WILHELM AMADEUS AUGUST ARENDT. — German historian, born into a Protestant family on 25 May 1808 in Berlin, who later converted to the Catholic Church in April 1832, and died in Speyer on 22 August 1865. In 1831 he obtained the chair of ecclesiastical history at the University of Bonn, which he had to leave after a few months due to health reasons. The reasons for his conversion were set out in an “open letter” published in Katholik, 44 (1832), pp. 42-78. After going to Belgium, in 1835 he obtained the chair of archaeology at the University of Louvain. He collaborated with several German and Belgian journals and wrote various works, among which deserve mention a biography of Leo the Great (1835), the Manuel des antiquités romaines (Louvain 1837) and the Essai sur la neutralité de la Belgique (1845).
ARENDT, WILHELM AMADEUS AUGUST
Bibl.: D. A. Rosenthal, Convertitenbilder aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, I, Schaffhausen 1872, pp. 48-57; G. Allmang, s. V. in DHG, IV, col. 1643. Cesare Bertola