Emmanuel Schelstrate (1649 – 6 April 1692) was a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

and ecclesiastical historian.

Life

Schelstrate was born at

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

in 1649. While he was a canon of the cathedral of Antwerp, he was called to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

by Pope Innocent IX and made an assistant librarian of the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

. He died at Rome on 6 April 1692.

Works

Schelstrate was a fine scholar in early ecclesiastical history and became the accredited defender of the

papal The pope is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the pope was the sovereign or head of sta ...

supremacy. For this reason his writings have often been very severely judged. His ''Antiquitas illustrata circa concilia generalia et provincialia'' (Antwerp, 1678) contains decrees of the popes and various matters of Catholic church history; in it he attacked what he, in accord with the Church in Rome, viewed as the errors of Jean Launoy regarding the primacy of Rome. Schelstrate was only able to issue two volumes of a second edition which he had planned on a large scale (1692 and 1697). Schelstrate carried on controversies with Arnauld and Louis Maimbourg concerning the authority of the general councils and of the popes; he opposed the 1682 '' Declaration of the Clergy of France'', codifying the principles of

Gallicanism Gallicanism is the belief that popular secular authority—often represented by the monarch's or the state's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the pope. Gallicanism is a rejection of ultramontanism; it has something ...

. Schelstrate wrote a treatise on the origin of the

Anglican Church Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

in a controversy with

Edward Stillingfleet Edward Stillingfleet (17 April 1635 – 27 March 1699) was an English Christian theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of ho ...

, Dean of

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Paul the Apostle, is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London in the Church of Engl ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. He published numerous other works.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schelstrate, Emmanuel 1649 births 1692 deaths Roman Catholic theologians from the Spanish Netherlands Flemish Roman Catholic priests Clergy from the Spanish Netherlands