Ludwig von Pastor

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Ludwig Pastor, created Freiherr von Campersfelden, (January 31, 1854, Aachen – September 30, 1928, Innsbruck), was the great Catholic historian of the Papacy, who published his Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters in sixteen volumes that appeared from 1886 to a last posthumous volume in 1933. It was translated into English and published as History of the Popes From the Close of the Middle Ages.

He was born in Aachen and educated at Frankfurt. A pupil of Johannes Janssen at the Frankfurter Gymnasium, Pastor studied 1875 at Leuven, 1875/76 at Bonn, where he became a member of K.St.V. Arminia, and 1877/78 at Vienna. Pastor taught at the University of Innsbruck, as a lecturer (1881), then as professor of modern history (1887). He later became director (1901) of the Austrian Historical Institute, Rome, and Austrian ambassador to the Holy See (1920). He was knighted by Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary in 1908 and was created a baron in 1916.

As a student Pastor's mentor Johannes Janssen made him aware of Leopold von Ranke's skeptical and critical history of the Papacy, which determined the field he would take for his own, becoming in a sense a Catholic anti-Ranke. Pastor made his start as lecturer in history at the University of Innsbruck; his approach was that the apparent shortcomings of the Papacy have simply reflected flaws of their times. At his first trip to Italy in 1876 his seriousness ensured the patronage of Pope Leo XIII, who opened the contents of the Vatican Library to him. Pastor was writing during the pontificates of Benedict XV and Pius XI, a reactive Catholic generation at odds with the modern world, and his conclusions and evasions sometimes betray the signs of his own generation.

Pastor returned to historical documentation for his work, consulting archives throughout Catholic Europe. In 1881 he convinced Pope Leo XIII to open the Vatican archives, which had been held unavailable to scholars. He decided to begin his history in 1305, with the papacy of Pope Clement V 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.

He combined the ardent partisan Roman Catholic sympathies necessary for dealing with such a life's work with the most 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.

He headed the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome from 1901 (with an interruption, 1914-1919) and was the Austrian minister to the Vatican from 1921. He died in Innsbruck.

The publication of his daybooks and correspondence in 1950 revealed less worthy aspects of a self-righteous, intolerant and argumentative temperament, with an aptitude for Christian apologetics.

Another major work is his edition of Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, 8 vol. (1893–1926; “History of the German People”).

[edit] History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages: Selected Volumes Online

These volumes, taken from Pastor's 40 volume "History of the Popes," were scanned by Google Books. Additional volumes, as they become available, will be added.

Vol.I Vol.II Vol.III Vol IV Vol.V Vol.VI Vol.VII Vol.VIII