Arnold Steffens

Born in 1851 and later active in Cologne, Arnold Steffens came from a rural background and rose to become an important Catholic cleric. A 2021 review of a modern biography describes him as a widely respected theologian and pastor with strong interests in history and art, and notes that he served as a canon of Cologne Cathedral from 1903.

His path was shaped by the upheavals of the Kulturkampf. After finishing school in Cologne in 1872, he studied philosophy and theology in Innsbruck, returned to Bonn, and then went back to Innsbruck when the Cologne seminary was closed; he was ordained a priest in 1876. He later served as a vicar in Belgium, earned a doctorate in Rome from 1886 onward, and worked in Cologne as a cathedral vicar and as secretary to Auxiliary Bishop Antonius Fischer.

Steffens is especially remembered for his strong commitment to the church recognition of devotion to the medieval mystic Christina of Stommeln. His book Die selige Christina von Stommeln remains the work most easily found today, preserving his interest in religious biography and the spiritual history of the Rhineland. He died in 1923.