OLIGER, Livarius. – Franciscan historian, b. at Schorbach in Lorraine on 27 Feb. 1875, d. at Rome on 29 Jan. 1951. On 25 Sept. 1892 he took the religious habit at Harreveld (Holland). On 22 Sept. 1900 he was ordained priest at Metz.
In the spring of 1903 he was sent to S. Maria degli Angeli in Assisi to guide pilgrims in the Franciscan shrines. From that time he became acquainted with the students of Franciscan history P. Sabatier and L. Alessandri, as well as the historians J. Schnürer, H. Boehmer, H. Grauert, and H. Denifle. In 1905 he came to Rome to perfect himself in ecclesiastical history under Fr. U. Hüntemann at the International College of S. Antonio. Having obtained the title of lector generalis, he remained there as professor of medieval and modern Church history and of the history of the Franciscan Order. He had been among the founders of the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (1907), and so at the end of 1911 he was sent as a member of the editorial board to the College of S. Bonaventura at Quaracchi (Florence). Except for the war years 1915–18, he remained there until 1923, when he resumed teaching in Rome at the Antonian College and, from 1931, also at the Pontifical Lateran Athenaeum until his death.
He was among the founders of the Antonianum (1927), of which he edited the journal until fasc. III of year VI (1931). He collaborated on the continuation of the Annales Ordinis Minorum of L. Wadding for vols. XXVI (1933) and XXVIII (1934).
O. occupies a prominent place in the field of Franciscan history. The number of his publications amounts to 180, besides reviews and articles in various encyclopedias, including the Enciclopedia Cattolica, all of a scholarly character. He made an excellent contribution to the knowledge of the Middle Ages, without neglecting the modern age to which belong the documents he published on the evangelization and civilization of America in the 16th and 17th centuries. In his critical research he always maintained the same rigorous acumen, impartiality, and methodological impeccability that seemed to be second nature to him. His monograph Pantanelli presso Orvieto, romitorio dei tempi di s. Francesco, e i signori di Baschi (Rome 1932), remains a model of how much erudition can enrich a subject that is in itself very meagre. The full maturity of his genius is revealed in the Expositio quattuor magistrorum super Regulam Fratrum Minorum (1241–1242). Accedit eiusdem Regulae textus cum fontibus et locis parallelis (ibid. 1950), the last work of O., to which he had devoted himself for forty years.