ESS, LEANDER van. - Translator and propagator of the Bible, b. at Warburg (Westphalia) on 15 Feb. 1772, d. at Affolderbach (Odenwald) on 13 Oct. 1847. From 1790 a Benedictine at Marienmünster (Paderborn), in 1796 a priest, after the suppression of his abbey (1802) parish priest at Schwalenberg (Lippe), from 1812 to 1822 parish priest and professor of theology at Marburg. Subsequently, without official positions, he set himself the task of translating and spreading the Holy Scriptures and defending the unlimited reading of the Bible by the faithful. He edited the edition of the Vulgate (Tübingen 1822-24), yet sharply criticizing the Tridentine decree. He became an agent of the Protestant British and Foreign Bible Society in London (from 1804 until 1820, when it asked him to abandon the deuterocanonical books), thereby securing an immense diffusion of his translation (28 editions between 1807 and 1822) down to our own days. His version, not free from inaccuracies, was much criticized (e.g., by the exegete J. H. Kistemaker and by the parish priest of Frankfurt L. Marx) and placed on the Index by decree of 19 Dec. 1821. He also edited the critical edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament. Also in other questions, e.g., that of mixed marriages, E., a son of the Enlightenment, manifested an anti-Roman spirit.
Among his works are to 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).