SCHLÖGL, NIVARD. - In the world Johannes; an exegete of great gifts and great defects, b. June 4, 1864 in Gaaden (near Mödling, Lower Austria), d. in Vienna in 1939. Having entered the Cistercian Order in 1884, professor of the Old Testament at Heiligenkreuz from 1896, at the University of Vienna from 1908, he was transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy in 1922-23.
The former Sängerknabe (choirboy) of Heiligenkreuz (from 1876, at the age of 12), himself also a poet (Das Waldthal-hloster, Paderborn 1897), had a marked preference for the poetic passages of the Bible and their meter. He translated works into his fine and expressive German (e.g., Geist des hl. Bernard, ibid. 1898). He devoted several studies to Hebrew metrics, the best of which is the first (De re metrica Hebraeorum veterum, Vienna 1899). He defended the opinion of his Vienna 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 judgment based mainly on accents, but secondarily he took into account the quantities of syllables. Following such a system, with ideas of literary criticism often too conservative and often too bold, he set about reconstructing the original texts of the Bible, e.g., 29:12-49:16 of the Hebrew Sirach just discovered in the gäntzäh of Cairo (Vienna 1901), the Song of Songs (ibid. 1902), the Psalms (Graz 1911: Hebrew and German). According to his criteria, Samuel (Vienna 1904), Kings and Chronicles (ibid. 1911) were also rhythmic and metric compositions or even poetry in the original text. Finally he maintained the opinion that all the books of the Old Testament would have been written, in their original form, with rhythm and meter, and he set about preparing such a version for the German people; only the Psalms and Isaiah (ibid. 1915), and Job (ibid. 1916) saw the light. He applied his metrical theories even to the New Testament (largely a version 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 an excellent and poetic German, but with incredible arbitrariness as regards the text and the 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 that blow disarmed his immense industriousness, which manifested itself in articles and reviews in journals and encyclopedias and, especially, in the composition of a commentary on the whole Bible, which consists of 20 large manuscript volumes, according to these criteria: reconstruction of the text according to his metrical theories, complete Latin and German version, philological and other notes for the general public; the work, naturally, was not sent to press. He also translated some Talmudic book into German (Vienna 1922), always according to his personal criteria.
A just evaluation 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.) was not yet operating with the salutary influence of its decrees. Moreover he was formed 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 impulses to the renewal of Catholic exegesis. He was an exemplary religious; master of Cistercian novices from 1890 to 1907, later devoted to the pastoral care of students in Vienna, he was full of charity toward his neighbor, ready for every sacrifice.
Bibliography
Pietro Nober