Ludwig von Pastor
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Ludwig Pastor, later Freiherr von Campersfelden (January 31, 1854, Aachen – September 30, 1928, Innsbruck), was a German historian and a diplomat for Austria. He became one of the most important Catholic historians of his time and is most notable for his History of the Popes.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Aachen, Pastor attended a Frankfurt gymnasium, where his teacher was Johannes Janssen. Pastor studied 1875 at Leuven, 1875/76 at Bonn, where he became a member of the student corporation Armininia, and 1877/78 at Vienna.
Pastor taught at the University of Innsbruck, first as a lecturer (1881), then as professor of modern history (1887). His dissertation was titled "Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen während der Regierung Karls V" (The Church's Attempts at Reunion During the Reign of Charles V).
Pastor edited his mentor Janssen's eight volumed Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (History of the German People) and published it from 1893 to 1926.
[edit] History of the Popes
Janssen had made him aware of Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes. This determined the field he would take for his own, becoming in a sense a Catholic anti-Ranke. His approach was that the apparent shortcomings of the Papacy have reflected flaws of their times. At his first trip to Italy his seriousness ensured the patronage of Pope Leo XIII, who opened the contents of the Vatican Library to him. Pastor consulted archives throughout Catholic Europe and, in 1881, convinced Pope Leo XIII to open the Vatican archives, which had been held unavailable to scholars.
The result of his research was his Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters in sixteen volumes. The opus magnum was subsequently translated into English and published as History of the Popes From the Close of the Middle Ages.
Pastor decided to begin his work with the papacy of Pope Clement V (1305-1314) and the onset of the Avignon Papacy, so that he could concentrate his research on surviving documents. His dispassionate and frank papal history concentrated on individual popes rather than on the developments of papal institutions. Pastor's tomes span the pontificates of 56 popes, from Clement V to Pius VI.
He combined the Roman Catholic sympathies necessary for dealing with such a life's work with painstaking scholarship and erudition. He was granted privileged access to the Secret Vatican Archives, and his history, largely based on hitherto unavailable original documents, superseded all previous histories of the popes in the period he covered, which runs from the Avignon Papacy of 1305 to Napoleon's entrance in Rome, 1799.
Pastor began his work in 1886 and wrote throughout the pontificates of Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI, publishing fifteen volumes. The 16th and final volume was published posthumously in 1930.
The work remains a standard in academia.
[edit] Academic memberships, honours and offices
In 1901, Pastor was appointed director of the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome, which he headed (with an interruption 1914-1919) until his death.
He also was a member of the Emperor-Francis-Joseph-Academy in Prag, corresponding member of the Società colombaria in Florence, member of the Papal Academy in Rome, of the Academy of Cracow and the Akadémie Royale d´Archéologie de Belgique in Antwerpes. He achieved honorary membership of the Accademia di S. Lucca in Rom, an honorary doctorate at the university of Leuven, membership of the historical section of the Görres society. He received the positions of commander of the papal Order of Saint Silvester, of knight of the papal Order of Saint Pius, of commander of the Austrian Francis-Joseph-Order and of the Italian Orders of Maurice and Lazarus.
Emperor Francis Joseph I elevated him to nobility, creating him Freiherr von Campersfelden in 1908.
In 1921 he was appointed the Republic of Austria's ambassador to the Holy See.
According to Collins and Lapierre in the historical book Is Paris burning?, his grandson, Erich Poch-Pastor played a key role in preventing the destruction of Paris by the nazis at the end of WWII.
[edit] Selected Volumes Online
These volumes of The History of the Popes are available from Google Books and the Internet archive.
Additional volumes, as they become available, will be added.
[edit] References
- (Thomas Brechenmacher), Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon: "Ludwig Pastor" Detailed summary.
[edit] External links
- Biografisch-Bibliographisches Lexikon biography (in German)
- Pastor @ New Catholic Dictionary
- Ludwig Pastor, the Great German Historian: Catholic world, Volume 67, Issue: 397, Apr 1898 @ the University of Michigan
