Author
Hilarin Felder
1867–1951
Hilarin Felder (1867–1951) was a Swiss Capuchin friar. He taught in the Capuchin houses of study and became a professor at the University of Fribourg. In 1921 he was appointed apostolic visitor for the Franciscan Third Order and titular bishop of Gera, and he spent his later years in Switzerland.
He wrote on the history of learning in the Franciscan order, notably the Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden of 1904, and on the person of Christ. His Jesus Christus, an apology for the messiahship and divinity of Christ in two volumes, was translated into several languages. His Apologetica sive theologia fundamentalis, published in Latin for seminary teaching, gathered his lectures into a full course.
The library holds both tomes of the Apologetica: the Demonstratio christiana, on the credibility of Christian revelation, and the Demonstratio catholica, on the Church. They show the shape of fundamental theology as it was taught in the seminaries of the early twentieth century.
Works
Texts currently available in the library.
Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica
1920Tomus II—Demonstratio Catholica—completes Hilarin Felder's Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis by treating the Catholic Church as the historical bearer and interpreter of revelation. Published at Paderborn in 1920 (with the second-edition setting issued in 1923), it develops the marks, continuity, authority, and universality of the Church through biblical, historical, patristic, and scholastic argument. Read with Tomus I, it documents the structure of early twentieth-century Catholic fundamental theology and the apologetic priorities of the period. Schola presents the 1920 Latin edition with an English translation.
Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana
1923Hilarin Felder, O.M.Cap.'s Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I—Demonstratio Christiana—is the Christian-demonstration half of a two-volume Latin manual of fundamental theology. First published at Paderborn in 1920 and revised in the second edition of 1923, it presents a neo-scholastic case for the historical revelation of Christ and the credibility of Christianity, using Scripture, history, and theological argument for classroom formation. Felder's work belongs to the mature manual tradition that shaped Catholic apologetics before the mid-century renewal. Schola presents the 1923 Latin edition with an English translation.