VI.
LESSIO. 1554–1623,
BORN at Brechten, a town in Brabant, of influential family, this noted Hygeist, at a very early age, exhibited so exceptional a disposition as to be known among his school-fellows as the “prophet.” His ardour for learning was so intense as to cause him to forget the hours of meals, and to reduce his time for sleep to the shortest period possible. Having obtained a scholarship at the Arras College in Louvain, Lessio pursued the course of studies there with the greatest success, and by his fellow-students was proclaimed “prince of philologers.” At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus. Two years later he was elected to the Chair of Philosophy at Douai. In 1585 he accepted the Professorship of Theology at Louvain.
So extraordinary were the respect and veneration which he had attracted in his Order and from all who had access to him, that not only did his death cause the greatest regret, but (as we are assured) his friends contended among themselves for possession of every possible relic and memento “of one who had composed so admirable works.” He was interred before the high altar of the church of his college in Louvain. Held in high honour during life, after his death so rare an ornament of his Church was signally eulogised by the Pope, Urbano VIII.; and he was even believed to have worked miracles. His praises are especially recorded in a book entitled De Vitâ et Moribus R. P. Leonardi Lessii—reprinted at Paris, 1644.
Principal Writings: De Justitiâ et de Jure Actionum, Humanarum, &c. (reprinted seven times). Many of the propositions, it seems, eventually came under the censure of the Theological Faculty, the Bishops, and the Pontiffs.
Quæ Fides et Religio sit Capessenda, Consultatio. Anvers, 1610. In the estimation of S. François de Sales, a work “not so much that of Lessio as of an Angel of the Judgment (Ange du Grand Conseil).”
Hygiasticon (Anvers, 1613–14, 8vo); it is superfluous to remark, his really valuable work. It was translated from the Latin into French by Sebastian Hardy, with the title of Le Vrai Régime de Vivre pour la Conservation du Corps et de l’Ame. Paris, 1646. Another editor, La Bonnodière, added notes, republishing it under the title of De la Sobriété et de Ses Avantages. Paris, 1701.
“Lessio,” writes the author of the article in the Biographie Universelle, “having been condemned by the physicians to have no more than two years longer to live, himself studied the principles of Hygiene, was struck by the example of Cornaro, resolved to imitate him, and found himself so well from such imitation that he translated his book (Della Vita Sobria), joining to it the results of his own experience, to which he owed the prolongation of his life by forty years.” For the rest, he was a man of extensive erudition; and Justus Lipsius celebrates, in some fine verse, the variety of his talents. (See Biog. Universelle Ancienne et Moderne. À Paris, chez Michaud, 1819.)
The Hygiasticon is prefaced by testimonials from three eminent physicians, setting forth their concurrence in the principles of the author. The English translation (1634) has prefixed to it addresses, in verse, to him; one of which is by Crashaw, the friend of Cowley, and a Dialogue between Glutton and Echo, also in verse. Affixed to this edition are an English version of Cornaro, by George Herbert, and a translation of an anonymous treatise by another Italian writer—That a Spare Diet is better than a Splendid and Sumptuous One: A Paradox.
In his chap. v. “Of the Advantages which a Sober Diet brings to the Body, and first, That it freeth almost from all Diseases”—Lessio promises the adherents of it, that in the first place:—
“It cloth free a man and preserve him from almost all manner of diseases. For it rids him of catarrhs, coughs, wheezings, dizziness, and pain in the head and stomach. It drives away apoplexies, lethargies, falling-sickness, and other ill-affections of the brain. It cures the gout in the feet and in the hands; the sciatica and diseases in the joints. It also prevents crudity (indigestion), the parent of all diseases. In a word, it so tempers the humours, and maintains them in an equal proportion, that they hurt not any way, either in quantity or quality. And this both reason and experience do confirm. For we see that those who keep themselves to a sober course of diet are very seldom, or rather never, molested with diseases; and if at any time they happen to be oppressed with sickness, they do bear it much better, and sooner recover than those others whose bodies are full fraught with ill-humours.
“I know very many who, though they be weak by natural constitution, and well grown in years, and continually busied in employments of the mind, nevertheless by the help of this temperance, live in health, and have passed the greater part of their lives, which have been many years long, without any notable sickness....
“The self-same comes to pass in wounds, bruises, puttings out of joint, and breaking of bones; in regard that there is either no flux at all of ill-humours, or, at least, very little of that part affected.... Furthermore an abstinent diet doth arm and fortify against the plague; for the venom thereof is much better resisted if the body be clear and free—wherefore Sokrates brought to pass that he himself was never sick of the plague, which ofttimes greatly wasted the city of Athens, where he lived, as Laertius writeth. The third commodity of the diet is that, although it doth not cure such diseases as are incurable in their own nature, yet it doth so much mitigate and allay them as that they are easily borne, and do not much hinder the functions of the mind. This is seen by daily experience.”
Lessio proceeds to descant upon the other benefits of the reformed regimen—such as that it prolongs life (other things being equal) to extreme old age, produces cheerfulness, activity, memory, and the like.[293]
Moffet, another hygienic writer of the sixteenth century, demands indignantly:—
“Till God (i.e., Superstition or Fraud) would have it so [the slaying of other animals for food], who dared to touch with his lips the remnant of a dead carcase? or to set the prey of a wolf, or the meat of a falcon, upon his table? Who, I say, durst feed upon those members which, lately, did see, go, bleat, low, feel, and move?[294]
“Nay, tell me, can civil and human eyes yet abide the slaughter of an innocent ‘beast,’ the cutting of his throat, the smashing him on the head, the flaying of his skin, the quartering and dismembering of his limbs, the sprinkling of his blood, the ripping up of his veins, the enduring of ill-savours, the heaving of heavy sighs, sobs, and groans, the passionate struggling and panting for life, which only hard-hearted butchers can endure to see?
“Is not the earth sufficient to give us meat, but that we must also rend up the bowels of ‘beasts,’ birds, and fishes? Yes, truly, there is enough in the earth to give us meat; yea, verily, and choice of meats, needing either none or no great preparation, which we may take without fear, and cut down without trembling; which, also, we may mingle a hundred ways to delight our taste, and feed on safely to fill our bellies.”—Health’s Improvement, by Dr. W. Moffet (ed. 1746), as quoted by Ritson. The author died in 1604.
THE author of the Anatomy of Abuses, a writer of the same period, denouncing the unnatural and luxurious living of his time, compares the two diets with equal force and truth:—
“I cannot persuade myself otherwise, but that our niceness and cautiousness in diet hath altered our nature, distempered our bodies, and made us subject to hundreds of diseases and discrasies (indigestions) more than ever our forefathers were subject unto, and consequently of shorter life than they.... Who are sicklier than they who fare deliciously every day? Who is corrupter? Who belcheth more? Who looketh worse? Who is weaker and feebler than they? Who hath more filthy phlegm and putrefaction (replete with gross humours) than they? And, to be brief, who dieth sooner than they?
“Do we not see the poor man who eateth brown bread (whereof some is made of rye, barley, peason, beans, oats, and such other gross grains), and drinketh small drink, yea, sometimes water, and feedeth upon milk, butter and cheese—I say do we not see such a one healthfuller, stronger, fairer complexioned, and longer-living than the other that fares daintily every day; and how should it be otherwise?”—Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses, 1583. Quoted by Ritson (Abstinence from Flesh: A Moral Duty.).