Servais de Lairuelz

Annibal-Servais de Lairuelz (1560 – 18 October 1631), a native of Hainaut in what is now Belgium, was a canon and reformer of the Premonstratensian Order.

He was baptised Annibal, but the Bishop of Verdun, Nicolas de Bousmar, gave him the confirmation name Servais (Servatius).

In 1600, he succeeded Daniel Picart as abbot of Sainte-Marie-au-Bois, and started sending his young religious to study at the University of Pont-à-Mousson.

In 1631, to escape the plague epidemic that had broken out in Pont-à-Mousson, he and the community returned to Sainte-Marie-au-Bois, where he died on 18 October.

De Lairuelz published 10 or so books in promotion of the strict observance, marked also by the influence of Ignatian spirituality.