Work

Lessius is now best known for his treatise ''De iustitia et iure'' (''On Justice and Law'') (1605), a commentary on the ''Secunda secundae'' of Aquinas's

Summa Theologica The ''Summa Theologiae'' or ''Summa Theologica'' (), often referred to simply as the ''Summa'', is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main th ...

, that went through more than 20 editions in the 17th century alone. It is probably the first in-depth moral theological approach to

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...

and financial questions. Lessius went to Antwerp, then a world business centre in rapid expansion, to study how

banking A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Becau ...

and

commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, nation ...

were functioning. His experience gave weight to his

ethical Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...

solutions to moral cases dealing with business and finance. He has been praised by modern historians of

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

for the subtlety of its understanding of business matters involving

interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...

. For example, Lessius clearly states the dependence of the price of an

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

contract on the

risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environm ...

of the event insured against. Among other things he gave guidelines for a new "just price" approach, accepting the fact that what was proposed by

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...

was no longer workable in the 16th century. His work ''On the Providence of the Deity, and the Immortality of the Soul, Against Atheists and Politicians'', containing design arguments for the existence of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

, was translated into English in 1631 under the title ''Rawleigh his Ghost''. From 1610 on, and already in poor health, he turned towards writing ascetical and theological books that had also much success.

Tomb

Lessius is buried in St. Michael Church, the historic Jesuit church in Leuven. His simple tomb is located in the baptistry, just to the north of the

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

. Previously, he was interred at the nearby Jesuit college.

Works

*''De Iustitia et Iure'', Lovania, 1605. The first full English translation of the sections in this work on sales, legal securities, and insurance was recently published by Christian's Library Press as ''On Sales, Securities, and Insurance'' (2016).Leonardus Lessius,
On Sales, Securities, and Insurance
'. CLP Academic, 2016. *''De Bono Statu eorum qui vovent...'', Colonia, 1615. *''De perfectionibus moribusque divinis'', Amberes, 1620.

Notes

References

*Decock, Wim, Lessius and the Breakdown of the Scholastic Paradigm, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 31 (2009), 57-78. *Franklin, James, ''The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). *Gordon, B.T., ''Economic Analysis Before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius'' (Macmillan, 1975). *Van Houdt, T. and Decock, W., ''Leonardus Lessius: traditie en vernieuwing'' (Antwerpen, Lessius Hogeschool, 2005) * Lessius, Leonardus,
On Sales, Securities, and Insurance
'. CLP Academic, 2016.

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lessius, Leonardus 1554 births 1623 deaths Jesuits of the Spanish Netherlands 17th-century Latin-language writers Flemish Jesuits Roman Catholic theologians of the Spanish Netherlands Catholic casuists People from Brecht, Belgium Sapienza University of Rome alumni Academic staff of the Old University of Leuven Old University of Leuven alumni Catholic philosophers Jesuit theologians Jesuit philosophers