ACTON, JOHN EMERICH EDWARD, lord ALDENHAM. - English politician and historian, b. in Naples on 10 Jan. 1834, d. at Tegernsee (Bavaria) on 19 June 1902. Having converted to Catholicism through the work of the Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman, he studied at Munich (from 1850) under Ranke and there was in contact with Döllinger. Returning to his homeland, he was, in the Commons, an adviser to Gladstone.
Meanwhile he collaborated in a Catholic sense with the English Historical Review and then with the journal The Rambler, of which he took over the direction, succeeding Newman, and which he transformed into the Home and Foreign Review (from 1862). Having entered the Upper House in 1869 with the title of Baron Aldenham, in the same year he went to Rome where he took a decided part, seconding Döllinger, in the movement of opposition to the dogma of pontifical infallibility; his writings on this subject (especially The Vatican Council, in The North British Review, 1870) are an interesting documentation for the history of the Vatican Council; however, two other of his works on the same subject were placed on the Index (20 Sept. 1871): Zur Geschichte des Vaticanischen Concils and Sendschreiben an einen deutschen Bischof d. Vati-
Vatican-Concils (1870). Despite his stance he did not separate from the Church and, having returned to his homeland, he devoted himself to historical studies, beginning, among other things, the publication of the Cambridge Modern History and of the English Historical Review (1886). From 1895 he was professor of modern history at Cambridge. From his papers there were published posthumously: Lectures on the French Revolution (1906); Historical Essays and Studies* (1907); furthermore the letters (1917); particularly interesting are those to Newman.
Bibliography3 works
Mario Niccoli.