Cornelius Petrus Mayer

Cornelius Petrus Mayer (photo from 2005)

Cornelius Petrus Mayer OSA (born March 9, 1929 in Pilisborosjenő ( German  Weindorf ), Kingdom of Hungary ) is a German Roman Catholic theologian and professor of systematic theology. He is the founder and long-term scientific director of the Center for Augustine Research at the University of Würzburg .

Life

Cornelius Mayer grew up in the Danube Swabian Pilisborosjenö / wine village near Budapest. As a member of the German minority, his family shared the fate of displacement following the Second World War. The family of Cornelius Mayer found a new home in Walldürn ; At the Augustinian grammar school in Münnerstadt , Lower Franconia , he continued his school career, which he completed with the Abitur in 1949. In the same year he decided to join the Augustinian order . He completed his studies in theology and philosophy at the University of Würzburg and was ordained a priest on March 26, 1955.

Father Petrus, as his religious name is, initially worked for a decade as prefect and director of the monastery seminary of St. Augustin before he was released for doctoral studies. Mayer specialized in the work of his religious father Augustinus von Hippo , conducted research at the Sorbonne , among others, and received his doctorate in theology in 1968 in Würzburg with summa cum laude . In 1973 he completed his habilitation and was appointed private lecturer for the subject of dogmatics and the history of dogma. After teaching at the universities of Würzburg, Frankfurt a. M. and Saarbrücken, Mayer was appointed professor for systematic theology at the University of Giessen in 1979 , which he held until his retirement in 1995. During this time he established the two research projects Augustinus Lexicon and Corpus Augustinianum Gissense , which enjoy international recognition as standard works in research. Even after his retirement, he continued his projects as the scientific director of the Center for Augustine Research (ZAF) founded by him in 2001 and based in Würzburg. In 2014 he handed over management to Christof Müller.

Research services

Augustine Lexicon

In the mid-1970s, Cornelius Petrus Mayer tackled a central desideratum of Augustine research: In cooperation with other specialist scholars, he developed the concept of the Augustine Lexicon , of which he has been the main editor ever since. The articles in this dictionary of concepts and realities are written by Augustine researchers all over the world and appear in German, English or French. The lexicon uses around 1,200 Latin lemmas, taken from the language of the North African Church Father, and is designed in five text volumes and one register volume. The first two fascicles of the standard work published by the Basel publishing house Schwabe were presented to the public in 1986; Since then, volumes 1, 2 and 3 of the technical lexicon, initially funded by the German Research Foundation from 1979 to 1989 and since 1990 as a long-term project by the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature , have been completed (1994, 2002 and 2010). Karl Heinz Chelius worked closely with the publication of the lexicon .

Corpus Augustinianum Gissense

The Corpus Augustinianum Gissense (CAG), also initiated and edited by Cornelius Petrus Mayer , originally formed a sub-project of the Augustinus Lexicon . As a solid basis for the lexicon articles, a complete computerized word concordance of the Augustinian complete works of over 5 million words was created in 1981–1983. In 1996, the Corpus Augustinianum Gissense on CD-ROM was the first digitized and lemmatized complete edition of Augustin's works on the market. In 2004 an improved, updated and expanded new edition was published (CAG 2). In 2013 the third version of the CAG was activated as an internet resource (CAG 3 = CAG-online).

Database of Augustine Secondary Literature

In 1983, Cornelius Petrus Mayer began using EDP to record the bibliographical records of the secondary literature on Augustine's person and work, estimated at around 50,000 titles. All titles are tagged with the lemmas of the Augustine Lexicon . As a database of the Augustine Secondary Literature (DBAS), this electronic bibliography is stored on the CD-ROM edition of the CAG and can also be accessed online via the Augustine literature portal .

Center for Augustine Research

Mayer's research projects are now coordinated under the organizational umbrella of the Center for Augustine Research (ZAF), which he founded in 2001 , and was its scientific director until 2014. On April 6, 2006, the competence center was granted the status of an affiliated institute of the University of Würzburg in accordance with Art. 129 (5) BayHSchG .

