Suitbert Bæumer

Historian of the Breviary and one of the most scholarly patrologists of the nineteenth century, b. 28 March, 1845 at Leuchtenberg near Kaiserswerth (Rhine); d. at Freiburg 12 August, 1894. He made his university studies at Bonn and Tübingen; in 1865 he entered the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron, then newly founded, and was ordained priest in 1869. The years 1875-90 were spent at Maredsous Abbey in Belgium and at Erdington in England; in the latter year he returned to Beuron. Dom Bæum er was long the critical adviser of the printing house of Desclée, Lefebvre and associates at Tournai, for their editions of the Missal, Breviary, Ritual, Pontifical, and other liturgical works. He contributed to leading reviews a number of valuable essays, e.g. on the Stowe Missal (the oldest liturgical record of the Irish Church) in the “Zeitschrift f. kath. Theologie” (1892), on the author of the “Micrologus” (an important medieval liturgical treatise) in “Neues Archiv” (1893), on the “Sacramentarium Gelasinnum” in the “Historisches Jahrbuch” (1893). He also wrote a life of Mabillon (1892) and a treatise on the history and content of the Apostles’ Creed (1893). His most important work is the classical history of the Roman Breviary “Geschichte, des Breviers” (Freiburg, 1895; French tr., R. Biron, Paris, 1905). In this work he condensed the labours of several generations of erudite students of the Breviary and the best critical results of the modern school of historical liturgists.