SCHMALZGRUEBER, FRANZ. - Canonist, born at Griesbach (Upper Bavaria) on 9 Oct. 1663, died at Dillingen on 7 Nov. 1735.
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1679, and taught philosophy and moral theology at the University of Innsbruck and canon law at those of Ingolstadt and Dillingen (1702, 1705–24). He served as censor for the press of his Order in Rome (1724–26). Resuming his chair at Dillingen in 1727, he died eight years later as rector magnificus of that university.
He enjoyed great authority as a canonist in the academy, at the Roman Curiae, and even among Protestants. As an author, he is ranked among the great classical writers of the second Renaissance (schola culta) of canon law in the post-Tridentine era. His celebrated treatise, Ius ecclesiasticarum universum seu lucubrationes canonicae in quinque libros Decretalium (7 vols., Ingolstadt 1719), gathers the material treated in the annual university disputations, already partly published in a series of separate treatises arranged according to the five books of the Decretals; a compendium was made of it: Succincta sacrorum canonum seu compendium iuris ecclesiastici (3 vols., Augsburg 1747) by one of his pupils. Although the treatise, still widely used, shows broad dependence on earlier commentators, especially Reiffenstuel, the author excels through his own merits, notably for clarity and ease of exposition, breadth of synthesis, solidity and completeness of doctrine, and abundance of legal texts and jurisprudential solutions.
He also wrote: Consilia, seu responsa iuris (2 vols., Ingolstadt 1722). Other minor treatises, such as Sponsalia et matrimonium (ibid. 1713), Crimen fori ecclesiastici (ibid. 1713), Clerus secularis et regularis, etc., are partial works later incorporated into the main treatise.