Quick Facts
Biography
Jean-Jacques Teniers (1653–1709), in religion Joannes Chrysostomus, was a preacher and poet who became abbot of St. Michael's Abbey in Antwerp.
Life
Jean-Jacques Teniers was born in Antwerp, the son of Melchior Teniers and Maria de Backer, and was baptised there on 28 January 1653.
After studying the Liberal Arts at Leuven University he entered St Michael's Abbey, Antwerp, a house of the Premonstratensian Order. He was professed on 17 January 1675, ordained 13 March 1677, and elected abbot 19 May 1687. As abbot he took the motto Tene Quod Bene ("Hold on to what is good", 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 21).
Teniers died in Antwerp on 30 November 1709. His portrait painted by Jan-Erasmus Quellinus is inside Tongerlo Abbey.
Writings
Teniers had some reputation as a preacher and a manuscript of his sermons for feastdays was preserved in the monastery library, as well as two volumes of his notes on the works of St Augustine.
One of his poems was published in the preliminary matter of Jacobus Moons's Sedelyck Vreughde-Perck (Antwerp, Michiel Knobbaert, 1685).