ESS, LEANDER van. — Translator and propagator of the Bible, born at Warburg (Westphalia) on 15 February 1772, died at Affolderbach (Odenwald) on 13 October 1847. From 1790 a Benedictine at Marienmünster (Paderborn), he became a priest in 1796; after the suppression of his abbey (1802), he was parish priest at Schwalenberg (Lippe), and from 1812 to 1822 parish priest and professor of theology at Marburg. Subsequently, without official positions, he took upon himself the task of translating and disseminating the Holy Scriptures and defending the unrestricted reading of the Bible by the faithful. He edited the edition of the Vulgate (Tübingen 1822–24), though harshly criticizing the Tridentine decree. He became an agent of the Protestant British and Foreign Bible Society in London (from 1804 until 1820, when it demanded that he abandon the deuterocanonical books), thereby securing an immense circulation for his translation (28 editions between 1807 and 1822), continuing to the present day. His version, not free from inaccuracies, was strongly criticized (e.g., by the exegete J. H. Kistemaker and the parish priest of Frankfurt L. Marx) and placed on the Index by decree of 19 December 1821. He also edited a critical edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament. In other matters as well, for example that of mixed marriages, E., a son of the Enlightenment, displayed an anti-Roman spirit.
Among his works, the following should be mentioned: Die hl. Schriften des Neuen Testamentes übersetzt (Braunschweig 1807); Die Schriften des Alten Testamentes (Sulzbach 1822–36); Auszüge aus den hl. Vätern und anderen Lehrern der katholischen Kirche über das notwendige und nützliche Bibellen (Bielefeld 1808); Ihr Priester, gebet und erklert dem Volke die Bibel? (Darmstadt 1825); Pragmatis doctorum catholicarum Tridentini circa Vulgatum... historia (Sulzbach 1816); Pragmatisch-kritische Geschichte der Vulgate. Ist der Katholik gesetzlich an die Vulgate gebunden? (Tübingen 1824); Vetus Testamentum Graecum iuxta Septuaginta interpretes ex auctoritate Sixti V P. M. editum... (Darmstadt 1824); Novum Testamentum graece et latine expressum secundum Complutentes et Errenum Roterodamum... (Tübingen 1827).
DIBL.: Hunter, V, cols. 1244–45; E. Nestle, a. v., in Realenz. I. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, V, p. 523 ff.; A. Schmittgen, Zur Vorgeschichte der Indizierung L. von E. im Jahre 1821, in Theologie und Glaube, 5 (1913), pp. 637–33; K. Fruhstorfer, Eine verbotene Bibel, in Theologisch praktische Quartalschrift, 87 (1934), pp. 570–74.