Caspar Riffel was a historian. He studied under Heinrich Klee at Mainz and Bonn and under Johann Adam Möhler at Tübingen. After his ordination to the priesthood 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.
