Paris Lodron

Paris Lodron or Paris of Lodron (Germ. Paris Graf von Lodron), 13 February 1586 - 15 December 1653, was the Prince-Archbishop of the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg from 1619-1653.

Paris of Lodron, 1627

Coat of arms of Paris of Lodron

Personal life

He was born 13 February 1586 in the , in Nogaredo, Trentino

Castelnuovo de Noarna

, a scion of the branch of the Italian noble family Lodron from Trentino called the Vallagarina or Castelnuovo-Castellano Line. He was the son of Count Nicolò Lodron (1549-1621) in Nogaredo), imperial colonel and governor of Tyrol, who expanded Castelnuovo di Noarna into a baroque aristocratic residence, and his wife Dorothea von Welsperg (1559-1615).

Archbishop

Markus Sittich von Hohenems, the incumbent in Salzburg, died 9 Oct 1619, and Lodron was elected to succeed him on 13 November 1619. Due to Sittich's refusal to join the Catholic League, Lodron was able to keep Salzburg out of the Thirty Years' War.

On 23 July 1622, he appointed the scholar Albert Keuslin first rector of the Benedictine University of Salzburg. Keuslin, a graduate of the Jesuit University of Dillingen, had established the Akademisches Gymnasium, a secondary school, at Salzburg five years earlier. By resolution of Emperor Ferdinand II, issued on October 8, the Gymnasium was raised to a university. While the Thirty Years' War raged outside the Archbishopric, the university was built up and maintained by a federation of Benedictine abbeys from Salzburg, Switzerland, Bavaria and Austria. In its early years, courses taught were theology, divinity, philosophy, law, and medicine. The university is sometimes called Paris-Lodron-Universität-Salzburg (PLUS) after the Archbishop.

Death and succession

Lodron died in Salzburg on 15 December, 1653, and would be succeeded as Archbishop by Guidobald Reichsgraf von Thun.

Sepulcher of Paris of Londron in Salzburg Cathedral

Cenotaph of Paris of Lodron in Salzburg Cathedral

Further reading

• Reinhard Rudolf Heinisch: Salzburg im Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Notring, Wien 1968 (dissertation for University of Vienna; in German)
• Reinhard Rudolf Heinisch: Paris Graf Lodron: Reichsfürst und Erzbischof von Salzburg. Amalthea, Wien et al. 1991, ISBN 3-85002-312-5
• Constantin von Wurzbach: "Lodron, Paris Graf (X., auch XI.)." In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (Biographical Lexicon of the Empire of Austria).  Part 15 Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1866, p. 378–380 (digitalised). (in German)
• Franz Valentin Zillner (1884), "Lodron, Paris Graf von", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 19, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 80–83
• Franz Ortner (2001), "Paris Graf von Lodron", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 20, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 67–68; (full text online)