TOMMASO CANTIMPRÉ (VAN BELLINGHEN, BRABANTINO). — Dominican scholar, hagiographer, and naturalist, b. in 1201 at Sint Pieters-Leeuw near Brussels, d. ca. 1270–72 at Louvain.
In 1217 he entered the Canons Regular of Cantimpré near Cambrai, whence his posthumous epithet. In 1230 he became a Dominican; he studied (1233–37) at Cologne under s. Alberto Magno and then (1237–40) at Paris; he was subprior at Louvain in 1246. In his intellectual development, T. represents the bifurcation of a naturalist who later turned toward the Albertine-Thomistic movement expressed in the Dominican ratio studiorum of 1259 and remained spiritualistic.
He also devoted himself to the direction of souls. In hagiography he is credulous, since he aimed solely at edification. He wrote the lives of the b. Cristina « mirabilis » and belgica (d. in 1224) of s. Trond (ed. Acta SS. Iulii, V, Paris 1868, pp. 650–60), of s. Ludgarde d’Aquiria (Aywières) O. Cist. (1246), whom he served as spiritual director (ibid., Iun., V, there 1867, pp. 189–210), of the abbot Giovanni of Cantimpré, of the b. Margareta d’Ypres (d. in 1237), a Dominican tertiary (ed. in H. Choquet, Sancti belgi O. P., Douai 1618, pp. 144–200, ed. G. Meerssmann, in Arch. Fratr. Praedic., 18 (1948), pp. 106–30), and the supplement to the life of the b. Maria d’Oignies (d. in 1213) (ed. Acta SS. Iunii, V, Paris 1867, pp. 573–81). The famous Bonum universale de opibus (Liber de opibus), completed in 1263, an edifying work that, under the image of bees, outlines exemplary Christian and religious life, contains much information on contemporary history, for example, concerning the origin of the beguines, s. Alberto Magno, and s. Tommaso d’Aquino, though it must always be checked; it was printed at Strasbourg in 1472, in an excellent edition at Douai in 1597, and lastly at The Hague in 1902. The De rerum naturis or Liber de natura rerum, an encyclopedia of the natural sciences, preserved
in numerous manuscripts and often attributed to s. Alberto Magno, provided material for Vincenzo di Beauvais, s. Alberto Magno (De mineralibus, De animalibus), Bartolomeo Anglico, Corrado di Megenberg, and others; it found a versifier in Giacomo Van Maerlant (Der Naturen bloeme).