Ludwig von Pastor
Ludwig Pastor, ennobled as Ludwig von Pastor, Freiherr von Campersfelden (31 January 1854 – 30 September 1928), was a German historian and diplomat for Austria. He became one of the most important Roman Catholic historians of his time and is most notable for his History of the Popes. He was raised to the nobility by the Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1908 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.[1]
Ludwig von Pastor
31 January 1854
Early life[edit]
Born in Aachen to a Lutheran father and a Catholic mother, Pastor was converted to Catholicism at ten, after his father's death.[2] He attended a Frankfurt gymnasium, where his teacher was Johannes Janssen who introduced him to historical studies.[3]
Pastor studied in 1875 at Leuven, in 1875/76 at Bonn, where he became a member of the student corporation Arminia, and in 1877/78 at Vienna. Pastor taught at the University of Innsbruck, first as a lecturer (1881–87), then as professor of modern history (1887).[4] 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-volume Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (History of the German People) and published it from 1893 to 1926.[3]
Academic memberships, honours and offices[edit]
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 Franz-Joseph Academy in Prague, corresponding member of the Società Colombaria in Florence, member of the Papal Academy in Rome, of the Academy of Cracow and the Académie Royale d'Archéologie de Belgique in Antwerp. He achieved an honorary membership of the Academy of St Luke in Rome, an honorary doctorate at the University of Leuven, and membership in the historical section of the Görres Society.
He received the positions of Commander of the Papal Order of St Sylvester Pope and Martyr, of Knight of the Papal Order of Saint Pius IX, of Commander of the Austrian Order of Franz Joseph and of the Royal Italian Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.
Emperor Francis Joseph I elevated him to the nobility in 1908 and gave him the title Freiherr von Campersfelden in 1916. In 1921 he was appointed the Republic of Austria's ambassador to the Holy See, and died in Innsbruck in 1928. [5]