MÖHLER, LUDWIG. - Catholic historian, b. July 16, 1883 in Mannheim, d. Dec. 25, 1943 in Freiburg im Breisgau. Ordained a priest, from 1910 he devoted himself to philological and historical studies, earning a doctorate in philosophy in 1912 with a thesis on Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna, which became a volume published in 1914.
Having dedicated himself to the study of the history of the papacy in the 14th century, he moved to the Roman Historical Institute of the Görres-Gesellschaft and worked there from 1912 to 1915, deepening his research on the revenues of the Apostolic Chamber in the time of Pope Clement VI (Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Klemens VI.); but the work, because of the difficulties of the war and the postwar period, came out only in 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 with Göller in 1918, presenting a thesis on Cardinal Bessarion. A professor of ecclesiastical history at Münster, at Würzburg (from 1935) and at Freiburg (from 1939), he always directed his studies toward the personality of Bessarion, publishing between 1923 and 1941 three volumes: the first of a broadly biographical and critical character (Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann, 1923), the other two providing the first critical Greek edition of the work In calumniatorem Platonis, along with other already known texts and letters addressed to Bessarion or written by him.
Bibliography
Silvio Furlani