SHGUANIN, CESARIO. — Theologian of the Order of the Servants of Mary, b. at Schöntal on 11 June 1692, d. in Rome on 4 February 1769. He entered religious life at the convent of Frohnleiten in Styria on 25 June 1713 and was ordained a priest on 19 September 1716. He was professor of philosophy and theology first at Innsbruck, then in Rome at the Collegio Gandavense, near S. Marcello al Corso.
He left many writings of a philosophical, juridical, hagiographical, ascetical, and historical nature. Among the most noteworthy are: Epitome scientiae animasticae seu asseritones philosophicae de praecipua microcosmi parte, nempe de anima rationali (Innsbruck 1724); De anatomia probabilismi (ibid. 1725, subsequently reprinted in Germany and twice in Rome); Arcanum tribunal poenitentiae (Ratisbon 1730); Scientia Sanctorum (in German, published in Vienna in 1736, subsequently translated by the author into Latin and published in Rome in 1759); Manuale clericorum saecularium, and various other pamphlets, published at different times. He left other unpublished volumes, largely preserved in the General Archives of the Order, among which the following deserve mention: Processus ab orbe condito novi et maximi
(4 volumes); Libri duodecim relationum super mysterio de universali reformatione (9 folio volumes); Vita, passio et triumphus Mariae sine labe conceptae et Sanctissimae Dei Genitricis (4 folio volumes); Opus universalis reformationis (7 folio volumes); Opus pro resuscitanda fide ad vitam.
For approximately eight years he was confessor and spiritual director of the monastery of the Cloistered Servants of Mary in Munich, where various extraordinary events occurred, which he recounted in the Processus. Having gone to Rome in 1736, he remained there until his death. He had been created a cardinal, but reserved in pectore. In 1762, he was the first to ask Pope Clement XIII for the dogmatic definition of the bodily Assumption of Mary Most Holy.