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Cornelius Jansen, often known as Jansenius ( October 28, 1585 — May 6, 1638) was bishop of Ypres and the father of the religious revival known as Jansenism.

He was born of humble Catholic parentage at Accoy in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands. In 1602 he entered the university of Louvain, then in the throes of a violent conflict between the Jesuit, or scholastic, party and the followers of Michael Baius, who swore by St Augustine. Jansen ended by attaching himself strongly to the latter party, and presently made a momentous friendship with a like-minded fellow-student, Du Vergier de Hauranne, afterwards abbot of Saint Cyran.

After taking his degree he went to ParisEiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. Paris is the capital and largest city of France. The city is built on an arc of the River Seine, and is thus divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to, partly to recruit his health by a change of scene, partly to study Greek. Eventually he joined Du Vergier at his country home near BayonneBayonne is also the name of a city in New Jersey, USA. Bayona is a city in Galicia, Spain. Bayonne (Basque Baiona is a city of southwest France on the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the departement of Pyrenees-Atlantiques, of which it is a so, and spent some years teaching at the bishop's college. All his spare time was spent in studying the early Fathers with Du Vergier, and laying plans for a reformation of the Church.

In 1616Events Dirk Hartog lands on an island off the Western Australian coast Pocahontas arrives in England War between Venice and Austria Collegium Musicum founded in Prague Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the he returned to LouvainLeuven Louvain in French, Lowen in German) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, of which it is the capital. The municipality comprises the city of Leuven proper and the towns of Heverlee, Kessel-Lo, Wilsele and Wijgmaal., to take charge of the college of St Pulcheria, a hostel for Dutch students of theology. Pupils found him a somewhat choleric and exacting master and academic society a great recluse. However, he took an active part in the university's resistance to the Jesuits; for these had established a theological school of their own in Louvain, which was proving a formidable rival to the official faculty of divinity. In the hope of repressing their encroachments, Jansen was sent twice to MadridThis article is about the Spanish capital. For other entries, see Madrid (disambiguation). Coat of arms Madrid the capital of Spain, is located in the center of the country at 40°25'N, 3°45'W. As of 2003 census, population of the city of Madrid proper was, in 1624Events The Netherlands establish a trading colony at Kaohsiung on Taiwan. Thirty Walloon families settle in the New Netherland colony. Oslo is destroyed by fire. When rebuilt by Christian IV, it would be renamed Christiania. Claudio Monteverdi publishes T and 1626Events September 30 Nurhaci , chieftain of the Jurchens and founder of the Qing Dynasty dies and is succeeded by his son Hong Taiji. Spanish establish a trading colony on Taiwan. Peter Minuit, director of the New Netherland colony, begins a policy of "pur; the second time he narrowly escaped the InquisitionThe Inquisition was an office of the Roman Catholic Church charged with suppressing heresy. Their actions and interactions with the local governments are subjects of considerable historical enquiry. Origin The Inquisition was a permanent institution in th. He warmly supported the Catholic missionary bishop of the Netherlands, Rovenius , in his contests with the Jesuits, who were trying to evangelize that country without regard to the bishop's wishes. He also crossed swords more than once with the Dutch Presbyterian champion, Voetius , still remembered for his attacks on Descartes.

Antipathy to the Jesuits brought Jansen no nearer Protestantism; on the contrary, he yearned to beat these by their own weapons, chiefly by showing them that Catholics could interpret the Bible in a manner quite as mystical and pietistic as theirs. This became the great object of his lectures, when he was appointed regius professor of scriptural interpretation at Louvain in 1630. Still more was it the object of his Augustinus, a bulky treatise on the theology of St Augustine, barely finished at the time of his death. Preparing it had been his chief occupation ever since he went back to Louvain.

But Jansen, as he said, did not mean to be a school-pedant all his life; and there were moments when be dreamed political dreams. He looked forward to a time when Belgium should throw off the Spanish yoke and become an independent Catholic republic on the model of the Protestant United Provinces. These ideas became known to his Spanish rulers, and to assuage them he wrote a philippic called the Mars gallicus (1635), a violent attack on French ambitions generally, and on Richelieu's indifference to international Catholic interests in particular. The Mars gallicus did not do much to help Jansen's friends in France, but it more than appeased the wrath of Madrid with Jansen himself; in 1636 he was appointed bishop of Ypres. Within two years he was cut off by a sudden illness; the Augustinus, the book of his life, was published posthumously in 1640.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica