Franz Xaver Kraus

Franz Xaver Kraus (18 September 1840 – 28 December 1901) was a German Catholic priest, and ecclesiastical and art historian.

He completed his studies in the Trier gymnasium, began his theology in 1858-60 in the seminary there, and finished it in 1862-64, having passed in France the time from the autumn of 1860 to the spring of 1862 as tutor in distinguished French families.

In the autumn of 1865 he became beneficiary of Pfalzel near Trier, where he developed a zealous literary activity, interrupted by several journeys of the purpose of study to Paris, Belgium, and to Rome in January 1870.

The "Kirchenpolitische Briefe" in the "Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung" (1895-9), written under the pseudonym of "Spectator", created a great sensation.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Kraus as "a man of brilliant and versatile talents, a scholar of great learning, a clever and elegant writer, and, in spite of ill-health and the acute bodily sufferings of his closing years, an author of wonderful productivity, who delighted in his work."

After a few translations from the French (van Hemen, de Ravignan, and Lacordaire), Kraus began his independent literary career with small works on the history of early Christian literature in the first centuries and the Middle Ages, among them: Of the edition of the "Opera omnia" of Thomas à Kempis, undertaken by Kraus, only the first volume appeared ("Opuscula", Trier, 1868).

Another series of writings, published in the "Bonner Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden" and in the "Serapeum", deals with particular features of the history and archeology of Trier.

I and II, Berlin, 1896 and 1901); they are of a literary, historical, and political character, and the majority appeared originally in the Deutsche Rundschau; particularly noteworthy are the essays "Antonio Rosmini" — for whom Kraus had a particular veneration — and "Francesco Petrarca in seinem Briefwechsel".