DREVES, GUIDO MARIA. - Jesuit, poet, and scholar of medieval hymnology, b. at Hamburg on 27 Oct. 1854, d. at Mitwitz (Bavaria) on 1 June 1909. His passion for poetry (he was the son of a poet) determined the direction of his work; he devoted his life to the search, in the various libraries of Europe, for hymns, sequences, canticles, rhymed prayers, and Latin liturgical prose of the Middle Ages, first alone (1886–96), then in association with Fr. C. Blume. His aim was to prepare the materials for a history of ecclesiastical hymnology, which he was subsequently unable to carry out. In 1906 he left the Order and devoted himself to spiritual ministry at Mitwitz.
From his researches, critically examined and studied, there resulted first of all the Analecta hymnica medii aevi (55 vols., Leipzig 1886–1920); Die Kirche von Lateiner in ihrer Liedern (ibid. 1908); Hymnologische Studien zur Venantius Fortunatus und Rubanus Maurus (ibid. 1908); Ein Jahrtausend lateinischer Hymnendichtung (posthumous, edited by C. Blume, ibid. 1909); and a series of articles in the periodical Stimmen aus Maria Laach, containing translations of refined artistic taste and commentaries on numerous major hymns. D. also published several small volumes of religious poetry, under the pseudonym Ulrich von der Uhlenhorst: Kränze ums Kirchenjahr (1886); Stimmen der Vorzeit (1888); Schwertlilien (1888).