CROMBRUGGHE, CAMILLE van. — Theologian, b. at Smeereble-Vlaersegem (Grammont) on 2 May 1876, d. at Ghent on 14 January 1940. Ordained priest, he completed his theological studies at Louvain with the celebrated thesis: De soteriologiae christianae primis fontibus (Louvain 1905). From 1909 to 1921 he delivered at the University of Louvain well-regarded lectures on the history of religions, and from 1923 to 1927 held the chair of fundamental theology.
He published De Verbo Incarnato (2nd ed., Ghent 1920) and De Beata Maria Virgine (ibid. 1913), two model treatises; La présence réelle et la transubstantiation (ibid. 1906); he collaborated on the Collationes Gandavenses, and was one of the founders, in 1924, of the Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses.
With the charm of a teacher genuinely orthodox, he preserved Louvain and his native land from modernism, thereby meriting the description, from Cardinal Mercier, of the best theologian in Belgium.