Author

Johannes Baptist Franzelin

1816–1886

Jesuit

Johannes Baptist Franzelin (1816–1886) was born at Aldein in South Tyrol and entered the Society of Jesus in Galicia in 1834. He taught in Jesuit colleges, studied at the Roman College and was ordained in 1849. In 1857 he succeeded Johann Perrone in the chair of dogmatic theology at the Roman College. He served as a papal theologian at the First Vatican Council, and Pius IX made him a cardinal in 1876.

Franzelin was a leading figure of the Roman school, which renewed dogmatic theology by joining scholastic method with close study of Scripture, the Fathers and the councils. His Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura was the most influential Catholic treatment of tradition in the nineteenth century, and he contributed to the preparatory texts of Vatican I on faith and on the Church. His other treatises cover God, the Trinity, the Incarnation and the sacraments.

The library holds his Tractatus de Deo trino secundum personas, on the Trinity. Its use of the Greek and Latin Fathers alongside the scholastics is typical of his method.

Works

Texts currently available in the library.

Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

1869

Johannes Baptist Franzelin, S.J.'s Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas is a Roman-school dogmatic treatment of the Trinity, first published in Rome in 1869 and represented here by the fourth edition of 1895. Its forty-eight theses move from the unity of the divine nature and distinction of persons through the analogical concept of the mystery, the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the missions of the divine persons. Franzelin combines patristic and conciliar authorities with tightly structured scholastic argument, a method that made his treatises influential seminary texts and important background to nineteenth-century Catholic dogmatics. Schola presents the 1895 Latin edition with an English translation.