JANSSENS, HENRI (in rel. LAURENT). – Benedictine theologian, born at St-Nicolas (Waes), Belgium, on 2 July 1855, died at Scheut-lez-Bruxelles on 17 January 1925. Of distinguished family, he entered the Seminary of Ghent in 1874 and, two years later, was sent to the Belgian College in Rome, where he studied under Franzelin and Palmieri. Having become a priest, he became a Benedictine at Maredsous (1881), and after several years of teaching theology and literature he returned to Rome (1893) as professor of dogmatic theology at the Athenaeum Anselmianum. He subsequently held important offices in the Roman Curia: secretary of the Biblical Commission, of the Commission for the Vulgate, and of the Sacred Congregation of Religious; he resigned from the last of these offices in 1910. In 1921 he was consecrated titular bishop of Tiberias.
Principal works: La Confirmation (Lille 1888); Au pays du Messie (Bruges 1921); Summa theologica ad modum commentarii in Aquinatis Summam praesentis aevi studiis aptatam (9 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau 1909–21). This is a rich commentary on the individual articles of the Summa of St Thomas, around which biblical and patristic passages are grouped and harmonized with the doctrine of Aquinas and his best interpreters.
His dissertation, entitled: Lo stato della dottrina sulla coscienza, libertà e grazia nel sistema ortodosso di teologia e tentativo di dilucidazione di questa dottrina, was rejected in 1872 by the academic council and in 1873 by the Holy Synod as contrary to the Symbolic Books and to the official theology, which, in J.’s view, was “not sufficiently determinate”; he therefore sought to replace it with the psychological-philosophical method. In the period 1874–75, J. dealt with union with the “Old Catholics.” J.’s principal work is La dottrina ortodosso-cristiana sulla moralità (a course of his lectures delivered in St Petersburg, Moscow 1887, 2nd ed. St Petersburg 1906). J. depended on Protestant authors. He promoted an asceticism that was not so much monastic as generally Christian, seeking to demonstrate its supreme reasonableness and insisting on the formation of one’s character rather than on contemplation, in which J. saw quietism.