FEROTIN, MARIUS. — Benedictine monk, paleographer, and historian of the liturgy, b. at Chateauneuf-sur-Rhone on 18 November 1855. He entered the monastery of Solesmes in 1874 and professed the monastic Rule on 8 September 1876. From 1881 to 1892 he resided at S. Domenico di Silos in Spain, and in 1895 he went to S. Michele di Farnborough, where he d. on 15 September 1914.
He spent his life in prayer and study, and his monumental works on the Mozarabic liturgy demonstrate how thoroughly versed he was in this field. Equal to the sharpness of his intellect was the profound critical spirit that he brought to bear on the study of the Spanish High Middle Ages. In the monastery of Silos, in old Castile, he found documents of great historical interest for knowledge of Spanish religious life. The first fruits of this research were a collection of the rich material existing in the monastery: Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Silos (Paris 1897), followed by a Histoire de l’Abbaye de Silos (ibid. 1897). Among the precious manuscripts preserved there he found the Rituale in use in Spain before the Arab invasion of 712 and published it in vol. V of the Monumenta Ecclesiae liturgica: Le « Liber Ordinum », en usage dans l'Église oligothique et mozarabe de l'Espagne du VIe au XIe siècle (Paris 1904). In vol. VI of the same Monumenta he subsequently published the Liber mozarabicus Sacromontorum et les monstants mozarabes (ibid. 1912). Other volumes on the Liber antiphonarum and the Liber Orationum were to follow, but death prevented him from completing them.
He produced many other publications in journals and volumes, but his name remains closely associated with the study of the Mozarabic liturgy, in which he left a profound mark through the breadth of his research, the scope of his investigations, and the seriousness of his judgments.