SAILER, JOHANN MICHAEL. — Theologian and bishop, born at Aresing (Upper Bavaria) on 17 November 1751, died at Regensburg on 20 May 1832. Of humble origin, at the age of ten he entered the Jesuit College in Munich, where he developed a passion for German literature (especially through contact with Klopstock’s Messia).
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1770 at Landsberg; when it was suppressed (1774), he continued his theological studies at Ingolstadt, under the Jesuits (especially Statler), who had remained there as secular priests. Ordained a priest at Eichstätt in 1775, two years later he was assigned to Statler as assistant, in the capacity of tutor in philosophy and theology. Having become professor of the second chair of dogmatic theology (1780), he published the inaugural lecture De idea theologi christiani (Munich 1781), revealing the originality of his method. When the University of Ingolstadt was reorganized at the behest of the prince of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, S., having left his chair, withdrew to Munich, where he composed important works, including: Vermuftlehre für Menschen wie sie sind (ibid. 1785); the principles of the Enlightenment are attacked therein, although the author was unable to rise above conceptions akin to those of Leibniz and Jacobi. In 1784, through the intervention of the archbishop of Trier, Clement Wenceslaus of Saxony, S. was appointed professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Dillingen, where he attracted a large number of students, upon whom he impressed himself through the nobility of his character and the novelty of his method (he used the German language in the classroom). Wessenberg (v.) and Christoph von Schmid. The following works appeared at this time: Grundlehre der Religion and Glückseligkeitsslehre.
Dismissed from teaching in 1794 on suspicion of unorthodoxy, he withdrew to Munich, where he translated and commented on the Imitation of Christ, reviving its spirit of interiority. In 1799 he was given the chair of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Ingolstadt, which was transferred the following year to Landshut. It was here that S. Savigny (v.), influencing his private life, and laid the foundations for the Catholic renewal of Germany through his students of that period, who later became leading figures in Bavarian public life (the physician Ringseis, the jurist Schenck, King Ludwig of Bavaria) and in Catholic activity in various German circles (Baron d’Andlav, future leader of the Catholics of Baden, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe, the former Prussian officer Melchior von Diepenbrock, later archbishop of Breslau, and Brentano). During his stay in Landshut he published: Über Erziehung für Erzieher (Munich 1807); Neue Beiträge zur Bildung der Geistlichen (2 vols., ibid. 1809–11).
In 1815, during the ecclesiastical reorganization of Germany, the Prussian chancellor Hardenberg designated him as archbishop of Cologne; S. refused in order not to abandon his Bavaria. In 1818, after the concordat between the Holy See and Bavaria, he was proposed as bishop of Augsburg, but Rome did not accept him because of the unfavorable judgment given regarding his doctrine by St. Clement Hofbauer; subsequently, after the accusation had been dispelled by a memorandum drawn up by S. himself, at the insistence of Crown Prince Ludwig, he was appointed dean of the chapter of Regensburg in 1821, and then (1822) titular bishop of Germanicopolis and coadjutor, with the right of succession, to the bishop of Regensburg.
In 1825, when Ludwig of Bavaria ascended the throne and the University of Landshut was transferred to Munich, where it became a major center of Catholic culture, S. influenced the appointment of the best professors (Görres, Möhler, Doellinger), the exclusion of the Enlightenment thinker Salat, and raised Schelling (v.). Having become bishop of Regensburg in 1829, the following year S. had occasion to oppose his royal disciple, Ludwig of Bavaria, over the question of mixed marriages, displaying singular apostolic firmness, despite his gentleness of character and virtue. An important work of his final period was the Handbuch der christlichen Moral (3 vols., Munich 1817). All his works were published in 40 volumes at Sultzbach, from 1830 to 1845.
A teacher greatly loved by his disciples, whatever reservations may be held regarding his thought, necessarily fluctuating because of the uncertain period in which it matured, no one can doubt his sincere adherence to the whole of Catholic truth. Because of the breadth of spirit and winning gentleness with which he approached unbelievers and Protestants, he was willingly compared to St. Francis de Sales. A pedagogical theorist of refined psychological insight, he had the rare good fortune to form a young man destined for the throne in the most genuine Catholic sensibility, earning himself the title of the Fénelon of Germany.