SPALDING, MARTIN JOHN. - Apologist and archbishop, b. at Bardstown (Kentucky, United States) on May 23, 1810, d. at Baltimore on Feb. 7, 1872.
Having entered St. Mary's College in Lebanon (Kentucky) in 1821, he taught mathematics there at the age of 14, took his degrees in 1826 and studied philosophy and theology at the Seminary of Bardstown. In 1830 he entered, in Rome, the College of Propaganda Fide, where he earned a doctorate in theology with the public defense of 256 theses. Ordained a priest in 1834, he returned to Bardstown as pastor of the Cathedral and editor of the Catholic Advocate, founded in 1835. He was vicar general in Louisville (1844), coadjutor cum iure successionis (1848) and bishop (1850) of Louisville. There he consecrated the Cathedral (1852) and established schools for boys; in Louvain he opened the American College (1857); he fought with lectures and writings against the Know-Nothing Movement and the system of secular schools then in vogue. He succeeded Msgr. Kenrick in the archiepiscopal see of Baltimore (1864), presided over the second Plenary Council (1866), which approved his plan to found a Catholic university. He took part in the celebrations of the centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter in Rome (1867). He invited the future Card. Herbert Vaughan to evangelize the negroes (1871) and helped Fr. Hecker found in New York the Catholic Publication Society. At the Vatican Council he was a member of the Commission for the faith and of the Commission for postulates. A determined supporter of pontifical infallibility, he drafted a memorandum in which he preferred an implicit definition of the dogma rather than an explicit one. Immediately after the definition of the dogma, he addressed a pastoral letter to his archdiocese to explain its content.
Noteworthy are his apologetic works: Evidences of Catholicity (a series of lectures given from 1844 to 1848); History of the Reformation (1840).
Bibliography2 works
Massimo Cogliati