LEMMENS, LEONHARD. - Franciscan, born at Bocket (Rhineland) on 19 Nov. 1864, died in Rome on 10 Feb. 1929. Called to Rome in 1899 to continue Wadding’s Annales Minorum, in 1901 he began teaching history at the College of S. Antonio (later the Pontifical Antonian Athenaeum), and from 1903 to 1906 he was at Quaracchi as president and prefect of studies at the College of S. Bonaventura. Having returned to Germany in 1907, he undertook various scholarly journeys in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, France, and, in 1914, to the Holy Land, where his presence proved valuable in saving certain Franciscan sites in Syria from the Turkish threat. From 1921 he was general archivist of the Order, and from 1924 professor of the history of missions at the College of S. Antonio.
As a man of learning, he took an active part in discussions concerning early Franciscan literature. His literary output was abundant and of great value; it includes critical editions of medieval texts (the writings of St. Francesco, of Frate Leone, the Speculum perfectionis, etc.), of documents—Acta S. Congregationis de propaganda Fide pro terra Sancta (2 vols., Quaracchi 1921-22)—the life of St. Bonaventura (1909 in German, 1921 in Italian), and above all his valuable Geschichte der Franziskanermissionen (Münster in W. 1929).