Suggest an Edit — Peter Canisius

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Biography

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Peter Canisius was born Pieter Kanis in 1521 at Nijmegen in the Duchy of Guelders in the Low Countries. His father, Jacob Kanis, was a wealthy burgomaster of the city; his mother died while he was still a child. He received a humanist education and studied arts, civil law, and theology at the University of Cologne, taking a master's degree in 1540. There he encountered Peter Faber, one of the first companions of Ignatius of Loyola, who directed him through the Spiritual Exercises. Canisius entered the Society of Jesus in 1543 at Mainz, becoming the first Dutch Jesuit, and was ordained priest in 1546. Shortly afterward he took part in the Council of Trent as a theological expert.

From the late 1540s he became one of the principal agents of Catholic restoration in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire, where Protestantism had made deep inroads. He preached in cathedrals and at princely courts, taught in universities, and advised Catholic rulers, including the dukes of Bavaria and Habsburg emperors. He was offered the bishopric of Vienna but declined it in order to remain a Jesuit missionary and teacher. As the first provincial of the Jesuit province of Upper Germany he organized the order's expansion and founded or consolidated colleges at Ingolstadt, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Innsbruck, Dillingen, and other cities. These schools combined humanist learning with Catholic doctrine and trained clergy and laity for the defense of the old faith.

His most lasting work was catechetical. The Summa doctrinae christianae of 1555, together with a shorter catechism for students and a still briefer one for children, set out Catholic teaching in a clear, systematic, and pastoral style. Translated into many languages and reprinted in hundreds of editions, the Canisius catechisms shaped religious instruction in Catholic Europe for more than two centuries. He also prepared editions of the letters of Saint Jerome and of other Church Fathers, and he wrote sermons, meditations, and controversial treatises. Contemporaries already called him the Second Apostle of Germany, after Saint Boniface, a title that reflected both his missionary labors and his role in preserving Catholicism in the Empire.

In his later years Canisius withdrew from provincial administration and settled in Fribourg in the Swiss Confederation, where he founded a Jesuit college that became a center of Catholic life in a confessionally mixed region. He died there in 1597. Popular veneration began soon after his death. Pope Pius IX beatified him in 1864; Pope Pius XI canonized him in 1925 and in the same year declared him a Doctor of the Church in recognition of his catechetical and theological writings. His feast is kept on 21 December. He is invoked as a patron of Germany, of the Catholic press, and of catechists, and he is buried in the Church of Saint Michael in Fribourg.

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