BLOSIUS, FRANCIS LOUIS (DE BLOIS)

Benedictine abbot and spiritual writer; b. Donstienne (Flanders), 1506; d. Liessies, Jan. 7, 1566. Blosius was of the lesser nobility and, for a time, a page at the court of the Emperor Charles V, but at the age of 14 he entered the Benedictine abbey of Liessies in the Austrian Netherlands.

Discipline in this abbey was more or less relaxed, in a manner characteristic of the times. Blosius was regarded as an outstanding young man, and his old and well-meaning but weak abbot picked him as his successor. He was made coadjutor abbot in 1527, and in 1530 succeeded as abbot. Blosius found himself faced, not with the problem of extirpating grave scandals, but with that of revitalizing the whole spirit of the monastic life. Perhaps in his youthful ardor, he demanded too much too soon, but he seems to have come to terms with his community and turned it into a fervent one.

Blosius belonged to the contemplative tradition of the late Middle Ages; the ideal he held out before the soul was a continual sense, as far as was possible, of the presence of God. He did not as much lay stress upon achieving the ultimate union as is usual for writers in this tradition, but he was aware of it and described it in terms of Dionysian mysticism, as represented by the German school—Tauler and Suso. His program for the soul is meditation in a wide sense, interior conversations with the soul itself and with God—affective prayer. He knew that this depended on detachment from self-will in all its ramifications and conformity to the will of God. In the contemplative tradition, he made mortification consistent with this, and his teaching is excellent on that subject. As befits one whose life work was to turn a relaxed community into a fervent one, he understood the weakness of human nature.

Bibliography: Works, tr. b. a. wilberforce, 7 v. (London 1925–30), comprises all his original spiritual writings, although he also made florilegia and wrote a few small controversial works. A complete list of the many editions would be lengthy and difficult to compile. Acta Sanctorum Jan. 1:430–456. g. de blois, A Benedictine of the Sixteenth Century: Blosius, tr. lady lovat (London 1878).

[g. sitwell]