LANSPERGER (LANSPERGI), JOHANN (IUSTUS VON LANDSBERG). — Carthusian monk and ascetical writer, b. at Landsberg in 1489 or 1490, d. at Cologne on 11 Aug. 1539. His family name was Gerecht, whence the Latin Iustus. He entered the Carthusian monastery at Cologne in 1509, became master of novices there (1520–30), and later prior of the monastery at Constance; but the climate and internal dissensions soon forced him to return to Cologne.
Apart from two polemical works written in German against Luther, all his other writings, composed in Latin, deal with ascetical subjects: commentaries, in the form of homilies, on the New Testament, Sunday sermons, and meditations on the life and passion of Christ. The central concept he developed was always the love of God for mankind and the reciprocal love that mankind must give to God; he also frequently and movingly spoke of the Sacred Heart, urging its devotion and imitation, with terms that foreshadow and prepare the later revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. He may therefore be considered one of the most valid precursors of the devotion propagated by the Saint.
Among his Latin works, collected in a new and careful edition by the Charterhouse of Notre-Dame-des-Prés (5 vols., Tournai 1890), the following treatises deserve mention: Enchiridion militiae Christianae, Divini amoris pharetra, and especially the section of the latter entitled Alloquium Iesu Christi ad animam fidelem, which were often published separately from the sixteenth century onward and translated into many languages.