OLIGER, LIVARIUS. - Franciscan historian, b. at Schorbach in Lorraine on 27 February 1875, d. at Rome on 29 January 1951. On 25 September 1892 he took the religious habit at Harreveld (Holland). On 22 September 1900 he was ordained a priest at Metz.
In the spring of 1903 he was sent to S. Maria degli Angeli in Assisi, to serve as a guide to pilgrims in the Franciscan sanctuaries. From that time he came to know 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 the guidance of Fr. U. Hüntemann in the international college of S. Antonio. Having obtained the title of lector general, he remained there as professor of medieval and modern history of the Church and of that of the Franciscan Order. He had been among the founders of the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (1907), and therefore, toward the end of 1911, he was sent as a member of its editorial board to the College of S. Bonaventura at Quaracchi (Florence). Except for the war period 1915-18, he remained there until 1923, when in Rome he resumed the teaching that he held in the Collegio Antoniano and, from 1931, also in the Pontifical Lateran Athenaeum until his death.
He was among the founders of the Antonianum (1927), whose editorial board he directed until fasc. III of year VI (1931). He collaborated in the continuation of L. Wadding's Annales Ordinis Minorum for vols. XXVI (1933) and XXVIII (1934).
O. occupies a pre-eminent place in the field of the history of the Franciscan Order. The number of his publications rises to 180, besides reviews and articles in various encyclopedias, among them the Enc. Catt., all of a scholarly character. He made an excellent contribution to the knowledge of the Middle Ages, without neglecting the modern age, to which the documents he published on the evangelization and civilization of America in the 16th and 17th centuries refer. In critical research he always maintained the same severe acumen, impartiality, and impeccability of method that seemed in him a second nature. His monograph Pantanelli presso Orvieto, romitorio dei tempi di s. Francesco, e i signori di Boschi (Rome 1932), remains a model of how much erudition can enrich a subject in itself very poor. 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., on which he had labored for forty years.
Bibliography2 works
Benedetto Pesci