SAILER, JOHANN MICHAEL. – Theologian and bishop, born at Arcsing (Upper Bavaria) on 17 Nov. 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 *Messias*).
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1770 at Landsberg, but after its suppression (1774) he continued his theological studies at Ingolstadt under the Jesuits (particularly Statler), who remained to teach as secular priests. Ordained priest at Eichstätt in 1775, two years later he was appointed assistant to Statler as a tutor in philosophy and theology. In 1780 he became titular professor of dogmatic theology and published his inaugural lecture *De idea theologi christiani* (Munich, 1781), revealing the originality of his method. When the Bavarian prince Karl Theodor reorganized the University of Ingolstadt, Sailer left his chair and retired to Munich, where he composed important works including *Vernunftlehre für Menschen wie sie sind* (1785), in which he attacked Enlightenment principles, though without fully transcending the conceptions of Leibniz and Jacobi.
In 1784, through the intervention of Archbishop Clemens Wenzeslaus of Trier, Sailer was appointed professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Dillingen, where he attracted large numbers of students, impressing them with the nobility of his character and the novelty of his methods (he taught in German). Among his pupils were Wessenberg (q.v.) and Christoph von Schmid. During this period he published *Grundlehren der Religion* and *Glückseligkeitslehre*.
In 1794 he was relieved of teaching duties due to suspicions about his orthodoxy and retired to Munich, where he translated and commented on *The Imitation of Christ*, reviving its spirit of interiority. In 1799 he obtained the chair of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Ingolstadt, which was transferred to Landshut the following year. It was here that Sailer formed an intimate friendship with Savigny (q.v.), influencing his private life, and laid the foundations for the Catholic renewal in Germany through his students, who later became leading figures in Bavarian public life (the physician Ringseis, the jurist Schenk, King Ludwig of Bavaria) and in Catholic circles across Germany (Baron d’Andlaw, future leader of Baden’s Catholics, Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe, the former Prussian officer Melchior von Diepenbrock, later Archbishop of Breslau, and Brentano). During his time in Landshut he published *Über Erziehung für Erzieher* (Munich, 1807) and *Neue Beiträge zur Bildung der Geistlichen* (2 vols., 1809–11).
In 1815, during the ecclesiastical reorganization of Germany, Prussian chancellor Hardenberg proposed Sailer for the archbishopric of Cologne; Sailer declined so as not to abandon Bavaria. In 1818, following the concordat between the Holy See and Bavaria, he was nominated bishop of Augsburg, but Rome rejected him due to an unfavorable assessment of his doctrine by St. Clement Hofbauer. After clearing himself with a memorandum, and at the insistence of Crown Prince Ludwig, he was appointed in 1821 dean of the chapter of Regensburg, then in 1822 titular bishop of Germaniciana and coadjutor with right of succession to the bishop of Regensburg.
In 1825, after King Ludwig I ascended the Bavarian throne and the University of Landshut was transferred to Munich, becoming a major center of Catholic culture, Sailer influenced the appointment of leading professors (Görres, Möhler, Döllinger), opposed the Enlightenment figure Salat, and raised objections to the appointment of Schelling (q.v.). In 1829 he became bishop of Regensburg, and the following year he opposed his royal pupil, King Ludwig I, in the matter of mixed marriages, displaying—despite his gentle character and virtues—remarkable apostolic firmness. A major work of his later years was the *Handbuch der christlichen Moral* (3 vols., Munich, 1817). All his works were published in 40 volumes at Sulzbach from 1830 to 1845.
A beloved teacher by his disciples, whatever reservations may exist regarding his thought—necessarily fluid in such an uncertain period—no one can doubt his sincere adherence to all Catholic truth. For the breadth of his spirit and the winning gentleness with which he approached unbelievers and Protestants, he was often compared to St. Francis de Sales. A pedagogue of fine psychological insight, he had the rare fortune of forming in the purest Catholic sensibility a young man destined for the throne, earning the title of the Fénelon of Germany.