Education
He studied under Heinrich Klee at Mainz and Bonn and under Johann Adam Möhler at Tübingen.
historian university professor
He studied under Heinrich Klee at Mainz and Bonn and under Johann Adam Möhler at Tübingen.
After his ordination to the priesthood (18 December, 1830) he was named assistant priest at Bingen. In 1835 he was appointed to a parish in Giessen, and to the chair of moral theology in the local theological faculty. His transfer to the professorship in Church history followed in 1837.
The Hessian Government hastened to retire him (19 November, 1842).
Riffel retired to Mainz, where in 1851 Bishop von Ketteler appointed him professor of Church history in his newly organized ecclesiastical seminary.