GHELLINCK D'ELSEGHEM, JOSEPH de. — Historian of theology and patrologist, born in Ghent on 30 October 1872, died in Louvain on 4 January 1950. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1889 at Tronchiennes, pursued his philosophical studies at Stonyhurst (England), and his theological studies at Louvain (1901–1905). After a brief stay in Linz (Austria), he returned to his homeland and, through contact with the Bollandists (De Smet, Delehaye, Peeters, Poncelet, Van Orroy), trained himself in that rigorous method which he was to apply with such success in his teaching and works. In 1906 he began teaching patrology at the Jesuit scholasticate in Louvain, adding the history of dogma in 1915. From 1925 to 1932, he spent several months each year in Rome directing the practical exercises (seminar) in positive theology at the Gregorian University. After the First World War, together with Lebon and Martin, he founded the universally renowned Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense. In 1942 he retired from teaching in order to devote himself to the publication of his works.
He wrote: L'Encharistie au XIIe siècle en Occident (in DThC, V, cols. 1233–1302), a dense historical-doctrinal article that revealed the author’s scholarly abilities; Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle (Paris 1914; 2nd revised and expanded ed., Brussels–Paris 1948), his masterpiece, in which the research of fifty years of medieval studies is fused into a harmonious synthesis, from which the theological face of the twelfth century emerges in luminous clarity; Pour l'histoire du mot sacramentum. I. Les anténicéens (Louvain 1924), in collaboration; Les exercices pratiques du séminaire en théologie (Paris 1934; 4th ed. there 1948), a methodological booklet in which the author condensed the experience of many years and his extensive knowledge of positive theology; Pierre Lombard (in DThC, XII, cols. 1941–2019), a magisterial article; Littérature latine au moyen âge (2 vols., Paris 1939); L'essor de la littérature latine au XIIe siècle (2 vols., there 1946), in which the specialist in the twelfth century fully displays his resources; Patriotique et moyen âge (3 vols., Gembloux–Paris 1946–49: the 4th vol. in preparation), a collection of studies and essays that follow the various stages of his passionate investigations into important subjects (e.g., the first volume is devoted to studies on the Apostles’ Creed). His articles, scattered throughout the leading journals of history and theology, are innumerable.
A scholar by temperament, whose powerful intellect was supported by a rigorous method, applied with uncompromising strictness, and by tireless industry, he consistently aspired to raise Catholic scholarship to a level equal or superior to that of the Protestants. His numerous and highly esteemed publications show how generously he devoted himself to this ideal and how often he succeeded in attaining II.