Schram(m), Dominikus

SCHRAM(M), DOMINIKUS. - Benedictine theologian, b. in Bamberg on 24 Oct. 1722, d. at Banz on 21 Sept. 1797.

He made his profession (1743) in the abbey of Banz, rebuilt after its destruction in the Thirty Years' War and flourishing as a cultural center; a priest in 1748, he taught there from 1757; from 1782 to 1787 he resided reluctantly, as prior, in the abbey of Michelsberg (Bamberg).

His principal works are: Analysis operum SS. Patrum et scriptorum eccl., 18 vols. (Augsburg 1780-96), which reaches as far as St. Epiphanius; Institutiones iuris eccl. publici et privati, 3 vols. (ibid., 1774-75; 2nd ed. 1782), in which S. indulges in the errors of his time; Epitome canonum eccles. ex conciliis Germaniae collecta (ibid. 1774); the reordered edition, brought up to date as far as Pius VI, of B. Carranza's Summa Conciliorum (v.), in 4 vols. (ibid. 1778). The work to which S.'s fame is tied is Institutiones theologiae mysticae ad usum directorum animarum, curatorum omniumque perfectioni christianae studentium, 2 vols. (Augsburg 1774, often reprinted; Paris 1868); in it he sets out the doctrine of the "mystici primarii" writers on the basis of the extensive work of the Jesuit Emmanuel de La Reguera (2 vols., Rome 1740-45), who had enriched with many "scholia" and "quaestiones" the work of Fr. Michael Godinez S.J., Práctica de la theología mística (published 1681; new Latin ed. Paris 1920).