BLOSIO (DE BLOIS), FRANÇOIS-LOUIS, venerable. Benedictine abbot and ascetical writer, b. at Donstiennes (Hainaut) in October 1506 of an ancient and noble family, d. at Liessies on 7 January 1566. A page of Archduke Charles, later Charles V, subsequently, after a wound received in a tournament at the age of 14, having left the court and his family, he entered the abbey of St. Lambert of Liessies (1520), whence he was sent to Ghent and then to Louvain for his studies. He was 22 years old when the news of his election as coadjutor of the old abbot reached him at Louvain in 1527; but only in 1530, on the death of the abbot, did he definitively leave the university and return to Liessies, and in that same year he was ordained priest and blessed abbot.
With tenacity he worked for seven years at the reform of his community, into which customs he did not approve had infiltrated; but almost in vain. Gentle and amiable toward all, he did not let himself be intimidated by resistance and waited until his reformist ideas were appreciated and accepted by his monks, who finally committed themselves later to renounce their old reprehensible customs, and at the same time asked him for a softening of his demands. B., after long prayers and reflections and also urged by the advice of persons loyal to him, as well as by the intervention of Charles V, finally decided to yield, but first he wanted assurances that his work would not be hindered. B. immediately restored at Liessies the new regime of observance; and in order to provide a stable directive he composed the Statuta which were approved by Paul III (1545). In their compilation he made use not only of ancient local customs, but also of the Constitutions of the Congregations of Bursfeld and of St. Justina of Padua. He recalled [his monks] to the practice of the common life: the whole life of the monk was to unfold within the monastery, which the holy abbot therefore wished to be aesthetically so attractive that it might be a continual reminder of Paradise.
By his discretion and his just indulgence B. soon obtained a reflowering of monastic observance, and the reform begun at Liessies was a few years later introduced also into its dependencies and afterwards imitated by other monasteries as well. A prudent and far-sighted administrator, he took great care with the financial reorganization of the principal monastery and of the other houses, and repaired the damages caused by the continuous wars. Dying at the age of 60, he left the abbey and its dependencies well organized and rooted in the spirit of the observance he had willed and so meritorious afterwards for the development of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the Low Countries.
Only with the destruction of the monastery and the dispersal of the monks, brought about by the revolution, did the fervor of religious life that had been preserved there unchanged from the death of the holy abbot come to an end at Liessies.
B. is by now known more for his ascetical writings than as a monastic reformer. He left, in fact, Speculum monachorum (Louvain 1538); Paradissus animae fidelis (ibid. 1540); Psychagogia ex SS. Patribus collecta (ibid. 1549); Collyrium haereticorum (ibid. 1549); Institutio spiritualis (ibid. 1553); Consolatio pusillanimum (ibid. 1555); Margaritum spirituale (ibid. 1555); Conclave animae fidelis (ibid. 1558), which met with extraordinary receptions among religious.
The practical and immediate purpose that B. had did not permit him a systematic and rational ordering of his doctrine, and one would search in vain for an organic plan in his works, with the exception of the Institutio spiritualis and the Speculum animae, where the gradual development of thought is more evident. The whole of ascetical doctrine is treated by B., who wishes to respond to the most urgent needs of souls. Sometimes he goes deeply into theological questions, which he expounds with clarity and precision. But his true purpose is to help in the spiritual ascent the monks and other souls who turn to him. He is not an author of great originality; his doctrine derives from the assiduous reading of the greatest doctors of Christian spirituality, beginning with the Fathers. His preferred authors, after Sacred Scripture and the Rule of St. Benedict, were St. Augustine and St. Gregory; in his writings the influence of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde is also noted; he further follows more recent authors such as Tauler and Ruysbroeck, and manifests much sympathy for the Exercises of St. Ignatius.
Springing above all from the Rule of St. Benedict scrupulously observed, B.'s spiritual doctrine is first of all Christocentric, demonstrating in this characteristic of his also his liturgical inspiration. Christ, "to whom nothing must be preferred" (St. Benedict), and his mysteries dominate B.'s thought. He recommends their study and meditation in every one of his treatises, insisting above all on the passion of Jesus as on the means most suited to union with God; and he composed an explanation of it.
The contemplation of Christ and of his sufferings will be a continual call to mortification and to recollection. The soul then lives habitually in the presence of God, who fills it with himself, so much so as to make it no longer seek consolations outside of him. It therefore has no longer anything but aspirations to heavenly things, to beatitude. Even the habitual attention to the presence of God and the constant aspiration to the joys of heaven reveal the adherence of B.'s doctrine to the thought of St. Benedict.
Nothing new, then, in B.'s spiritual doctrine as regards content, but a method of interior life suited to all, even the weakest, just as his monastic ideal, once freed from the excessive rigidities of the first period, was followed for over two centuries by monks of differing degrees of virtue.
His doctrine is still studied today and new translations of his works are being made here and there (a complete one is announced also in Italian in the Scripta monastica of the abbey of Praglia), which indicates the timeliness of B., whom Pope Pius XI would have wished a saint and doctor of the Church. The title of "venerable" has been universally recognized for him because of the fame acquired through his works and in homage to his virtues. He is commemorated in the Benedictine Martyrology on 7 January.