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 was ordained priest in 1796. After the suppression of his abbey (1802), he became parish priest at Schwalenberg (Lippe), and from 1812 to 1822 parish priest and professor of theology at Marburg. Subsequently, without official duties, he took upon himself the task of translating and disseminating Holy Scripture and defending the unrestricted reading of the Bible by the faithful. He supervised the edition of the Vulgate (Tübingen 1822-24), though he harshly criticised the Tridentine decree on II. He became an agent of the Protestant British and Foreign Bible Society in London (from 1804 until 1829, when it asked him to omit the deuterocanonical books), thereby ensuring immense diffusion for his translation (28 editions between 1807 and 1842) down to our own day. His version, not free from inaccuracies, was much criticised (e.g., by the exegete J. H. Kistemaker and by the Frankfurt parish priest L. Marx) and placed on the Index by decree of 19 December 1821. He also prepared critical editions of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament. In other matters too, such as that of mixed marriages, E., a son of the Enlightenment, displayed an anti-Roman spirit.
Among his works are to be mentioned:
Die hl. Schriften des Neuen Testaments übersetzt (Braunschweig 1807);
Die Schriften des Alten Testaments (Sulzbach 1822-30);
Auszüge aus den hl. Vätern und anderen Lehrern der katholischen Kirche über das notwendige und nützliche Bibellesen (Bielefeld 1808);
Ihr Priester, gebet und erfaehrt den Volke die Bibel! (Darmstadt 1825);
Pragmatica doctorum catholicorum Tridentini circa Vulgatum, historia (Sulzbach 1816);
Pragmatisch-kritische Geschichte der Vulgata. Ist der Katholik gesetzlich an die Vulgate gebunden? (Tübingen 1824);
Vetus Testamentum Graecum iuxta Septuaginta interpretes ex auctoritate Sixti V. M. editum... (Darmstadt 1824);
Novum Testamentum graece et latine expressionem secundum Complutenses et Erasmum Roterdamm... (Tübingen 1827).