BARDENHEWER, OTTO. - Born on 16 March 1851 in München-Gladbach (Rhineland), died in Munich on 23 March 1935. He studied theology and Oriental languages in Bonn, graduating 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 in Cologne, where he came under the influence of Scheeben; in 1875 he was ordained a priest. He continued his studies in Würzburg and in 1877 published his theological thesis: *Des hl. Hippolytus Kommentar zum Buch Daniel*. With a scholarship 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: *Polychromus, der Bruder Theodor's von Mopsueste*, Freiburg im Br. 1879. From 1884–86 he was professor of the Old Testament in Munich, and from 1886 professor of the New Testament there, where in 1905 he established a biblical-exegetical seminar. His principal field of study, however, was ancient Christian literature. *Patrologia* appeared in 1894 (2nd ed. 1901, 3rd ed. 1910; also Italian translation). Even more important was *Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur*, I, 1902 (2nd ed. 1913); II, 1903 (2nd ed. 1914); III, 1914 (additions 1923); IV, 1924; V, 1924. In 1911 he assumed direction of the *Bibliothek der Kirchenväter* and had already since 1895 directed the *Biblische Studien*, in which he published: *Der Name Maria*, Freiburg im Br. 1895, and *Maria Verkündigung*, 1912; *Der Brief des hl. Jakobus*, 1912. His devotion to the Madonna is expressed in his translation of ancient homilies on Mary (*Marienpredigten aus der Väterzeit*, 1913–14). B. was a conservative; for his fidelity to the Church he had to overcome many difficulties in his youth from the Old Catholic movement and during the *Kulturkampf*, and later in the struggle against Modernism. As a patrologist he earned a preeminent place in these studies by providing the only modern, detailed, and well-updated literary history of all ancient ecclesiastical writers.