Victor Leopold Jacques Louis Brants (1856–1917) was a Belgian economic and social historian, professor at the Catholic University of Leuven.

After the public unrest of 1886, the government headed by Auguste Beernaert appointed Brants to a commission on the condition of the labouring classes, giving him considerable influence on social legislation.

He was an active member of the Royal Commission for the publication of the old laws of the Low Countries,[1] and a contributor to the Biographie Nationale de Belgique and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

[1] Displaced by the Sack of Leuven in 1914, he lived as a refugee in Brussels, where he fell into isolation and poverty.

He died while undergoing pulmonary surgery without anaesthetic in Leuven on 28 April 1917, offering up his suffering with his eyes fixed on an image of Christ.