Kohlman, Anthony

Kohlman, Anthony an eminent Roman Catholic author, was born at Kaizersberg, near Colmar, July 13, 1771. He was ordained priest in April 1796, joined the fathers of the Sacred Heart, and in 1799 he served those who were taken with the plague in Hagenbrunn, and was appointed chief chaplain of the Austrian military hospitals in Padua, whose moral and physical state was described as frightful. He exercised the ministry in Upper Germany and in Prussia until, in 1805, he entered the Society of Jesus. In 1807 he was sent to America, a part of the time superior of the Jesuit missions. In 1809 he visited Thomas Paine on his death-bed, in company with father Benedict Fenwick. A faithful account of it is in the United States Catholic Magazine, 1842, page 358. In 1813 the "Catholic Question in America" was discussed in the courts of New York, in which Kohlman took an important part. The case was reported by William Simpson, Esq., one of the counsel, and published in New York by Gillespy. In 1820-21 Kohlman published his Unitarianism Philosophically and Theologically Examined (2 volumes, 8vo), going through three editions in a short time. He was rector of Washington Seminary in 1824, when the so-called Mathingly. Miracle took place, an account of which was published by Wilson (12mo). In 1825 this keen and learned Jesuit was called to Rome to teach moral theology in the Gregorian University, just restored to the Jesuits by Leo XII, who held him in great esteem, and had placed at his service his private library. Kohlman died in Rome, April 10, 1836. See Cath. Almanac, 1872, page 80; De Courcey and Shea, Hist. of the Cath. Church in the U.S. page 356 sq.