Heinrich Leander Van Ess, a German Roman Catholic theologian, born at Warburg, Westphalia, Feb. 25, 1770, died in Affolterbach, Oct. 13, 1847. He entered the Benedictine order in 1793, and officiated as pastor in a village from 1799 to 1813, when he became pastor and professor of theology at the university of Marburg. Conjointly with his cousin and fellow Benedictine, Karl van Ess (1770-1824), he published a new German translation of the New Testament (Brunswick, 1807; 20th ed., Sulzbach, 1830), which is highly valued. They also published Das Alte Testament (Nuremberg, 1819), and Die Heilige Schrift Alien und Neuen Testaments (Sulzbach, 1840). Heinrich made himself widely known by his endeavors to promote the reading of the Bible among the Catholics of Germany, for which purpose he prepared Auszuge aus den heiligen Vatern (2d ed., Sulzbach, 1822); Pragmatica Doctorum Catholicorum Tridentini circa Vulgatam, a prize essay (Sulzbach, 1816; German translation, Tubingen, 1824); Was war die Bibel der ersten Christen? (1816); Gedanken uber Bibel und Bibellesen (1816); Die Bibel nicht ein Buck fur Priester (1818); and Rechtfertigung der gemischten Ehen, a work in defence of marriages between Catholics and Protestants (1821). His views in regard to the general reading of the Bible by the people being disapproved by the German bishops and by the pope, he resigned his place at Marburg, and devoted himself to defending the position he had taken.

After his death his library, comprising about 20,000 volumes, especially rich in early editions of the Bible, of the fathers, and of early theological writers, was purchased for the Union theological seminary in New York.