FRANCIS LUCAS, called OF BRUGES (Bruggensis). — Specialist in biblical textual criticism, born in Bruges in 1548, canon there, from 1602 canon and dean at St-Omer, died there on 19 February 1619. He studied at Louvain, where he became magister artium (1568) and licentiate in theology (c. 1575 or 1576). In 1574, at the age of only 26, with the help of his former teacher, the Jesuit Jean Guillelmi (Harlemius) or Wilhelmsz of Haarlem, he produced a substantially revised new edition of J. Henten’s Bible.
L. also collaborated on the Sistine edition of the Vulgate; then he continued his work, not hesitating to highlight the defects of the pontifical edition. In 1606 he published variant readings on the Gospels, and in 1617 a new collection of variants extending to the entire Bible: Libellus alter continens alias lectionum variantes (Antwerp 1617; reproduced in J.-P. Migne, S. Scripturae cursus completus, XXVIII, Paris 1840, pp. 599–620). The Sisto-Elementine Bible of 1592 was therefore not considered a perfect work by L., who corrected it in his own Plantinian edition of 1603. Nevertheless, in Rome it was thought that there was no need to proceed to a new “authentic” edition after those that had appeared in 1592, 1593, and 1598.
Arias Montano (v.), L. was his collaborator on the Antwerp polyglot Bible. To him are also due the Concordantiae Scripturarum (1617). Lucas’s complete works were published in a second, posthumous edition, edited by Von Velden, in Antwerp in 1712.