SCHLÖGL, NIVARD. — In the world Johannes; an exegete of great gifts and great defects, born on 4 June 1864 in Gaaden (near Mödling, Lower Austria), died in Vienna in 1939. He entered the Cistercian Order in 1884 and was professor of the Old Testament at Heiligenkreuz from 1896 and at the University of Vienna from 1908; in 1922–23 he was transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy.
The former Sängerknabe (choirboy) of Heiligenkreuz (from 1876, at the age of 12), also a poet (Das Waldthal-hloster, Faderborn 1897), had a marked preference for the poetic passages of the Bible and their metre. He translated works into his beautiful and expressive German (e.g., Geist des hl. Bernard, ibid. 1898). He devoted several studies to Hebrew metre, the best of which is the first (De re metrica Hebraeorum veterum, Vienna 1899). He defended the opinion of his Viennese colleague Hubert Grimme, who admitted a rhythm not only of thoughts (parallelism), but also of words. Among the various systems he reviewed, he proposed a conciliatory position based chiefly on the accents, while in second place taking account of the quantities of the syllables. Following the lines of this system, with ideas of literary criticism often too conservative and often too audacious, he set about reconstructing the original biblical texts: for example, 29,12–49,16 of the Hebrew Ecclesiasticus recently discovered in the gäntzäh of Cairo (Vienna 1901), the Song of Songs (ibid. 1902), and the Psalms (Graz 1911: Hebrew and German). According to his criteria, Samuel (Vienna 1904), Kings and Paralipomenon (ibid. 1911) were also rhythmic and metrical compositions, or indeed poetry, in the original text. Finally, he maintained that all the books of the Old Testament had been written, in their original form, with rhythm and metre, and undertook to prepare such a version for the German people; only the Psalms and Isaiah (ibid. 1915), and Job (ibid. 1916), saw the light of day. He applied his metrical theories even to the New Testament (largely a translation from Hebrew, not Aramaic, according to S.), publishing Schriften des Neuen Bundes (ibid. 1920), to which he added Schriften des Alten Bundes (ibid. 1922; 2 vols., the 2nd without imprimatur), in excellent and poetic German, but with incredible arbitrariness regarding the text and vocabulary. These writings were unanimously rejected by German Catholic exegesis (a fact overlooked by the reviewer in Revue biblique, 30 [1921], pp. 466–69). The complete version of the Bible was placed on the Index in 1922 (AAS, 14 [1922], pp. 41, 349). But not even this blow disarmed his immense industry, which found expression in articles and reviews in journals and encyclopedias and, especially, in the composition of a commentary on the entire Bible, consisting of 20 large manuscript volumes, according to the following principles: reconstruction of the text according to his metrical theories, a complete Latin and German version, and philological and other notes for the general public; the work, naturally, was never published. He also translated some Talmudic book into German (Vienna 1922), always according to his personal criteria.
A fair assessment of S. and his work is difficult. He was an exegete of the pre-Modernist type, formed at a time when the Biblical Commission (v.) did not yet operate with the salutary influence of its decrees. Moreover, he was trained before systematic excavations had revolutionized knowledge of the ancient East. He is a typical product of his generation; many of those who belonged to it, despite ending up being placed on the Index, nevertheless gave strong impetus to the renewal of Catholic exegesis. He was an exemplary religious; master of the Cistercian novices from 1890 to 1907, later devoted to the pastoral care of students in Vienna, he was full of charity toward his neighbor and ready for every sacrifice.