GRISAR, HARTMANN. - Jesuit, historian, archaeologist and apologist, b. at Koblenz on 22 Sept. 1845, d. at Innsbruck on 25 Feb. 1932. After his early studies in Koblenz, he moved to Münster, to Innsbruck, to the Jesuit college, then to Rome to the German-Hungarian College. Ordained a priest, he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on 24 Nov. 1868. Having gone to Austria in 1870, he was called to the chair of ecclesiastical history in the theological faculty of Innsbruck.
In Ferdinand Gregorovius's History of Rome in the Middle Ages there was lacking the principal element, constituted by the fact that Rome is the center of the Catholic Church; H. G. set about taking up the theme again and established the plan of his work almost as "a civil history of the papacy in the Middle Ages against the background of the history of Rome." He divided the material into six volumes: the 1st from the 4th century to the 6th, the 2nd from Gregory the Great to the Carolingian era, the 3rd from that era to the Investiture Controversy, in the time of Gregory VII, the 4th up to the fall of the Hohenstaufen, the 5th up to the whole period of the papal residence in Avignon, the 6th up to the popes of the Renaissance so as to connect with the History of the Popes from the End of the Middle Ages by his colleague at the University of Innsbruck, Ludwig von Pastor.
The 1st vol., entitled History of Rome and the Popes of the Middle Ages, part 1, Rome at the End of the Ancient World, began to appear in installments in 1898; in 1900 came the first Italian edition, followed by the German one in 1901, the French in 1906, the second Italian edition in 1908, the English in 1911-12 and the third Italian with an introduction by A. Bartoli in 1930.
G. began with a limpid description of Rome at the moment of the agony of paganism, then describing the state of the City and of the papacy at the time of the Gothic domination, to pass on to Rome's relations with the Byzantine court and the Goths, up to the re-establishment of imperial power in Italy; then to the period of Narses and the first exarchs up to the continuous decline of the Roman State, while, on the contrary, the development of the life of the Church increases more and more. The author, with a wise choice of illustrations, places before the reader's eyes the evidence of the Christian transformation in the city, at the same time giving the history of the institutions and the evolution of civil and religious life, fusing it with that of the monuments.
G. accompanied this volume, unfortunately the last of the series he had envisioned, with the Analecta Romana (Rome 1899), which contain fifteen dissertatations on individual themes relating to the history of Rome which he had not been able to treat at length in his volume, but had dealt with previously in certain specialized periodicals such as the Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie (diss. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9), the Civiltà Cattolica (diss. 5, 12, 13, 14, 15), the Römische Quartalschrift (diss. 10-11), the Studi e documenti di storia e diritto (diss. 6); [diss. 7, on the other hand, was unpublished. Thus his Analecta Romana came into being. The first 5 dissertations concern the sources: the Liber Pontificalis, the letters of the popes and the collections of their documents; the sylloges of Roman inscriptions, the Ordines romani and the formularies of the papal processions, stations and Masses; the origins of the Roman Martyrology, that is, the primitive Roman calendar, and the Hieronymian Martyrology. The following 4 dissertations concern the tombs of the princes of the Apostles, and the prerogatives of the See of Peter in the time of Leo the Great, an unpublished treatment and the theme with which G. opens the volume of his History: on Honorius I and the Sixth Council. Then come 3 dissertations illustrating monuments of Christian Rome, such as the door of S. Sabina; the ancient basilica of St. Peter and the mosaic of the Lateran oratory of S. Venanzio; 2 dissertations contain studies relating to churches of Rome: S. Croce in Gerusalemme, the oratory of the Holy Cross at the Lateran, S. Pudentiana, S. Maria Maggiore, S. Anastasia and the SS. Apostoli. The series closes with the examination of the famous bronze statue of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica, which G. attributes to the beginning of the 6th century.
Concerning Gregory the Great and his pontificate, G. published a monograph in part 3 of the 1st Italian edition of the History and then in the collection I Santi (Rome 1904).
