Ferdinand Probst

1816-1899. German liturgical scholar. Educated at Tübingen under Karl Hefele, he afterward concentrated on liturgical studies. He was ordained into the Roman Catholic Church in 1840, becoming parish priest at Pfärrich in 1843, professor of pastoral theology at Breslau in 1864, and finally dean of Breslau Cathedral in 1896. Despite the rigid conservatism of his views, some of his conclusions were very speculative, and hence were treated with suspicion by other scholars, in particular his belief that the Liturgy of Book VII of the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions was the universal Christian eucharistic rite from the earliest days. Probst was a prolific writer, though few if any of his works were translated into English.