Mathieu Moulart

Mathieu Moulart (1536–1600), alternatively Moullart or Moulard, was an abbot and bishop in the Habsburg Netherlands.

Life Moulart was born in the village of Saint-Martin-sur-Cojeul in 1536, the son of the labourers Jean and Antoinette Pronnier. He entered Saint-Ghislain Abbey around 1553 and made his final vows in 1557. In 1559 he was sent to Leuven University where he graduated Licentiate and then Doctor of Sacred Theology. He returned to his monastery on 3 February 1564 and was enthroned as its new abbot on 14 January 1565. As abbot he took steps to identify and punish heretics and sorcerers in Dour.

In 1566, as gangs of iconoclasts were moving through the county, he armed the citizens of Saint-Ghislain to resist them. Warned of these preparations, the image-breakers stayed away from the town.

On 15 February 1600 he greeted the new joint sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands, Albert and Isabella, when they made their solemn entry into Arras, and in the same year he sat in the Estates General of 1600 as the first member of the First Estate for the County of Artois. He died in Brussels on 2 July 1600.

His will, drawn up on 13 January 1596, left a house and his library to found a college at the University of Douai. He had a reputation for generosity to the sick, prisoners, widows and orphans, and to clerical refugees from the Dutch Revolt, but as a fierce opponent of heresy and superstition.