SPÁCIL, TEOFILO. - Professor of comparative Byzantine-Slavic theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome (1918–37).
Born on 25 April 1875 at Výmyslice in Moravia, died on 5 or 8 December 1950, confined in the monastery of Osek near Teplice in Bohemia. After having been a student at the German College in Rome (1895–1902), he entered the Society of Jesus (1905). Between 1912 and 1918 he was professor of philosophy and fundamental theology at the University of Innsbruck. From 1938 to 1945 he governed the Jesuit province of Bohemia. Among the first professors of the Oriental Institute, he helped lay the foundations of comparative Eastern Christian theology, especially through his studies published in Orientalia Christiana, later Or. Chr. Analecta and Or. Chr. Periodica. Worthy of notice are his investigations into the teaching of the separated Eastern theologians concerning the Church, Baptism, and the Eucharist. He was the first to write on comparative fundamental theology and on the doctrine of the separated theologians concerning the Sacraments in general.