GRABMANN, MARTIN. - Historian of theology, b. at Winterzhofen (Bavaria) on 5 Jan. 1875, d. on 9 Jan. 1949 at Eichstätt, where he had retired permanently in 1943. A priest in 1898, a resident student of S. Maria dell'Anima in Rome (1900-1902), a doctor in philosophy and theology, he devoted a few years to the sacred ministry. He taught dogmatics at the diocesan Lyceum of Eichstätt (1906-13), Christian philosophy at the University of Vienna (1913-18) and dogmatics at that of Munich (1918-39), until the suppression of the Faculty of Theology by the Nazi government. In his lectures his preferred authors were St. Thomas Aquinas and Scheeben, whom he defined as: «the greatest in dogmatics in the 19th century».
The scientific activity of G. appears above all from the extraordinary mass of publications concerning mainly medieval theology and philosophy. About a hundred should be added today to the 215 numbers of the bibliography appended to the miscellaneous collection of 77 articles Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters (= Beiträge zur Gesch. d. Philos. u. Theol. d. Mittelalters, Supplementband III, Münster), offered to the sixty-year-old G. in 1935. For the history of theology from the age of the Fathers onward, three works are fundamental: Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode... (2 vols., Freiburg im Br. 1909 and 1911), carried down to the beginning of the 13th century; Die theologische Erkenntnis u. Einleitungslehre des Thomas von Aquin auf Grund seiner Schrift in Boethium de Trinitate (Freiburg 1948), a complement to the Geschichte while awaiting a second volume on the Philosophische Wissenschaftslehre of the Aquinate; Die Geschichte der katholischen Theologie seit dem Ausgang der Väterzeit (Freiburg im Br. 1933; Italian trans. Storia della teologia cattolica dalla fine dell'epoca patristica ai tempi nostri, 2nd ed., Milan 1939).
Of the numerous publications on St. Thomas, worthy of emphasis are Thomas von Aquin, seine Persönlichkeit u. Gedankenwelt (Munich 1946, 8th ed., Italian trans. Milan 1920); Das Seelenleben d. hl. Th. v. Aq. (Munich 1924); Die Werke d. hl. Th. v. Aq. (Münster 1931; 3rd ed. ibid. 1949), Einführung in die Summa theologiae d. hl. Th. v. Aq. (2nd ed. Freiburg im Br. 1928; Italian trans. Milan 1929), Die Lehre d. hl. Th. v. Aq. von der Kirche als Gotteswerk
(Ratisbon 1903), Die Idee des Lebens in der Theologie d. hl. Th. v. Aq. (Paderborn 1922), Die Kulturphilosophie d. hl. Th. v. Aq. (Augsburg 1925; Italian trans. Bologna 1931).
The Mittelalterliches Geistesleben (2 vols., Munich 1926, 1936) is, with a few exceptions, a collection of 42 treatises, already published, but here reworked or expanded, on the history of scholasticism and medieval mysticism; there Aristotle, St. Augustine, Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius are examined with regard to the Middle Ages, the influence of Albert the Great and of St. Thomas, treatises on logic, commentaries of St. Thomas, Dominican authors, Averroist writers.
For the study of Aristotelianism in the 13th century, important works are Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts (Münster 1916), I divieti di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX (Rome 1941), Guglielmo di Moerbeke O. P., the translator of the works of Aristotle (ibid. 1946). The influence of Aristotelian logic in the Faculty of Arts is treated especially in Die Sophismaliteratur des 12. u. 13. Jahrhunderts mit Textausgabe eines Sophisma des Boetius von Dacien (Münster 1940). Numerous are the studies on the «artists», especially in the Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (philos.-hist. Abteilung). The influence of Aristotelian philosophy on the politico-ecclesiastical writings of the Middle Ages is examined, from one author to another, in the study Der Einfluss der aristotelischen Philosophie auf die mittelalterlichen Theorien über das Verhältnis von Kirche u. Staat (Munich 1934).
One must also recall, besides notes or obituaries of scholars, G.'s collaboration on the Lexikon f. Theologie u. Kirche (1930-38), the editorship, assumed after the death of Cl. Baeumker (1925), of the collection Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie u. Theologie des Mittelalters, that of the Philosophisches Jahrbuch (from 1927 onward, with the publisher Hartmann) and that of the Series scholastica, founded in 1929 with Fr. Pelster, in the collection Opuscula et textus historiam Ecclesiae eiusque vitam atque doctrinam illustrantia.
In his publications G. does not treat authors and works as isolated entities, to be considered for themselves, but places them in the series of their genre, examining also, as the case may be, the influences received or exerted. The singular merit of his publications (studies or texts) is his recourse to the sources and to an infinity of manuscripts, and an extremely rich bibliographical information. Thus he corrected many false attributions and disinterred numerous authors and writings, of which he often reproduces extracts or entire texts. One may cite only his discoveries for Albert the Great, William of Shyreswood, Peter of Spain (John XXI), Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, Eckhart, Thaddaeus of Parma, Henry of Brussels.
G. was an apostolic protonotary, a member of the Academies of Munich, Berlin and Vienna, of the Academy of St. Thomas in Rome, a doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Louvain, Innsbruck, Milan, Budapest, a member of the Central Directorate of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Pious, modest, affable, G. gave, as no one else in this century, a most important contribution to the scientific knowledge of the philosophical and theological Middle Ages.
Bibliography6 works
Augusto Pelzer