Jean-Théodore Laurent

Jean-Théodore Laurent (6 July 1804 – 20 February 1884) was the Apostolic Vicar of Luxembourg from 1841 to 1856.

Laurent was born in 1804 in Aachen to a family of modest means. His father, the Luxembourger Franz Laurent, had 14 children with his wife Gertrude Schönen, originally from Aachen. After attending a Gymnasium in Aachen, Laurent studied theology for two years in Bonn. As he disliked the lectures by Professor Georg Hermes, he moved to the diocese of Lüttich, where he continued his studies in the seminary. Here he was ordained a priest on 14 March 1829. From 1829 to 1835 he was a vicar in Heerlen, and from 1835 to 1839 worked as a parson in Gemmenich in Belgium, near Plombières. During this period the Cologne church controversy was escalating, in which he was involved through his own writings, and in which he took the side of the founder of the Aachener Priesterkreis and ultramontanist, Leonhard Aloys Joseph Nellessen, arguing against the tenets of Hermesianism.

The Leuven Professor Karl Möller and the Nuntius in Brussels, Raffaele Fornari, were friends with Laurent, and on 17 September 1839 he was appointed Apostolic Vicar of the Nordic Missions and titular bishop of Chersonesus in Crete. He was consecrated on 27 December 1839 in Lüttich. As Laurent was rejected by the Prussian government due to his position during the church controversy, his appointment was untenable, and he asked to be relieved of his office on 15 November 1840. Until then, he had resided in Aachen.

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