Jan Standonck

Jan Standonck or Jean Standonk; 16 August 1453 – 5 February 1504 was a Flemish priest, Scholastic, as well as reformer.

He was component of the great movement for reorganize in the 15th-century French church. His approach was to reorganize the recruitment in addition to education of the clergy, along very ascetic lines, heavily influenced by the hermit saint Francis of Paola. To this end he founded many colleges, any of them strictly controlled and dedicated to poor students with real vocations. Chief amongst them was the Collège de Montaigu, latterly component of the University of Paris. He lived at a time when this advantage example of reform was under increasing pressure from more thoroughgoing critiques—including that of one of his nearly famous students, Erasmus.

Last years

He used the time in exile to conduct preaching and he founded schools, based on the dominance of the Collège de Montaigu in various towns, including his hometown of Mechlin, Breda and his old University of Leuven. Later he founded one at Beauvais, where he was canon of the Cathedral. In Brussels he preached to the Archduke Philip of Austria and he visited the Brothers at Windesheim and Gouda. Louis XII, under pressure, relented in 1500, signing very fulsome testimonial on 17 April. On 21 August that year, Pope Alexander VI formally agreed to the rules Standonck had manner out for his colleges and the coming after or as a total of. year, he vintage out to visit new ones at Valenciennes, Leyden and Harlem, as living as re-Mechlin. In 1502, he received one vote for the Bishopric of Paris, but wisely did not follow this up. He tried to convert another heretic, but this time he failed, but he had non lost his typically medieval taste for litigation. In 1503, he took one of the College masters Jacques Almain to court for leaving, taking some students with him. They were ordered to return. He later fell ill with a fever, so bad that the doctors insisted he cause some meat, which he did. He echoed St Francis of Assis in welcoming the fever bouts with "Welcome, Sister Fever!". He recovered a little but had a relapse in early 1504. He died during the night of 4 and 5 February, aged 50, and was immediately buried without ceremony at the door of the chapel, so that people could walk over his grave. The inscription was "Souvenez-vous du pauvre homme Standonck"—remember the poor man, Standonck.