Cornelis Jansen

Cornelis Jansen (1585-1638), Flemish theologian, who founded the Roman Catholic reform movement known as Jansenism. He was born in Acquoi, near Leerdam, and was educated at the universities of Utrecht, Leuven, and Paris. During his school days he came in contact with the disciples of Flemish Roman Catholic theologian Michael Baius, also known as Michel de Bay, who had advanced radical theories of grace and justification based on a pessimistic reading of Saint Augustine. Jansen also began a lifelong friendship with French theologian Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, who later became abbot of Saint-Cyran and chaplain of the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs near Paris. Jansen became head of the Dutch theological college of Saint Pulcheria, in Leuven, in 1617, professor of exegesis at the University of Leuven in 1630, and bishop of Ieper in 1636. He died of the plague just after completing his great work, the Augustinus, which, upon publication two years later, was condemned as heretical.