Emmanuel Schelstrate was a Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 theologian born at Antwerp in 1649. While he was a canon of the cathedral of Antwerp, he was called to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 by Pope Innocent IX

Pope Innocent IX

Pope Innocent IX , born Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti, was Pope from 29 October 1591 to his death on 30 December of the same year...

 and made an assistant librarian of the Vatican Library

Vatican Library

The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...

.

He was a fine scholar in early ecclesiastical history and became the accredited defender of the papal supremacy. For this reason his writings have often been very severely judged.

His Antiquitas illustrata circa concilia generalia et provincialia (Antwerp, 1678) contains decrees of the popes and various matters of Catholic church history; in it he attacked the errors of Jean Launoy in regard to the primacy of Rome. Schelstrate was only able to issue two volumes of a second edition which he had planned on a large scale (1692 and 1697). He carried on controversies with Arnauld

Antoine Arnauld

Antoine Arnauld — le Grand as contemporaries called him, to distinguish him from his father — was a French Roman Catholic theologian, philosopher, and mathematician...

 and Louis Maimbourg

Louis Maimbourg

Louis Maimbourg was a French Jesuit and historian.Born at Nancy, Maimbourg entered the Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen, and after studying at Rome became a classical master in the Jesuit college at Rouen. He afterwards devoted himself to preaching, but with only moderate success...

 concerning the authority of the general councils and of the popes; he opposed the declaration

Declaration of the Clergy of France

Under the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682, the following privileges were claimed by France in relation to the Holy See. They are the framework of Gallicanism, and have never been accepted by the Pope....

 of the Gallican clergy in 1682, and wrote a treatise on the origin of the Anglican Church in a controversy with Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet was a British theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holiness" for his good looks in the pulpit, and was called by John Hough "the ablest man of his...

, Dean

Dean (religion)

A dean, in a church context, is a cleric holding certain positions of authority within a religious hierarchy. The title is used mainly in the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church.-Anglican Communion:...

 of St. Paul's

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He also published numerous other works.

He died at Rome on 6 April 1692.