SAILER, JOHANN MICHAEL. - Theologian and bishop, b. at Aresing (Upper Bavaria) on 17 Nov. 1751, d. at Regensburg on 20 May 1832. Of humble origin, at the age of 10 he entered the Jesuit College in Munich, where he developed a passion for German literature (especially through contact with Klopstock's Messias).
Having 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 remained to teach as secular priests. Ordained priest at Eichstätt in 1775, two years later he was assigned as assistant to Statler, as a repetitor of philosophy and theology. Having become holder of the second chair of dogmatics (1780), he published the prolusion De idea theologi christiani (Munich 1781), revealing the originality of his method. Because of the reorganization of the University of Ingolstadt, ordered by the Prince of Bavaria Charles Theodore, Sailer left his chair and retired to Munich, where he composed important works, among them: Vermuftlehre für Menschen wie sie sind (ibid. 1785); in it the principles of the Enlightenment are attacked, although the author does not manage 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, Sailer was appointed professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Dillingen, where he attracted a great number of students, to whom he commended himself by the nobility of his character and the novelty of his method (he used German in the classroom). Here his disciples included Wessenberg (v.) and Christoph von Schmid. There appeared at that time: Grundlehre der Religion and Glückseligkeitsslehre.
Relieved of teaching in 1794 on suspicion of unorthodoxy, he retired to Munich, where he translated and commented on the Imitation of Christ, reviving its spirit of interiority. In 1799 he received the chair of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Ingolstadt, which the following year was transferred to Landshut. It was here that Sailer contracted a close friendship with Savigny (v.), influencing his private life, and laid the foundations of the Catholic renewal of Germany through his students of that time, who later became the leading figures of Bavarian public life (the physician Ringseis, the jurist Schenck, King Louis of Bavaria) and of 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, Brentano). During his stay at Landshut he published: Über Erziehung für Erzieher (Munich 1807); Neue Beiträge zur Bildung der Geistlichen (2 vols., ibid. 1809-11).
In 1815, in the ecclesiastical reorganization of Germany, the Prussian chancellor Hardenberg designated him Archbishop of Cologne; Sailer refused so as not to abandon his Bavaria. In 1818, after the concordat between the Holy See and Bavaria, he was presented as Bishop of Augsburg, but
Rome did not accept him because of the unfavorable judgment on his doctrine given by St. Clement Hofbauer; later, the accusation having been dispelled by a memorial drawn up by Sailer himself, at the insistence of the Crown Prince Louis, in 1821 he was appointed dean of the chapter of Regensburg, then (1822) titular bishop of Germanapoli and coadjutor with the right of succession to the Bishop of Regensburg.
In 1825, when Louis of Bavaria ascended the throne, the University of Landshut was transferred to Munich, which became a great center of Catholic culture; Sailer influenced the appointment of the best professors (Görres, Möhler, Doellinger), the exclusion of the Enlightenment figure Salat, and raised difficulties over the choice of Schelling (v.). Having become Bishop of Regensburg in 1829, the following year Sailer had occasion to oppose his royal disciple, Louis of Bavaria, in the question of mixed marriages, showing, though mild by character and by virtue, a singular apostolic firmness. An important work of the last period was the Handbuch der christlichen Moral (3 vols., Munich 1817). All his works were published in 40 vols. at Sultzbach, from 1830 to 1845.
A teacher much loved by his disciples, whatever reservation one may have about 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. For the breadth of soul and the winning gentleness with which he approached unbelievers and Protestants, he was willingly compared to St. Francis de Sales. A pedagogue of fine psychological insight, he had the rare fortune of forming in the most genuine Catholic sentiment a young man destined for the throne, earning himself the title of the Fénelon of Germany.
Bibliography12 works
Antonio Piolanti