KURTSCHEID, BERTRAND (VALENTIN). - Canonist, b. at Rheinbroll (Germany) on 11 March 1877, d. at Rome on 29 Aug. 1941.
He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1894 and was ordained priest in 1903. After some years spent in study at Rome and at Freiburg im Br., he was appointed professor in 1908 at the Franciscan school of Paderborn, whence in 1922 he was transferred to the general house of studies of the Order at the International College of S. Antonio in Rome, of which he was to become the first rector magnificus when it was elevated to the rank of a pontifical Athenaeum. In 1933 he assumed the re-established chair of history of canon law at the «Pontificium Institutum Utriusque Iuri». He held various offices in his Order, including that of general definitory (1933–39).
He wrote on canon law, and especially on the history of canon law, as well as on the development of certain branches of ecclesiastical studies.
Especially noteworthy and esteemed were the works: Das Beichtsegel in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Freiburg 1912, 2nd ed., English, St. Louis 1927); Die christliche Ehe (Düsseldorf 1928), and Historia iuris canonici, Historia institutionum, I (Rome 1941).
The volume B. K.-F. A. Wilches, Historia iuris canonici, I, Historia fontium et scientiae iuris canonici, Rome 1943, was compiled by Wilches, who states in the preface that he made use of material left by K.