MOHLER, LUDWIG. - Catholic historian, b. 16 July 1883 at Mannheim, d. 25 Dec. 1943 at Freiburg im Br. Ordained a priest, from 1910 he devoted himself to philological and historical studies, taking a degree in philosophy in 1912 with a dissertation on Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna, which became a volume published in 1914.
Having devoted himself to the study of the history of the papacy in the fourteenth century, he joined the Roman Historical Institute of the Görres-Gesellschaft and worked there from 1912 to 1915, deepening his investigations into the revenues of the Apostolic Camera in the time of Pope Clement VI (Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Klemens VI.); but, owing to the difficulties of the war and postwar period, the work did not appear until 1931. At the outbreak of the First World War M. returned to his homeland and served there as a military chaplain. At the same time he energetically resumed his studies and took his degree under Göller in 1918, submitting a dissertation on Cardinal Bessarione. Professor of ecclesiastical history at Münster, at Würzburg (from 1935), and at Freiburg (from 1939), he consistently directed his studies toward the personality of Bessarione, publishing three volumes between 1923 and 1941: the first, biographical and broadly critical in character (Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann, 1923); the other two provide the first critical Greek edition of the work In calumniatorem Platonis, together with other already known texts and letters addressed to Bessarione or written by him.