SPALDING, MARTIN JOHN. — Apologist and archbishop, b. at Bardstown (Kentucky, United States) on 23 May 1810, d. at Baltimore on 7 Feb. 1872.
Having entered St. Mary’s College at Lebanon (Kentucky) in 1821, he taught mathematics there at the age of fourteen, received his degrees in 1826, and studied philosophy and theology at the Seminary of Bardstown. In 1830 he entered the Collegio di Propaganda Fide in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in theology by publicly defending 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 at Louisville (1844), coadjutor cum iure successionis (1848), and bishop (1850) of Louisville. There he consecrated the Cathedral (1852) and established schools for boys; at Louvain he opened the American College (1857); he opposed the Know-Nothing Movement and the system of secular education then in vogue through lectures and writings. He succeeded Msgr. Kenrick in the archiepiscopal see of Baltimore (1864), presided over the Second Plenary Council (1866), which approved his project for founding a Catholic university. He took part in the celebrations in Rome marking the centenary of the martyrdom of St. Pietro (1867). He invited the future Cardinal Herbert Vaughan to evangelize Black people (1871) and helped Fr. Hecker found the Catholic Publication Society in New York. At the Vatican Council he was a member of the Commission for the Faith and of the Commission for Postulates. A determined supporter of papal infallibility, he drafted a memorandum in which he preferred an implicit definition of the dogma to an explicit one. Immediately after the definition of the dogma, he addressed a pastoral letter to his archdiocese to explain its content.
