Constantine von Schäzler

Konstantin Freiherr von Schaezler ( born May 7, 1827 in Augsburg, † September 19, 1880 in Interlaken ) was a Catholic theologian and representative of the neo-Thomism and the neo-scholasticism. He was advisor to the First Vatican Council in Rome.

Life

Schaezler came from the rich, Protestant Augsburg banking family of Schaezler. After graduating from St. Anne High School in Augsburg, he studied in Erlangen 1844/45, Munich from 1845 to 1847 and Heidelberg 1847/48 jurisprudence, then made ​​up to 1850 when the Bavarian army officer service. In 1850, he was, after he had completed a legal internship in Traunstein, in Erlangen, Dr. jur. doctorate.

Schaezler who felt drawn to Catholicism since childhood and at times wanted to be a Capuchin, converted in 1850 Brussels in the later Jesuit General Jean Pierre Beckx. He then studied at the Collegium Romanum in Rome theology. In 1851 he entered the novitiate of the Jesuits in Drongen at Ghent and thus began a rich way station with inlets and outlets in various Catholic religious orders. He continued his theological training in 1853 in lion away. Ordained a priest in 1856 in Liege, he left the Society of Jesus in 1857 and continued his studies in Munich on, from which he graduated in 1859 with a doctorate in theology. He stood in friendly contact with Ignaz von Dollinger, and to the strictly ecclesiastical, former Munich Vicar General Friedrich Windischmann.

1860/61 was Schaezler Repetent at the seminary Osnabrück. After his failed attempt to be admitted to the order of the Redemptorists, he entered 1861/62 in the convent of the Dominicans in Huissen one. He turned to the neo-Thomism represented by the Dominicans. As well as the influence Windisch 's and close to him ultramontane circles, this led to the alienation of Dollinger, 1863 he protested against his speech about the past and present of Catholic theology at the "Munich meeting of scholars " along with seven other conservative theologians.

After his attempts to obtain a professorship, were thwarted by the opposition German university theologians, he was a lecturer in Freiburg im Breisgau. Already during the First Vatican Council, he served as theological consultant to the Redemptoristenkardinals Victor Augustin Isidore Deschamps, he moved in 1873 all the way to Rome, where he worked as a consultant to the Holy Office and other Roman Congregations since 1874. In 1879, he joined in Naples again with the Jesuits. He died on a trip through Switzerland before his planned reemergence of a heart condition.

His sister, the writer Baroness Olga von Leonrod (1828-1901), left the corpse to Freiburg im Breisgau transfer. For his grave she ordered a statue of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Freiburg sculptor Julius Seitz. She had become aware of him by whose grave times in the Campo Santo Teutonico. In 1882 the sculpture of 1.40 meters, which consisted of Carrara marble, laid in the old part of the gallery of the Freiburg main cemetery and destroyed in World War II during Operation Tiger Fish.

It's rich assets bequeathed Schaezler and his sister Olga testament to the former seminary of the Archdiocese of Freiburg in St. Peter ( " Olga and Constantin von Schaezler'sche Foundation " to promote Thomistic studies).

The theological works

Schaezler, who made a name for itself as a leading Neuscholastiker, applies to all fidelity to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas as the original. He became famous for his advocacy of papal infallibility as by his controversy with John the Evangelist Kuhn on the relationship between nature and grace, the church was politically significant as part of the debate between " Roman " and " German " theology.

Already at the beginning of this controversy was its commitment to the establishment of an independent state from the Catholic University, against which Kuhn had expressed. He played an active role in efforts extremely ultramontane circles around the Redemptorists Carl Erhard Schmöger, the Cardinal Karl August von Reisach and the Bishop of Regensburg Ignatius of Senestrey to effect the condemnation of the works of Kuhn and 1873 that Johann Michael Sailer at the Roman Inquisition in 1867. Schaezler handed each under his name the indictment; the conviction but failed both times to the opposition of the Jesuit theologian John Baptist Franzelin who performed the duties of a Konsultors the Inquisition. There are strong indications that Schaezler could be determined only under pressure to file indictments. The influence of Schaezler was significant especially in the Dominican Order; to Schaezler students count Commer Ernst and Herman Schell and the secretary of the Congregation of the Index, Thomas Esser, who traced its entry into the Dominican Order on Schaezler.

Works

• The doctrine of the efficacy of the sacraments ex opere operato in their development within the scholasticism and its importance for the Christian doctrine of salvation, Munich 1859.
• Natural and the supernatural. The dogma of grace and the theological question of the present. A critique of Kuhn'schen theology, Mainz 1865.
• New studies on the dogma of the grace and essence of the Christian faith. With special reference to the momentary representation of Catholic dogmatic theology at the universities of Tübingen, Munich and Freiburg, Mainz 1867.
• The dogma of the Incarnation of God / Christ in the spirit of St.. Thomas, Freiburg 1870.
• The first faith decisions of the Vatican Concils and the religious needs of the present, Freiburg 1870.
• The papal infallibility proved from the nature of the Church, Freiburg / Br. In 1870.
• Divus Thomas Doctor Angelicus contra Liberalismum invictus veritatis catholicae assertor. De doctrinae S. Thomae ad exstirpandos huius Aetatis errores vi et efficacia commentarius in texto centenario Angelici praeceptoris, Roma 1874.
• Introductio in S. Theologiam dogmaticam ad mentem S. Thomae Aquinatis posthumously ed. by Thomas Esser, Regensburg 1882.
• The importance of the history of dogma - discussed by the Catholic point of view, posthumously ed. by Thomas Esser, Regensburg 1884.