ZIERIKZEE, CORNELIUS OF

Franciscan reformer in Scotland; b. Island of Schouwen, Zeeland, the Netherlands, 1405; d. Antwerp, Belgium, c. 1470. Since 1282 there had been at least one friary of franciscans on the Island of Schouwen, and whether Cornelius entered this house before he joined the Franciscan Observants is not known. King James I of Scotland (d. 1437) had asked the province of Cologne for learned and pious religious to reestablish Franciscan life in his country. Made aware of the King's wishes, the Vicar-General John of Maubert, at the close of the provincial congregation of Gouda (1447), sent James II a group of seven Franciscans under Cornelius's leadership. The choice was well-made, for the friars soon became popular, and Cornelius accepted into the order several young noblemen who had studied at the Universities of Paris and Cologne. At first he hesitated to accept the fine buildings in Edinburgh offered to him by the King, but in 1455 he consented when compelled to do so by pius ii, who, at the request of the archbishop primate of saintandrews, accepted the property for the Holy See. In 1458 a second friary was built at Saint Andrews by Robert Keith and a third at Perth in 1460 by Jerome Lindsay, and eventually Cornelius was put in charge of both of them. In 1462 he returned to the province of Cologne and subsequently died a saintly death in the monastery at Antwerp. His remains were burned by the Calvinists in 1566.

Bibliography: Sources. w. m. bryce, The Scottish Grey Friars, 2 v. (London 1909) v.2. Collection d'etudes et de documents sur l'histoire religieuse et littéraire du moyen âge, 7 v. (Paris 1898–1909) v.1. Literature. a. du monstier, Martyrologium franciscanum (2d ed. Paris 1753). s. schoutens, Martyrologium minoritico-Belgicum (Hoogstraten, Bel. 1902). p. schlager, Beiträge zur Geschichte der kölnischen Franziskaner-Ordensprovinz im Mittelalter (Cologne 1904) 102–104. Archivum Franciscanum historicum 1 (1908) 309; 7 (1914) 572.

[j. cambell]