ACTON, JOHN EMERICH EDWARD, lord ALDENHAM. – English politician and historian, born in Naples on 10 January 1834, died at Tegernsee (Bavaria) on 19 June 1902. Converted to Catholicism through the efforts of the Archbishop of Westminster, Nicola Wiseman, he studied in Munich (from 1850) at the school of Ranke and there came into contact with Döllinger. On returning to his homeland, he became, in the House of Commons, an adviser to Gladstone.
Meanwhile, he collaborated from a Catholic standpoint with the English Historical Review and thereafter with the journal The Rambler, whose direction he assumed after Newman and which he transformed into the Home and Foreign Review (from 1862). Having entered the House of Lords in 1869 with the title of Baron Aldenham, in the same year he went to Rome, where, supporting Döllinger, he took a determined part in the movement opposing the dogma of papal infallibility; his writings on this subject (especially The Vatican Council, in The North British Review, 1870) are interesting documentation for the history of the First Vatican Council. However, two other works of his on the same subject were placed on the Index (20 September 1871): Zur Geschichte des Vaticanischen Concils and Sendschreiben an einen deutschen Bischof d. Vati-
Vatican-Concils (1870). Despite his position, he did not separate himself from the Church and, having returned to his homeland, devoted himself to historical studies, initiating, among other things, the publication of the Cambridge Modern History and the English Historical Review (1886). From 1895 he was professor of modern history at Cambridge. The following works were published posthumously from his papers: Lectures on the French Revolution (1906); Historical Essays and Studies* (1907); as well as the letters (1917), particularly interesting those to Newman.