Honors, awards, commemorative publications

• 1969 Prize of the Board of Trustees of the Lower Franconian Memorial Year Foundation for Science
• 1988 Doctor of Humane Letters from Villanova University of Pennsylvania
• 1989 Awarded the silver medal of the European Union for transnational research
• 1989 Ceremony on the occasion of the 60th birthday at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Hans Maier (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich): Human rights and Christian thinking
• 1989 Dedication of the Festschrift: Signum Pietatis. Ceremony for Cornelius Petrus Mayer on the occasion of his 60th birthday (edited by A. Zumkeller). Wuerzburg 1989
• 1989 Dedication of the Festschrift: proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ today . Prof. Dr. theol. Dr. hc Cornelius Petrus Mayer OSA on his 60th birthday on March 9, 1989 (edited by B. Jendorff). Giessen 1989
• 1993 Award of the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1995 honorary member of the German Club Pilisborosjenö / Weindorf
• 2000 Dedication of the study by Christian Overstolz: A quiet credo of JS Bach. Prelude and fugue in A Major from the well-tempered piano I . Basel 2000
• 2005 Awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit by Prime Minister Stoiber
• 2009 Award of the City of Würzburg Dancing Shepherd playing a horn by Mayor Georg Rosenthal
• 2009 Dedication of the Festschrift: Spiritus et Littera . Contributions to Augustine research. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Cornelius Petrus Mayer OSA (edited by G. Förster / A. Grote / C. Müller). Wurzburg 2009
• 2009 Dedication of the anthology: Augustine as Judge (edited by J. Hellebrand). Wurzburg 2009
• 2009 Dedication of the magazine volume : Officina 2009: Augustinus . Communications from Schwabe AG, printer and publisher (edited by WJ Tinner). Basel 2009
• 2009 Awarded the honorary citizenship of Pilisborosjenö / Weindorf (Hungary)
• 2011 Reception by Pope Benedict XVI. in private audience
• 2012 Honorary membership of the University of Würzburg
• 2019 Academic celebration on the occasion of the 90th birthday in the Augustinian monastery in Würzburg with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Karla Pollmann (University of Bristol, UK): The importance of Augustine for Western intellectual history
• 2019 Award of the Medal of Honor of the Lord Mayor of the City of Würzburg

Publications (selection)

• The signs in the spiritual development and in the theology of the young Augustine (= Cassiciacum 24, 1). Wuerzburg 1969
• The signs in the spiritual development and in the theology of Augustine . Part II: The anti-Manichean epoch (= Cassiciacum 24, 2). Wuerzburg 1974
• (Ed.) Augustinus Lexicon . Schwabe, Basel, volumes 1 (1986–1994), 2 (1996–2002), 3 (2004–2010)
• CAG 2. Corpus Augustinianum Gissense. The electronic edition of the works of Augustine of Hippo . Basel 2004
• International symposium on the state of Augustine research. 12-16 April 1987 in Rauischholzhausen Castle ( Cassiciacum 39 = Res et signa 1). Wuerzburg 1989
• CAG 3 = CAG-online. Corpus Augustinianum Gissense a Cornelio Mayer editum . Internet resource. Basel 2013
• Augustine quotes treasure. Core themes of his thinking. Latin-German with short comments . Basel: Verlag Schwabe, 7th, expanded, revised and thoroughly commented version, 2018. ISBN 978-3-7965-3902-2 (E-Book / PDF: ISBN 978-3-7965-3940-4 )

literature

• W. Hambuch: Important Augustine researcher Dr. Dr. Cornelius Petrus Mayer (1929-). In the S. (Ed.): Our common heritage. 1100 years of German-Hungarian Christian relations. The contribution of outstanding charismatic clerics and lay Christians of German origin to ecclesiastical and spiritual life in Hungary. Budapest 2001, pp. 473-478.
• Regina Einig: Pope congratulates Cornelius Mayer. In: Die Tagespost of March 5, 2009, p. 7 (see online version ).

Footnotes

1. ↑ Dissertation: Mayer, The characters I .
2. ↑ Habilitation thesis: Mayer, Diezeichen II .
3. ↑ See, for example, the review by H.-J. Seven in: Theologie und Philosophie 80, 2005, pp. 273–276.
4. ↑ See http://www.mainpost.de/regional/wuerzburg/Augustinus-Lexikon-Dritter-Band-vollendet;art735,6195973
5. ^ Augustine literature database
6. ↑ See http://www.main-netz.de/nachrichten/region/frankenrhein-main/franken-kurz/art4006,408841
7. ↑ Appointment speech by Mayor János Küller see speech by Mayor János Küller on the award of the honorary citizenship of Pilisborosjenö / Weindorf to Cornelius Mayer ( Memento from February 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ Vatican: Pope receives Augustine specialists
9. ↑ See http://www.cag-online.net/
10. ↑ Detailed information at: https://www.augustinus.de/zitatenschatz . See also the reviews of previous editions at https://augustinus.de/literatur/zitatenschatz/rezensions

Web links

• Literature by and about Cornelius Petrus Mayer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Internet presence of the Center for Augustine Research
• Personal entry on the homepage of the University of Giessen
• Complete bibliography of Prof. Dr. Cornelius Petrus Mayer