William V (29 September 1548 – 7 February 1626), called the Pious, (German: Wilhelm V., der Fromme, Herzog von Bayern) was the duke of Bavaria from 1579 to 1597.
He received a Jesuit education and showed keen attachment to the Jesuit Counter Reformation tenets. His title 'the Pious' was given to him because he devoted his daily routine to masses (when possible, several times a day), prayer, contemplation, and devotional reading. He took part in public devotions, processions, and pilgrimages.
William V's residence as crown prince was the ancient fortified Wittelsbach seat Trausnitz Castle, which he renovated extensively between 1568 and 1578. His projects, including the construction of an arcaded inner court, changed the Gothic castle into a Renaissance palace complex.
During William V's reign, non-Catholics were forced to leave Bavaria, and the so-called Geistlicher Rat, an ecclesiastical council, was formed to advise William V on theological affairs, independent of the traditional privy council or the treasury, which administered secular affairs. The Geistlicher Rat supervised and disciplined the duchy's Catholic clergy through regular visitations; it controlled the Catholicism of all the state officials by issuing certificates documenting their annual confession and communion; it funded new Catholic schools, new Catholic colleges, new houses of religious orders, especially the missionary and educational ones, such as the Jesuits and Capuchins for men and the Ursulines for women. William V is responsible for numerous executions due to witch-hunts in his duchy.[citation needed]
The JesuitSt. Michael's Church and college of the Jesuits were built in Munich between 1583 and 1597 as spiritual centers for the counter-reformation. William V's spending on Church-related projects, including funding missionaries outside Bavaria—as far away as Asia and the Americas—put tremendous strain on the Bavarian treasury. The Italian confidence man Marco Bragadino who was promising to make copious amounts of gold to erase the Dukes's debts was called upon by William V in 1590, and executed after he had failed. William V abdicated on 15 October 1597 in favour of his son, Maximilian I and retired into a monastery where he spent the remainder of his life in contemplation and prayer. He died in 1626 at the Old Schleissheim Palace and was buried at St. Michael's Church, Munich.
Cultural activity
Wilhelminische Veste (1860)
Already as crown prince in Landshut, William V patronised the arts. His court architect Friedrich Sustris was in charge of the decoration and remodelling of Trausnitz Castle in Landshut. Later when he ascended to rule, Sustris also undertook the expansion of the Munich Residenz, the construction of the adjoining college, the palace Wilhelminische Veste (the so-called Maxburg) in Munich, and St. Michael's Church.
^Jessica Keating (2018). Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Early Modern World. Penn State University Press. p. 2. ISBN9780271081519.
