ARENDT, WILHELM AMADEUS AUGUST

ARENDT, WILHELM AMADEUS AUGUST. - German historian, born into a Protestant family on 25 May 1808 in Berlin; he later converted to the Catholic Church in April 1832, and died at Speyer on 22 Aug. 1865. In 1831 he obtained the chair of ecclesiastical history at the University of Bonn, which, however, after a few months he had to relinquish because of ill health. The reasons for his conversion were set forth by him in an “open letter” published in the Katholik, 44 (1832), pp. 42-78. Having gone to Belgium, he obtained, in 1835, the chair of archaeology at the University of Louvain. He contributed to several German and Belgian journals, and wrote various works, among which worthy of mention are a biography of Leo the Great (1835), the Manuel des antiquités romaines (Louvain 1837), and the Essai sur la neutralité de la Belgique (1845).