LANSPERGER (LANSPERGIO), JOHANN (IUSTUS VON LANDSBERG). — Carthusian monk and ascetical writer, born at Landsberg in 1489 or 1490, died at Cologne on 11 August 1539. His family name was Gerecht, hence the Latin Iustus. Having entered the Charterhouse of Cologne (1509), he became master of novices there (1520–30), then became prior of the Charterhouse of Constave; but the climate and internal disagreements soon compelled him to return to Cologne.
Apart from two polemical works, written in German, against Luther, his other works, 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 theme he continually develops is God’s love for human beings and the return of love that human beings ought to offer God; he also speaks frequently, in a moving and deeply affecting style, of the Sacred Heart, inculcating devotion to and imitation of it, in terms that foreshadow and prepare the later revelations of St. Margherita Alacoque. He may therefore be regarded as one of the most important precursors of the devotion propagated by the Saint.
Among the Latin works, collected in a new and carefully prepared edition by the Charterhouse of Notre-Dame-des-Prés (5 vols., Tournai 1890), the following treatises should be mentioned: 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.