SCHAEFER, THIMOTHEUS. - Capuchin canonist, b. at Hechingen (Hohenzollern) on 14 Sept. 1877, d. at Rome on 29 Nov. 1948. Having graduated at Rome in utroque iure and philosophy, he taught at Münster, in the theological seminary of his Order, where he was also master of novices, then at Rome, at the international College of S. Lorenzo da Brindisi (1920) and at the Pontifical Academy of Nobles (1927).
For many years he was an esteemed consultor of the S. Ufficio and of various other Congregations, and a prosynodal judge at the tribunal of the vicariate. He was among the first systematic commentators on the new CIC, to which he devoted several monographs, highly esteemed and widely circulated in Germany. He specialized in the law of regulars. His De Religiosis is still the most complete and most frequently consulted treatise on the subject. His principal works are: Das Eherecht nach dem CIC, Münster 1918; 4th ed. ibid. 1924; Die Verwaltung und Spendung der heiligen Sakramente, Paderborn 1921; Pfarrer und Pfarrvikare nach dem CIC, ibid. 1922; Das Ordensrecht nach dem CIC, ibid. 1923; Compendium de Religiosis, ibid. 1927; De Religiosis, 4th ed., Rome 1927. He was rapporteur at the International Juridical Congress, held in Rome in 1933, with an extensive dissertation on the subject: Justinianus I et vita monachica (Atti del Congresso, I, pp. 173 ff.).