On Saturday July 28th 2007, Tarsicius Jan van Bavel o.s.a. died. Exactly one month before the date of death of St. Augustine, whose work he tried to penetrate and translate.

Tars van Bavel was born 84 years ago in Tilburg, (The Netherlands) and was ordained a priest in 1948 in Ghent (Belgium). In 1954, he received his doctor’s degree in Fribourg (Switserland). He was responsible for the education of Belgian augustinians and was part of the General Board of the Order for several years.

From 1969 to 1988, he was a professor at the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He was managing director of the Augustinian Historical Institute in Heverlee (Belgium), and editor of the journal Augustiniana, from 1973 to 2003.

A great number of publications bear his name, amongst them the recent Dutch translation of De Trinitate of St. Augustine. In Tars van Bavel, we mourn a great Augustine scholar, a wise man, a good friend. The funeral took place on Saturday August 4th 2007 at the O.L.-Vrouw van Troost-church in Heverlee.