Louis de Blois
Encyclopedia
Abbot
Abbot
The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...

 Louis de Blois, O.S.B., (October 1506 – 7 January 1566) was a Flemish monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

 and mystical writer, generally known under the name of Blosius.

Life

He was born at the château of Donstienne, near Liège, of an illustrious family to which several crowned heads were allied.

He was educated at the court of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 with the future emperor Charles V of Germany
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...

, who remained to the last his staunch friend. At the age of fourteen he received the Benedictine habit
Religious habit
A religious habit is a distinctive set of garments worn by members of a religious order. Traditionally some plain garb recognisable as a religious habit has also been worn by those leading the religious eremitic and anachoritic life, although in their case without conformity to a particular uniform...

 in Liessies Abbey
Liessies Abbey
Liessies Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in the village of Liessies, near Avesnes-sur-Helpe, in the Archdiocese of Cambrai and the département of Nord, France.-First foundation:...

 in Hainaut, of which he became Abbot
Abbot
The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...

 in 1530. Charles V pressed in vain upon him the archbishopric of Cambrai, but Blosius studiously exerted himself in the reform of his monastery and in the composition of devotional works. He died at his monastery on 7 January 1566.

Works

Blosius's works, which were written in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, have been translated into almost every European language, and have appealed not only to Roman Catholics, but to many English laymen of note, such as WE Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

.

The best editions of his collected works are the first edition by J Frojus (Louvain, 1568), and the Cologne reprints (1572, 1587). His best-known works are:
  • the Institutio Spiritualis (Eng. trans., A Book of Spiritual Instruction, London, 1900)
  • Consolatio Pusillanimium (Eng. trans., Comfort for the Faint Hearted, London, 1903)
  • Sacellum Animae Fidelis (Eng. trans., The Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul, London, 1905)

All these three works were translated and edited by Father Bertrand Wilberforce, O.P., and have been reprinted several times; and especially Speculum Monachorum (French trans. by Félicité de Lamennais
Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais , was a French priest, and philosophical and political writer.-Youth:Félicité de Lamennais was born at Saint-Malo on June 19, 1782, the son of a wealthy merchant...

, Paris, 1809; Eng. trans., Paris, 1676; re-edited by Lord Coleridge, London, 1871, 1872, and inserted in "Paternoster" series, 1901).

See Georges de Blois, Louis de Blois, un Bénédictin au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1875), Eng. trans. by Lady Lovat (London, 1878, etc.).
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