JANSSEN, JOHANNES 0829-1890, German historian, was born at Xanten on April Io, 1829, was ordained priest in 1860, became a member of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies in 1875, and in 188o was made domestic prelate to the pope and apostolic pronotary. He died at Frankfort on Dec. 24, 1891. Janssen was a stout champion of the Ultramontane party in the Roman Catho lic Church. His great work is his Geschichte des deutschen V olkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (8 vols., Freiburg, 1878-94), in which he attempts to prove that the Protestants were responsible for the general unrest in Germany during the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Geschichte, which reached its loth ed. in 1926, has been con tinued and improved by Ludwig Pastor, and the greater part of it has been translated into English by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie
(1896, fol.). Of his other works perhaps the most important are: the editing of Frankfurts Reichskorrespondenz, 1376-1519 (Freiburg, 1863 187a) ; and of the Leben, Briefe and kleinere Schriften of his friend J. F. Bohmer (Leipzig, 1868) ; a monograph, Schiller als Historiker (Freiburg, 1863) ; and Zeit- und Lebensbilder (Freiburg, 1875).
See L. Pastor, Johannes Janssen (Freiburg, 1893) ; F. Meister, Erin nerung an Johannes Janssen (Frankfort, 1896) ; Schwann, Johannes Janssen und die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Munich, 1892).