Truly historical was his address at the Congress of Catholic Scientists, held in Munich in Sept. 1900. H. G. rose courageously against the accusations that Catholic scholarship lagged behind in what concerned historical studies, that there was a lack of criticism and a fear of the truth; he demonstrated that one must be on guard both against excessive readiness to doubt and to deny (hypercriticism), and against too great an anxiety to defend all so-called traditions ("pium est credere"), thereby compromising the credit and esteem of Holy Church. He concluded by repeating the Ciceronian maxim that the supreme pontiff Leo XIII had recalled when opening the Vatican Archives to scholars: "ne falsum dicere audeat, ne verum dicere non audeat".
During the Roman period H. G. was an active member of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology, of the Society of Students of Christian Archaeology, and a contributor to the Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana, as, for example, with the articles: Note archeologiche sulla Mostra di arte sacra antica a Orvieto, in N. bull. di arch. crist., 3 (1897), pp. 5-44; Una scuola classica di marmorarii medievali, ibid., 2 (1896), pp. 42-57; or studies in the Römische Quartalschrift and in the Festschrift zum Elfthundertjährigen Jubiläum des deutschen Camposanto, 1897 (Das römische Pallium und die ältesten liturgischen Schärpen, pp. 83-114).
G. understood all the importance of the contribution that archaeological discoveries, so remarkable and inexhaustible from the middle of the 19th century, brought to the history of Rome. He had been captivated by them during his youthful years, first at the German College and then during his novitiate at S. Andrea al Quirinale. And if during his stay at Innsbruck his fruitful activity had made him one of the most assiduous and valuable contributors to the Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, of which he was one of the founders from 1877, he, called to Rome by Card. Hergenröther, devoted himself from then on profoundly to the study of the Christian monuments of Rome, of its libraries, its archives, its museums, its countryside. Inestimable fruit of his long-continued researches are the chronicles which, under the title Archeologia, he lavished in the Civiltà Cattolica during his long Roman sojourn, which made him one of the most profound connoisseurs of ancient Rome, both classical and Christian.
To him is due the exact topographical identification of S. Maria Antiqua, confirmed by the discovery of 1900.
To G. belongs the merit of having proved that the apostolic memoria in Catacumbus was localized in the Basilica itself and not in the so-called platonia to the west of it, which was the burial place of the martyr St. Quirinus. He discovered a privilegium of the year 1521 relating to the basilica of S. Sebastiano, which he himself found in Umbria (Die römische Sebastianuskirche und ihre Apostelkraft im Mittelalter, in Römische Quartalschrift, 9 [1895], pp. 409-61). To him belongs the merit - beset by many thorns like every noble human activity - of the treasure of the Sancta Sanctorum, of which he gave a admirable illustration in a twofold edition: Il Sancta Sanctorum ed il suo tesoro sacro (Rome 1907); Die römische Kapelle Sancta Sanctorum und ihre Schatz (Freiburg 1908).
Compelled to leave Rome, his studies turned to Luther. The great work Luther came out at Freiburg im Br. (1911-13; English ed. 1913-17); later 6 fascicles of Lutherstudien (ibid. 1921), then Der deutsche Luther im Weltkrieg und in der Gegenwart (ibid. 1924); finally Martin Luthers Leben und sein Werk (ibid. 1926, with a Hungarian ed. in 1929, English in 1930 and French in 1931; Italian Turin 1933).
In 1924 appeared his monograph Die Stationen und ihre Perikopen in römischen Missale. Liturgiegeschichtliche Studien aus der römischen Stadtgeschichte, in Miscellanea Ehrle (Studi e testi, 58), II, Rome 1924, pp. 101-140. These are studies of the history of the liturgy in relation to the history of the city of Rome; a first group is constituted by the Masses with local elements of the Station; a second group by the Masses with hagiographical elements; the third group by the Roman usages for explaining the stational Mass. Then the stations of Holy Week, of the three Sundays before Lent, of the Ember Days, of Advent, of Christmas, of Easter, of Pentecost. He then developed the same subject in Das Missale im Lichte der römischen Stadtgeschichte (Freiburg im Br. 1925).
His last writing is a homage to the Blessed Virgin, of whom he was always most devout: Marienblüten. Systematische Marienlehre aus dem grossen Marienwerk des Petrus Canisius (ibid. 1930). He wrote his autobiography in Religionwissenschaft in Selbstdarstellungen (ibid. 1927), pp. 37-56.
Bibliography3 works
Enrico Josi