MOMBAER, JAN (Ioannes de Bruxellis, Ioannes Mauburnus). - Monastic reformer and ascetic writer, b. probably ca. 1460 at Brussels, d. at the end of 1501. He entered the Canons Regular (Congregation of Windesheim) of Agnetenberg, near Zwolle, where, soon charged with governing his confreres, he showed uncommon aptitudes. In 1496 he was called to France to introduce the reform there in various monasteries of his Order. His activity met with successes and bitter setbacks. Elected abbot of Livry in 1501, Mombaer saw his great plans for reform cut short by a premature death.
Mombaer's external work was elevated and pervaded by a method of spiritual renewal whose doctrine is found in his printed or manuscript works: Rosetum, Venatorium, etc. A great scholar, essentially eclectic, positive and practical, very reserved toward every form of mysticism, Mombaer gathers everything that ecclesiastical literature hands down concerning the practice of prayer, asceticism and virtue, and formulates it in scalae, divisions, septenaries, schemas, mnemonic verses, etc. Nourished by the Devotio moderna (v.), deformed by tendencies too mechanized and schematized, Mombaer seeks to sustain the intense effort of the interior life, but he frightens the best wills with his rigidity, his verbalism, his complexity. Mombaer's greatness lies in his work as an almost forgotten reformer, rather than in his writings, which are cited and praised more than they are savored or read. Mombaer represents the spirituality of his time with its possibilities and its gaps.
Bibliography4 works
Alberto Ampe