Leonardus Lessius

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Leonardus Lessius, or Leys, Flemish moral theologian, was born in Brecht, near Antwerp, now in Belgium, in 1554. He entered the Jesuits in 1572, and after study in Rome under Suarez, he became professor of theology at Leuven. He died in Louvain in 1623.

In his early years, he contributed to the debates on predestination, but his principal work is his De iustitia et iure (On justice and law), of 1605. It has been praised by modern historians of economics for the subtlety of its understanding of business matters involving interest. For example Lessius clearly states the dependence of the price of an insurance contract on the risk of the event insured against.

[edit] References

B.T. Gordon, Economic Analysis Before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius (Macmillan, 1975).

J. Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), ch. 10.

T. Van Houdt - W. Decock, Leonardus Lessius: traditie en vernieuwing (Antwerpen, Lessius Hogeschool, 2005)

[edit] External link

• Article on Lessius from Catholic Encyclopedia (1911).