He made his profession (1743) in the abbey of Banz, rebuilt after the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War and flourishing as a cultural centre; he was ordained priest in 1748, and 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 S.S. Patrum et scriptorum ecc., 18 vols. (Augsburg 1780-96), which extends as far as St. Epiphanius; Institutiones iuris ecc. publici et privati, 3 vols. (ibid. 1774-75; 2nd ed. 1782), in which S. is inclined to indulge the errors of the time; Epitome canonum eccles. ex conciliis Germaniae collecta (ibid. 1774); the revised and updated edition, up to Pius VI, of the Summa Conciliorum by B. Carranza (v.), in 4 vols. (ibid. 1778). The work to which S.’s fame is bound is Institutiones theologiae mysticae ad usum directorum animarum, curatorum omniumque perfecti in Christianae studentium, 2 vols. (Augsburg 1774, often reprinted; Paris 1868); here he sets out the doctrine of the principal writers and mystics on the basis of the extensive work by the Jesuit Emmanuel de La Reguera (2 vols., Rome 1740-45), which he enriched with many notes and scholia and questions drawn from the work of Fr. Michael Godinez S.J., Præctica de theologia mystica (published 1681; new Latin ed. Paris 1920).