Leonardus Lessius

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Leonardus Lessius (Lenaert Leys), Belgian moral theologian, was born in Brecht, near Antwerp, (Belgium), on the 1 October 1554. He joined the Jesuits in 1572, and after theological studies in Rome under Suarez and Robert Bellarmine, he became professor of theology at the Catholic University of Louvain. He died in Louvain on the 15 January 1623.

In his early teaching years, he was involved in the sterile predestination theological debate that was raging in Louvain in 1587-88 (against Baius) but he is most remembered for his treatise De iustitia et iure (On justice and law), of 1605 that went through more than 20 editions in the 17th century only. It is probably the first in-depth moral theological approach to economic and financial questions. Lessius went to Antwerp, then a world business centre in rapid expansion, to study personally how banking and commerce were functioning. His acquired skills in banking and financial matters gave much weight to his ethical solutions to moral cases dealing with business and finance. He 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. Among other things he gave guidelines for a new ‘just price’ approach, accepting the fact that what was proposed by Saint Thomas Aquinas was no longer workable in the 16th century.

From 1610 on, and already in poor health, he turned towards writing more ascetical and theological books that had also much success. In 1615 Pope Paul V thanked him personally for the services rendered to the Church.

[edit] Works

De Iustitia et Iure, Lovania, 1605.
De Bono Statu eorum qui vovent..., Colonia, 1615.
De perfectionibus moribusque divinis, Amberes, 1620.

[edit] References

Franklin,James, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), ch. 10.
Gordon, B.T., Economic Analysis Before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius (Macmillan, 1975).
Smith, Gerard (ed), Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, Milwaukee, Marquette Univ., 1939 (pp.133-155)
Van Houdt, T. and Decock, W., Leonardus Lessius: traditie en vernieuwing (Antwerpen, Lessius Hogeschool, 2005)