The High Reverend Lord

Matthæus Yrsselius

abbas S. Michaelis Antwerpiensis
Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens (ca. 1624)
ChurchRoman Catholic
Installed1614
Term ended1629
PredecessorChristianus Michælius
SuccessorJohannes Chrysostomus vander Sterre
Personal details
Born
Mattheus van Iersel

1541
Died1629

Matthæus Yrsselius or Irsselius, the Latinized form of Mattheus van Iersel (1541–1629), was abbot of St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp, from 1614 until his death. He was remembered as a patron of the arts and sciences.

Patronage

In 1624, he commissioned an altarpiece depicting the Adoration of the Magi from Peter Paul Rubens, paying for it in two installments of 750 guilders each in 1624 and 1626.[1]

In 1627, the students of the Jesuit college in Antwerp put on a school play dramatizing the life of Norbert of Xanten, dedicating the production to Yrsselius.[2]

At his death, Yrsselius bequeathed a celestial and a terrestrial globe, a cosmographic sphere, and an edition of the works of St Gregory the Great to the abbey library.[3]

References

  1. Max Rooses, Rubens' leven en werken (1903), p. 380.
  2. S. Norbert (Antwerp, Martinus Nutius, 1627). Available on Google Books.
  3. "Catalogue des bienfaiteurs de la bibliothèque de l'abbaye de Saint-Michel à Anvers", Le Bibliophile Belge 1:2 (1854), 276-277.
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