LOUIS I, King of Bavaria. - B. 25 Aug. 1786 at Strasbourg, d. 29 Feb. 1868 at Nice. Son of Maximilian Joseph of the Two Bridges and of Wilhelmine Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt. His father was related to Charles Theodore, elector of Bavaria, whom he succeeded in 1799 in the sovereignty over that region. He had as his tutor Joseph Anton Sambuga, a priest who planted in the soul of the young L. the first seeds of his religious ideas. In 1803 he attended the University of Landshut and listened with particular interest to the lectures of Johann Michael Sailer, who gave a course on the morality of the sovereign according to Christian maxims. Opposed to France, to Napoleon and to the Francophile and anti-Catholic policy of Count Montgelas, he succeeded in 1817 in persuading his father to dismiss that minister, who nevertheless had the merit of having increased the territory of the State and of having procured for his sovereign the title of king in 1806.
Having ascended the throne upon his father's death in 1825, L. summoned to himself the physician Ringseis, the jurist Schenk and his tutor Sailer, and began the Catholic restoration of Bavaria. The following year the University of Landshut was transferred to Munich. The restrictions placed by Montgelas on the free development of the faith and of the Catholic Church were for the most part abrogated. The convents of the religious Orders secularized in 1803 were reopened. In principle, however, L. considered the Church subordinate to the State, nor did he permit the Jesuits to return and the bishops to communicate freely with the Holy See. He acted as mediator in the settlement of the conflict that arose between the Holy See and Prussia over the person of Droste-Vischering. After 1840 the King's relations with Catholics worsened appreciably. The King made no secret at all of his passion for the dancer Lola Montez, who arrived in Munich in 1846, and his conduct was harshly stigmatized by the ministers, by the Church and by the people. Jealous of his royal prerogatives, L. was in no way willing to be a constitutional sovereign and to renounce the government of the State. The Munich riots of March 1848 therefore decided him to abdicate.
Bibliography4 works
Silvio Furlani