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Rome and Lord Acton: A Reinterpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

E. D. Watt
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Extract

The relations between Lord Acton and his ecclesiastical leaders did not pass without comment in his own lifetime, nor have they been neglected since. Yet the picture remains somewhat blurred. It is not that there are important items of information still missing; we may not yet know everything, but we do know a great deal, and have known it for several decades. The picture is not incomplete; rather, it is out of focus. Nor will this necessarily be cured by more research, for history does not write itself. A more detailed picture might still be out of focus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 1966 , pp. 493 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1966

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References

1 In the English Historical Review, LXI (1946), 413Google Scholar. New material is continually being published. The most important forthcoming work is Victor Conzemius' edition of Acton's correspondence with Döllinger, which will appear in four volumes. The first volume, Ignaz von Döllinger und Lord Acton: Briefwechsel 1850–1869 (Munich, 1963)Google Scholar, contains nothing to modify the view of Acton's religious orthodoxy which is set out here. Indeed, there has so far been no evidence of a “more real Acton,” to be discerned only through his unpublished, never through his published works; though, of course, commentators may as well be misled according to their preconceptions by the former as by the latter.

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