Joannes Molanus

Joannes Molanus (1533–1585), often cited simply as Molanus, is the Latinized name of Jan Vermeulen or Van der Meulen, an influential Counter Reformation Catholic theologian of Louvain University, where he was Professor of Theology, and Rector from 1578. Born at Lille (a city in the County of Flanders, then under Habsburg rule), he was a priest and canon of St. Peter's Church, Leuven, where he died.

He wrote numerous books, several only published posthumously. He is best known for his ''De Picturis et Imaginibus Sacris, pro vero earum usu contra abusus'' ("Treatise on Sacred Images"). This was published in 1570, four years after the Iconoclastic Fury had swept through the Low Countries, and it defended the production and use of devotional images, but enforcing the restrictions of the Council of Trent, as he interpreted them, in a brutally polemical fashion, which was very influential. Five further, enlarged, editions of this appeared between 1594 and 1771, and a modern French translation was published in 1996. He was also lead editor of an edition of the works of Saint Augustine (Antwerp, Plantin Press, 1566–1577), and wrote a manuscript history of Louvain that was printed in two volumes in 1861, edited by P. F. X. de Ram. Provided by Wikipedia