SCHMALZGRUEBER, FRANZ. - Canonist, b. at Griesbach (Upper Bavaria) on 9 Oct. 1663, d. at Dillingen on 7 Nov. 1735.
Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1679, he taught philosophy and moral theology at the University of Innsbruck and canon law at those of Ingolstadt and Dillingen (1702, 1705-24). He was in Rome as censor for the press of his Order (1724-26). Having resumed the chair at Dillingen in 1727, he died eight years later, as magnificent rector of that University.
He had great authority, as a canonist, in the schools, at the Curias and even in Protestant circles. As an author, he is numbered among the great classics of the second renaissance (schola culta) of the science of canon law in the post-Tridentine era. His celebrated treatise, Ius ecclesiasticum universum seu lucubrationes canonicae in quinque libros Decretalium (7 vols., Ingolstadt 1719) gathers the material treated in the annual university disputations, already previously published in part in a series of distinct treatises according to the five books of the Decretals; a compendium of it was made: Succincta sacrorum canonum seu compendium iuris ecclesiastici (3 vols., Augsburg 1747) by one of his pupils. Although the treatise, still much in use, reveals a broad dependence on previous commentators, especially on Reiffenstuel, the author excels in it through undoubted personal merits, in particular through clarity and ease of exposition, breadth of synthesis, soundness and completeness of doctrine, abundance of legal texts and of jurisprudential solutions.
He also wrote: Consilia, seu responsa iuris (2 vols., Ingolstadt 1722). Other minor treatises, such as Sponsalia et matrimonium (ibid. 1713), Crimina fori ecclesiastici (ibid. 1713), Clerus secularis et regularis, etc., are partial works later recast into the principal treatise.
Bibliography5 works
Zaccaria di San Mauro