Nicolaus von Weis

After the early death of the father, his mother went back with the boy to Germany and he grew up in Altheim, now a part of Blieskastel, Saarland.

He studied at the seminary at Mainz, when Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann was regent, and was ordained 22 August 1818 by Bishop Joseph Ludwig Colmar.

In conjunction with Andreas Rass, afterwards Bishop of Strasbourg, he revised, enlarged, and translated several apologetic, dogmatic, homiletic, and hagiographic works, the best known of which are an enlarged German edition of Butler's "Lives of the Saints" (24 vols., Mainz, 1821–27), translations from the French of Carron, Brillet, Picot, and others, and an extensive compilation of sermons by various authors.

During his pontificate the cathedral of Speyer was artistically frescoed by Johann Schraudolph (1846–53), and the renovation of its western front was completed (1858).

Therefore, the German novelist Conrad von Bolanden characterized him in his novel Die Aufgeklärten, 1864, as the "landlord of the golden cross, whom call the poor their father".