Armand A. Maurer, CSB (1915-2008)

Reverend Armand Maurer, CSB, died on Saturday, 22 March, 2008 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Fr Lawrence Dewan passed along the death notice from the Toronto Globe and Mail:

At Mount Sinai Hospital, on Saturday, March 22, 2008. Father Armand Augustine Maurer, C.S.B., son of the late Armand, Sr. and Louise (nee Ribson), brother of Dorothy Maurer and the late Robert, Lorriane, and Richard. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1938, he entered the Basilian Novitiate in 1940 and made profession of vows on September 12, 1941. He taught English at Aquinas Institute, Rochester N.Y., 1941- 1942 and then returned to Toronto for theology. He was ordained to the priesthood on August 15, 1945 by Archbishop James Charles McGuigan. He completed his doctoral programme at the University of Toronto in 1947 and was sent for post-doctoral studies in Paris. In 1949 Father Maurer was appointed to the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, where he spent the rest of his life engaged in research, publication and teaching. Concurrently he taught philosophy at St. Michaels' College and in the Graduate Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. In 1954 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue research in mediaeval philosophy. In 1966 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He spent two terms teaching at the Basilian Center for Thomistic Studies in the University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX. Father Maurer remained actively engaged in scholarship after retirement. He was a gentle and inspiring presence in his local Basilian community. Friends may call at the Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, 95 St. Joseph Street on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Prayer vigil at 7:30 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. at the Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre. Interment Holy Cross Cemetery.

Fr Maurer was a fixture at PIMS for decades—he marked my paper on motion, which I had written for James Weisheipl's course on Thomas's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, when Fr Weisheipl died in December of 1984. But that was all the opportunity I ever had to study with him. Others were more blessed than I.

His literary output is impressive. And his students, colleagues, and admirers published a book but a few years ago in honor of him. But his name likely entered the consciousness of most English-speaking Thomists as the translator and editor of Thomas's On Being and Essence or his The Division and Methods of the Sciences (from Thomas's scriptum on the De trinitate of Boethius, qq. 5-6), these two being long-time staples in the PIMS publication catalog.

Fr Dewan communicated to me that Fr Maurer was editing Gilson's last Toronto lecture, "three lectures of species." Requiescat in pace.