John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron Acton
Baron Acton, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, 1895-1902,
born at Naples, 10 January, 1834, Where his father, Sir Richard
Acton, held an important diplomatic appointment; died at
Tegernsee, Bavaria, 19 June, 1902.
His mother was the heiress of a distinguished Bavarian family, the
Dalbergs. The Actons, though of an old English Catholic stock, had
long been naturalized in Naples, where Lord Acton's grandfather
had been prime minister. The future historian was thus in an
extraordinary degree cosmopolitan, and much of his exceptional
mastery of historical literature may be ascribed to the fact that
the principal languages of Europe were as familiar to him as his
native tongue. In 1843 the boy was sent to Oscott College,
Birmingham, were Doctor, afterwards Cardinal, Nicholas Wiseman was
then president. After five years spent at Oscott, Acton complete
his education at Munich, as the pupil of the celebrated historian
D�llinger. With D�llinger he visited France, and both there and in
Germany lived on terms of intimacy with the most eminent
historical scholars of the day. Returning to England, however, in
1859, to settle upon the family estate of Aldenham in Shropshire,
he entered parliament as member for an Irish constituency, and
retained his seat for six years, voting with the Liberals, but
taking little part in the debates. In the meantime he devoted
himself to literary work, and upon Newman's retirement, in 1859,
succeeded him in the editorship of a Catholic periodical called
"The Rambler", which, after 1862, was transformed into a quarterly
under the title of "The Home and Foreign Review". The ultra
liberal tone of this journal gave offence to ecclesiastical
authorities, and Acton eventually judged it necessary to
discontinue its publication, in April, 1864, when he wrote,
concerning certain tenets of his which had been disapproved of,
that "the principles had not ceased to be true, nor the authority
which censured them to be legitimate, because the two were in
contradiction." The publication of the "Syllabus" by Pius IX in
1864 tended to alienate Acton still further from Ultramontane
counsels. He had in the meantime become very intimate with Mr.
Gladstone, by whom he was recommended for a peerage in 1869, and
at the time of the First Vatican Council Lord Acton went to Rome
with the express object of organizing a party of resistance to the
proposed definition of papal infallibility. The decree, when it
came, seems to have had the effect of permanently embittering
Acton's feelings towards Roman authority, but he did not, like his
friend D�llinger, formally sever his connection with the Church.
Indeed in his later years at Cambridge he regularly attended Mass,
and he received the last sacraments, at Tegernsee, on his death-
bed. The Cambridge Professorship of Modern History was offered to
him by Lord Roseberry in 1895, and, besides the lectures which he
delivered there, he conceived and partly organized the "Cambridge
Modern History", the first volume of which was only to see the
light after his death. Lord Acton never produced anything which
deserves to be called a book, but he wrote a good many reviews and
occasionally an article or a lecture. As an historian he was
probably more remarkable for knowledge of detail than for judgment
or intuition. The "Letters of Quirinus," published in the
Allgemeine Zeitung", at the time of the First Vatican Council, and
attributed to Lord Acton, as well as other letters addressed to
the "Times", in November, 1874, show a mind much warped against
the Roman system. The "Letters to Mrs. Drew" (Mr. Gladstone's
daughter), which we printed by Mr. Herbert Paul in 1903, are
brilliant but often bitter. A pleasanter impression is given by
another collection of Lord Acton's private letters (published
1906) under the editorship of Abbot Gasquet. Some of Acton's best
work was contributed to the "English Historical Review". His
article on "German Schools of History", in the first volume, and
on "D�llinger's Historical Work", in the fifth, deserve particular
mention.
HERBERT THURSTON Transcribed by Michael C. Tinkler
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80228.
(
[email protected])
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
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