BLOSIUS, FRANCISCUS LUDOVICUS

( (Latin), ) born 1506, Don-tienne, Neth. died 1566, Liessies, Fr. French Franois-louis De Blois Benedictine monastic reformer and mystical writer. Of noble birth, he was a page at the court of the future emperor Charles V and received his early education from the future pope Adrian VI. In 1520 he entered the Benedictine Order at Liessies, becoming abbot in 1530. During the invasion of King Francis I of France, Blosius, accompanied by three monks, retired (c. 1537) to Ath. He returned to Liessies (1545), remaining there rather than accepting the archbishopric of Cambrai offered by Charles V in 1556. His concern for the renewal of the monastic spirit inspired his writings, which for a time rivalled in popularity the Imitation of Christ, a Christian devotional work of uncertain authorship written between 1390 and 1440. Doctrinally, Blosius was a successor to the earlier Lowlands mystics, but without their speculative interests, and a forerunner of St. Francis of Sales, patron of all writers. Blosius' more important treatises are translated in the series Spiritual Works by B. Wilberforce and D.R. Huddleston.