BLOSIO (DE BLOIS), FRANÇOIS-LOUIS, Venerable. – Benedictine abbot and ascetical writer, born at Donstiennes (Hainaut) in October 1506 into an ancient and noble family, died at Liessies on 7 January 1566. Page to Archduke Charles, later Emperor Charles V, he left the court and his family after receiving a wound in a tournament at the age of fourteen. In 1520 he entered the Abbey of St Lambert at Liessies, from which he was sent to Ghent and then to Leuven for his studies. He was twenty-two when, in 1527, news reached him at Leuven that he had been elected coadjutor to the elderly abbot; but it was not until 1530, upon the abbot’s death, that he definitively left the university and returned to Liessies, where he was ordained priest and blessed as abbot in the same year.
For seven years he worked tenaciously to reform his community, in which practices had taken root that he could not approve; yet almost in vain. Gentle and amiable toward all, he was not intimidated by resistance and waited until his reforming ideas were appreciated and accepted by his monks, who eventually committed themselves to renouncing their old reprehensible customs and even asked him to moderate his demands. After long prayer and reflection, and urged also by the counsel of faithful friends as well as by the intervention of Charles V, Blosio finally decided to yield, but only after securing assurances that his work would not be obstructed. He immediately established the new observance at Liessies, and to provide a stable direction he compiled the Statuta, which were approved by Paul III in 1543. In their composition he drew not only upon ancient local customs but also upon the Constitutions of the Bursfeld and St Justina (Padua) Congregations. He recalled the monks to the practice of common life: every aspect of the monk’s existence was to unfold within the monastery, which the saintly abbot made so aesthetically pleasing that it would continually evoke the image of Paradise.
Through his discretion and judicious indulgence, Blosio soon restored monastic observance, and the reform begun at Liessies was later introduced into the dependencies and imitated by other monasteries. A prudent and far-sighted administrator, he devoted much care to the financial reorganization of the principal monastery and its dependent houses, repairing the damage caused by continual warfare. Having reached the age of sixty, he resigned the abbacy and its dependencies, well organized and rooted in the spirit of the observance he had fostered, which was later to prove so beneficial for the development of Catholic Reform in the Low Countries.
Only with the destruction of the monastery and the dispersal of the monks by the Revolution did the fervor of religious life, preserved unaltered at Liessies since the death of the holy abbot, finally come to an end.
Blosio is now better known for his ascetical writings than as a monastic reformer. He left behind Speculum monachorum (Leuven 1538); Paradisus animae fidelis (ibid. 1540); Psychagogia ex SS. Patribus collecta (ibid. 1540); Collivium haereticorum (ibid. 1540); Institutum spirituale (ibid. 1553); Consolatio pusillanimium (ibid. 1553); Margaritum spirituale (ibid. 1553); Conclave animae fidelis (ibid. 1558), all of which met with extraordinary reception among religious.
The practical and immediate aim that Blosio pursued did not allow him to arrange his doctrine systematically and rationally, and one will search in vain for a coherent plan in his works, with the exception of Institutum spirituale and Speculum animae, where the gradual development of thought is more evident. All his ascetical doctrine is treated by Blosio with a view to meeting the most urgent needs of souls. At times he delves into theological questions, which he expounds with clarity and precision. Yet his true purpose is to assist in the spiritual ascent those monks and other souls who turn to him. He is not an author of great originality; his doctrine derives from assiduous reading of the greatest doctors of Christian spirituality, beginning with the Fathers. His preferred authors, after Holy Scripture and the Rule of St Benedict, were St Augustine and St Gregory; in his writings one also notes the influence of St Gertrude and St Mechtilde; he further follows more recent authors such as Tauler and Ruysbroeck, and shows great sympathy for the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.
Arising above all from the Rule of St Benedict scrupulously observed, Blosio’s spiritual doctrine is first and foremost Christocentric, a characteristic that also reveals his liturgical inspiration. Christ, “to whom nothing must be preferred” (St Benedict), and His mysteries dominate his thought. He recommends their study and meditation in every treatise, insisting especially on the Passion of Jesus as the most fitting means to union with God, and he composed an explanation of II.
Contemplation of Christ and His sufferings will be a continual reminder to mortification and recollection. The soul then lives habitually in the presence of God, who fills it with Himself to such an extent that it no longer seeks consolations outside Him. It aspires only to heavenly things and to beatitude. Even the habitual attention to God’s presence and the constant yearning for the joys of heaven reveal how closely Blosio’s doctrine adheres to the thought of St Benedict.
Thus there is nothing new in Blosio’s spiritual doctrine as regards content, but rather a method of interior life suited to all, even the weakest, just as his monastic ideal, once freed from the excessive strictness of its early phase, was followed for more than two centuries by monks of varying degrees of virtue.
His doctrine is still studied today, and new translations of his works appear in many places (a complete Italian edition is announced in the Scripta monastica of the Abbey of Praglia), which attests to Blosio’s enduring relevance; Pope Pius XI would have wished him declared a saint and Doctor of the Church. The title “Venerable” has been universally accorded him on account of the fame won by his works and in homage to his virtues. He is commemorated in the Benedictine Martyrology on 7 January.