Ludwig von Pastor
Ludwig von Pastor (created Freiherr von Camperfelden in 1916) (January 31, 1854 - September 30, 1928), born in Aachen and educated at Frankfort, was the German historian who is remembered primarily as the author of the monumental (in 40 volumes) and authoritative Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters ("History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages"), the result of almost a half century of unremitting labor of this highly disciplined scholar, a work that began to appear in print in 1886 and continued after his death: the English translation was not completely in print until 1953. 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access to the Secret Vatican Archives, and his history, largely based on hitherto unavailable original documents, superseded all previous histories of the popes in the period he covered, which runs from the Avignon Papacy of 1305 to Napoleon's entrance in Rome, 1799.
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.
He headed the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome from 1901 (with an interruption, 1914 - 19) 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.