Sasserath, Rainer

SASSERATH, RAINER. - Conventual, moral theologian, b. at Holtzheim near Reuss on 20 Aug. 1696, d. at Cologne between 1771 and 1775. He entered the Order of Friars Minor Conventual at Cologne in 1712, and, having obtained his degree in theology on 22 Jan. 1744, taught moral theology for very many years at that order's University. He was provincial minister of Germany and definitor general.

He left, among other things, a Directorium confessariorum; but his fame is linked to the principal work of his life: Cursus theologiae moralis tripartitus, which went through repeated editions while he was still alive (2nd ed., 3 vols., Cologne 1760; 4th ed., 4 vols., Augsburg 1771). The work is divided into three parts: 1) De actibus humanis, legibus, conscientia, peccatis, censuris et virtutibus theologicis; 2) De virtute religionis, de iustitia et iure, de contractibus; 3) De Sacramentis in genere et in specie et de indulgentiis. The division of the treatises adopted by him, apparently for the first time, is still used more or less in almost all manuals of moral theology. The clarity and solidity of the work and the balance of the author, classified among the most representative probabilists, are unanimously recognized and praised.

Lorenzo Simeone