Dreves, Guido Maria

DREVES, GUIDO MARIA. - Jesuit, poet and scholar of medieval hymnology, b. in 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 orientation of his work; he devoted his life, in fact, to the search, in the various libraries of Europe, for Latin hymns, sequences, canticles, rhymed prayers and liturgical prose of the Middle Ages, at first alone (1886-96), then in association with Fr. C. Blume. His aim was to prepare the material for a history of ecclesiastical hymnology, which he was then unable to carry out. In 1906 he left the Order and devoted himself to spiritual ministry at Mitwitz.

From his researches, sifted and studied, there derived 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, which contain translations of fine artistic taste and commentaries on numerous principal hymns. D. also published several little volumes of religious poetry, under the pseudonym Ulrich von der Uhlenhorst: Kränze ums Kirchenjahr (1886); Stimmen der Vorzeit (1888); Schwertlilien (1888).