ALTMEYER, JEAN-JACQUES. - Belgian philosopher and historiographer, b. at Luxembourg in 1804, d. at Brussels in 1877. Having graduated in philosophy and law (1831–32), he was appointed to teach Greek and Latin history and antiquities at the University of Brussels from its foundation. He also gave courses there in political economy and commercial history. He was a freethinker and, in politics, a liberal.
Two of his works were condemned by the Index: Introduction à l'étude philosophique de l'histoire de l'humanité (Brussels 1837; decree of 28 Jan. 1842); and Cours de philosophie de l'histoire fait publiquement à l'Université de Bruxelles (ibid. 1840; decree of 16 Sept. 1841). In them he appears as an exaggerated champion of human progress, wholly imbued with a natural optimism that experience disproves every day; he denies the origin of evil as professed by Faith; proclaims the Church to be the cause of the Protestant schism; reduces Christianity solely to love and makes it consist in the agreement of evangelical doctrine with reason and nature, which would be the two revelations of God in the finite world; he condemns individualism and patriotism as narrow ideas, because we are all children of one and the same Father. He also wrote: Histoire des relations commerciales et diplomatiques des Pays-Bas avec le Nord de l'Europe pendant le XVIe siècle, ibid. 1840; Les précurseurs de la Réforme aux Pays-Bas (ibid. 1885). Celestino Testore