WESSEL, GANSFORT. – Theologian, born in Groningen around 1419 and died there on 4 October 1489.
Educated at the school of the Brethren of the Common Life of Zwolle, in 1449 he went to the University of Cologne and then to that of Heidenberg, where, having become magister artium (1 June 1456), he learned Greek and Hebrew and showed himself faithful to Thomistic realism. Moving to Paris in 1457, he adhered to Scotism and then to nominalism; from there he later returned to Groningen, certainly because of Louis XI’s law against nominalism (1473).
Among other works, he wrote: De causis incarnationis; De Sacramento Eucharistiae; Farrago rerum theologicarum; Epistolae in quibus praesertim de Purgatorio et Indulgentiis (Groningen 1614, edited by A. Hardenberg).
W. G.’s posthumous fame is due to the belief that spread in the sixteenth century that he was a precursor of Luther: «Doctor Wesselus multa habet cum Luthero communis» (Erasmus, Opera omnia, Leiden 1706, col. 1622). In fact, his pamphlets contain doctrines that anticipate Lutheran ones (e.g., the denial of the Church’s infallibility, the exaggerated exaltation of the opus operantus to the detriment of the opus operatum of the Sacraments, the non-judicial nature of the sacrament of Penance, and the uselessness of Indulgences), but it is likewise certain that they contain many statements that conflict with what would later become Luther’s theological system. Particularly noteworthy, however, is his Eucharistic doctrine, which, despite the fluctuation of a style suffused with mysticism, seems genuinely to approach what became the “sacramentarian” error of Zwingli and Oecolampadius; indeed, it has been proved that the celebrated letter of Oen (Honius), which had such a strong influence on Zwingli, was written using elements drawn from W. G.’s Eucharistic works.