BARDENHEWER, OTTO. - Born on March 16, 1851 in München-Gladbach (Rhineland), died in Munich on March 23, 1935. He studied theology and Oriental languages in Bonn, taking his degree in 1873 in letters with the thesis: Hermetis Trismegisti qui apud Arabes fertur de castigatione animae libellum edidisse, latine vertit [B.O.].
In 1874 he entered the seminary of Cologne, where he came under the influence of Scheeben; in 1875 he was ordained a priest. He then continued his studies in Würzburg, and in 1877 he published his theological thesis: Der hl. Hippolytus Kommentar zum Buch Daniel. With a grant from the Görres-Gesellschaft he continued his Oriental studies in Munich and published: Die ps.-Aristotelische Schrift « über das Reine Gute», bekannt unter dem Namen « Liber de causis », 1882. In 1878 he became a lecturer in Munich, with the thesis: Polychronius, der Bruder Theodor's von Mopsueste, Freiburg im Breisgau 1879. From 1884-86 he was professor of the Old Testament in Münster and from 1886 professor of the New Testament in Munich, where in 1905 he established a biblical-exegetical seminar. His principal field of study, however, was ancient Christian literature. The Patrologia appeared in 1894 (2nd ed. 1901, 3rd ed. 1910. Also an Italian translation). Still more important is the Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur, I, 1902 (2nd ed. 1913); II, 1903 (2nd ed. 1914); III, 1914 (additions 1923); IV, 1924; V, 1932. In 1911 he assumed the editorship of the Bibliothek der
Kirchenväter, and already from 1895 he held that of the Biblische Studien, in which he published: Der Name Maria, Freiburg im Breisgau 1895, and Mariä Verkündigung, ibid. 1926; Der Brief des hl. Jakobus, ibid. 1928. His devotion to the Madonna is expressed in his translation of ancient sermons on Mary (Marienpredigten aus der Väterzeit, ibid. 1934). B. was a conservative; because of his fidelity to the Church he had to overcome many difficulties in his youth at the hands of the Old Catholic sect and during the Kulturkampf, and later in the struggle against modernism. As a patrologist he won for himself a pre-eminent place in these studies, having given us the only modern literary history, detailed and well up to date, of all the ancient ecclesiastical writers.
Bibliography
Erik Peterson