| John Jones | |
| Birth Date: | 1575 |
| Death Date: | 17 December 1636 |
| Death Place: | London |
| Nationality: | Welsh |
| Occupation: | Benedictine monk |
John Jones, also known as Leander à Sancto Martino, (1575 – 17 December 1636) was a Welsh Benedictine monk.
Jones was born in 1575. He belonged to a family settled at Llan Wrinach, Brecknockshire, and was connected with the Scudamore family of Kentchurch, Herefordshire. Ralph Weldon asserts that Jones was removed from Wales to England when scarcely a year old (Chronicle of the Benedictine Monke, p. 100). His parents. who were Protestants, sent him to Merchant Taylors' School, London, in 1584, and there he studied with Lancelot Andrewes and William Juxon, afterwards bishop of London, On 15 October 1591 he was elected a scholar of St John's College, Oxford, where he was chamber-fellow with William Laud. He obtained a fellowship in his college, and was admitted to the degree of B.C.L. on 16 July 1600. 'His mind being much inclined to the Roman religion,' he quit the university, and within a few days of his arrival in London his parents died of the plague. Thereupon Jones left England for Spain, was received into the English Collage at Valladolid, then under the direction of the jesuits, 20 December 1596, and took the college oath on the feast of St. Alban, 1597. In October 1599 he was admitted into the Benedictine abbey of St. Martin at Compostella, and became a monk of that order, taking, in religion, the name of Leander à Sancto Martino. He passed brilliantly through his theological studies in the university of Salamanca, was ordained priest, and, after graduating D.D., continued his studies for about six years in Spanish monasteries.
Although ordered to the English mission, Jones acted successively as novice-master at the abbey of St. Remigiua at Rhelms, and at St. Gregory's at Douay. He was also for nearly twenty-five years professor of theology, and taught Hebrew in the college of Marchiennes, or in that of St. Vedast, in the university of Douay. In 1612 he became vicar-general of the Anglo-Spanish Benedictines. When in 1619 the present English Benedictine congregation was formally approved by Pope Paul V, Jones was elected its first president-general for the usual triennial period, and wua re-elected in 1633. According to decrees of the general chapter of the Benedictine congregation, he acted as prior of St. Gregory's at Douay from 1621 to 1628, and from 1629 to 1633. In 1629 he was appointed abbot of Cisniar, and in 1633 received the titular diguity of cathedral prior of Canterbury.
Jones frequently visited England, and enjoyed special protection through the agency of his friends at court. When early in 1634 Urban VIII determined to send an accredited agent to England to open diplomatic relations he chose Jones for the important mission. Jones displayed a general spirit of good sense and moderation, and took the oath of allegiance on 17 December 1634, appending to it a declaration that the pope had no dispensing power in regard to the oath (Clarendon State Papers, 1. 210). In letlers addressed by him to Cardinal Barberini, he sought to refute charges of minimising the Pope's pretensions and the claims of the Catholics. The negotiations led to no practical result. But Francis Harris, a secular priest who had conformed to the established church, deposed in 1643, before the lords' committee appointed to take the examinations in the case of Archbishop Laud, that Father Leander, 'by the common report of papists and priests, both abroad and in England, was very familiar with the said archbishop, and came over on purpose into England ... to negotiate with the said archbishop about matters of religion, to make a reconciliation between the church of Rome and England' (Prynne, Canterburie's Doome, pp. 411, 412). Laud denied the truth of this accusation.
Jones died in London on 17 December (O.S.) 1636, and was buried in the chapel of the Capuchin friars in Somerset House. Wood describes him as 'the ornament of the English Benedictines in his time,' adding that 'he was a person of extraordinary eloquence generally knowing in all arts and sciences, beloved of all that knew him and his worth, and hated by none but by the puritans and jesuits (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 604).
The following works were written or edited by him :
It has been erroneously stated that Jones was one of the editors of the works of Rabanus.