JOHN OF FREIBURG, called Lector. - Dominican moralist, d. at Fribourg on 10 March 1314.
B. probably at Haslach near Fribourg in Breisgau, G. made the Dominican Convent there famous; he probably did his studies at Strasbourg, which he perhaps completed at Paris. On 30 Nov. 1294 he traced the new boundaries of the Convents of Fribourg and Basel, made necessary by the foundation of the Convent of Gebweiler. Except for teaching at Basel, G. remained faithful to his Convent of Fribourg, which he distinguished as lector and as prior.
If G. left a few sermons in German and in Latin, his literary and doctrinal legacy is preserved mainly in his writings for the advancement of practical morals. Besides the Sum in titsch on the 7 virtues, there survive from G. the Registrum or Tabula super textu et apparatu [Guilelmi Redonensis] sive glossa Raymundi [de Peñafort]; Additiones ad Summam Raymundi; Quaestiones casuales (of 1277?); Confessionale; Summa confessorum (1297), also called Summa Iohannina; Statuta Summae confessorum ex sexto libro decretalium addita (after 9 March 1298); Manuale, that is, an extract from the Summa; Summa abbreviata; a commentary on the 4th book of the Sentences that Quétif attributes to him is probably spurious.
The Summa confessorum embraces, like the Summa of St. Raymond, 4 books. While Raymond proceeds as a canonist, G. is a moralist. G. exceeds by two thirds the bulk of Raymond's Summa, relying on the theologians Albert the Great, St. Thomas, and also on Peter of Tarentaise, Ulrich of Strasbourg and others, and on the canonists William of Rennes, Godfrey of Trani, Hostiensis, Innocent IV, Bernard of Botone, William Durandus senior, Monaldus, Hermann of Minden, Burchard of Strasbourg, various glossators, and on the papal decretals from Gregory IX to Boniface VIII. The Summa Iohannina provides confessors with a complete moral theology, furnished with the doctrines of Albert and Thomas and other authorities. The Iohannina has eclipsed Raymond's Summa.
The manuscripts are enumerated in Quétif-Echard, Schulte and Dietterle, though not exhaustively. The oldest printing of the Summa confessorum is from 1476 at Augsburg. A disciple of G., Friar Berthold, translated the Summa confessorum, perhaps already before 1300, or at least between 1300 and 1310, into German and procured for it an extraordinary diffusion in the age of manuscripts and incunabula. The Tabula super Summam, the Summa rudium, the Summa casuum abbreviata of William of Cayeu, the Régie des marchands are summaries or abbreviations of the Summa Iohannina.
Bibliography7 works
Angelo Walz