SCHÄZLER, KONSTANTIN VON

Theologian; b. Regensburg, Germany, May 7, 1827;d. Interlaken, Switzerland, Sept. 19, 1880. He studied law at Munich and Heidelberg, and after serving as an officer in the Bavarian army took his doctorate in law at Erlangen and entered practice. He became a convert in 1850 and entered the Society of Jesus in 1851, while studying theology at Louvain. After his ordination in 1856, he left the Jesuits and took a doctorate in theology at Munich in 1859. While a tutor at the Osnabrück seminary in 1861, he entered the Dominican novitiate but did not make profession. From 1862 until 1873 he taught the history of dogma at Freiburg im Breisgau; in 1866 he was appointed archiepiscopal councilor. During Vatican Council I he was Bp. J. Fessler's theologian. He took up residence in Rome in 1873 and was made a domestic prelate in 1874. Until he reentered the Jesuits in 1878, he served as a consultor to numerous Roman Congregations.

He was a rigidly Thomistic theologian and made a significant contribution to the neoscholastic movement of the 19th century. His writing was devoted to exposing the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas and to defending it in controversy especially with J. kuhn of Tübingen. While his works are not of great value at the present time, his presentation of Thomistic teaching concerning grace, the supernatural, and the Sacraments was competent and served a good purpose in his day. That his understanding of the spirit and thought of St. Thomas was not as deep as it might have been is evidenced by his unsuccessful attempt to oppose it to the liberalism of his time in a work entitled, Divus Thomas Doctor angelicus contra Liberalismum invictus veritatis catholicae assertor (Rome 1874). His doctoral dissertation was entitled Die Lehre von der Wirksamkeit der Sakramente ex opere operato in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Scholastik und ihrer Bedeutung für die christliche Heilslehre dargestellt (Munich 1860).

Bibliography: Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae 5.2:1505–06. j. f. knÖpfler, Allgemeine deutsche Biographie 30:649–651. g. m. hÄfele, "Constantin von Schäzler: Zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstag," Divus Thomas 5 (1927) 411–448. j. p. grausem, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 14.1:1270.

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