BREVES, GUIDO MARIA. - Jesuit, poet, and scholar of medieval hymnology, born in Hamburg on 27 October 1854, died at Mitwitz (Bavaria) on 19 June 1909. His passion for poetry (he was the son of a poet) shaped the direction of his work; indeed, he devoted his life to the search, in the various libraries of Europe, for hymns, sequences, canticles, rhymed prayers, and Latin liturgical prose from the Middle Ages, first alone (1886–96), then in association with Fr. C. Blume. His aim was to prepare material for a history of ecclesiastical hymnology, which he was ultimately unable to complete. In 1906, he left the Order and dedicated himself to spiritual ministry in Mitwitz.
From his research, which he carefully examined and studied, there first emerged the *Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi* (55 vols., Leipzig 1886–1920); *Die Kirche der Lateiner in ihren Liedern* (ibid. 1908); *Hymnologische Studien zu Venantius Fortunatus und Rabanus Maurus* (ibid. 1908); *Ein Fahrstunden lateinischer Hymnendichtung* (posthumous, ed. C. Blume, ibid. 1909); and a series of articles in the journal *Stimmen aus Maria Laach*, which contain finely artistic versions and commentaries on numerous principal hymns. He also published several small volumes of religious poetry under the pseudonym Ulrich von der Uhlenhorst: *Kräuze ums Kirchenjahr* (1886); *Stimmen der Vorzeit* (1888); *Schwertlilien* (1888).