BARDENHEWER, OTTO. – Born on 16 March 1851 in München-Gladbach (Rhineland), died in Munich on 23 March 1935. He studied theology and Oriental languages at Bonn, graduating in letters in 1873 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 at Würzburg and in 1877 published his theological thesis: Der hl. Hippolytus Kommentar zum Buch Daniel. With a grant from the Görres-Gesellschaft, he continued his Oriental studies at Munich and published: Die ps.-Aristotelische Schrift « über das Reine Gute», bekannt unter dem Namen « Liber de causis », 1882. In 1878 he became a Privatdozent at Munich, with the thesis: Polychronius, der Bruder Theodor's von Mopsmesse, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1879. From 1884 to 1886 he was professor of the Old Testament at Münster, and from 1886 professor of the New Testament at Munich, where in 1905 he established a biblical-exegetical seminary. His principal field of study, however, was ancient Christian literature. The Patrologia appeared in 1894 (2nd ed. 1901, 3rd ed. 1910; also translated into Italian). Still more important was the Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur, I, 1902 (2nd ed. 1913); II, 1903 (2nd ed. 1914); III, 1914 (supplements 1923); IV, 1924; V, 1932. In 1911 he assumed the editorship of the Bibliothek der
Kirchenwäter, and as early as 1895 he had taken over that of the Bibliche Studien, in which he published: Der Name Maria, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1895, and Marine Verkündigung, ibid., 1926; Der Brief des hl. Jakobus, ibid., 1928. His devotion to the Madonna was expressed in the translation of ancient sermons on Mary (Marieupreäigten 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 on the part of the Old Catholic sect and during the Kulturkampf, and later in the struggle against modernism. As a patrologist, he earned a prominent place in these studies by giving us the only modern, detailed, and up-to-date literary history of all the ancient ecclesiastical writers.