Hill, Bennett D(avid) 1934-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born September 27, 1934, in Baltimore, MD; died of complications from pneumonia February 26, 2005, in Doylestown, PA. Historian, monk, educator, and author. Hill was a Benedictine monk and former professor of history. When he graduated from Princeton University in 1956, he was one of the first two African Americans to graduate from that institution. Hill then went on to earn a master's degree from Harvard University in 1958. Returning to Princeton, he became a history instructor while working on his doctorate, which he completed in 1963. Hill taught at the University of Western Ontario for two years before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1967. He remained there for the rest of his academic career, becoming a full professor in 1975 and chairing the history department from 1978 to 1981. Ordained a Benedictine monk in 1982, he left the university the next year to devote himself to St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C. Later, he moved to Pennsylvania and served at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Doylestown. As an historian, Hill specialized in the medieval period, cowriting Church and State in the Middle Ages (1970) and authoring English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (1968). He also cowrote the general history books A History of Western Society (1978; seventh edition, 2003) and A History of World Societies (1983; fourth edition, 1996). At the time of his death, Hill was writing a history of slavery throughout the world.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, 2005, p. A40.

ONLINE

Philadelphia Daily News Online, http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/ (March 4, 2005).