The Henson Journals

[335]

Friday, January 21st, 1927.

["]When he (Wolsey) exchanged Durham for Winchester, he asked that the see which he vacated should be transferred to his son, a youth then studying in Paris.["]

v. Acton. Historical Essays. p. 62

Lord Acton was a severe critick of his own church, so severe that his continuance in his own church puzzled his contemporaries, and constitutes a problem of which the solution is not easy to find. His review of Lea's "History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages" contributed to the English Historical Review in 1888 and re–published in the volume "History of Freedom & Other Essays", is a notable illustration of his historical method. He draws a sharp distinction between the medieval institution, & that which came into being at the Reformation. "The later Inquisition, starting with the Spanish and developing into the Roman, is not so much a prolongation or a revival as a new creation. The medieval Inquisition strove to control States, and was an engine of government. The modern strove to coerce the Protestants, & was an engine of war. One was subordinate, local, having a kind of headquarters in the house of Saint Dominic at Toulouse. The other was sovereign, universal, centred in the Pope, & exercising its domination, not against obscure men without a literature, but against bishop and archbishop, nuncio and legate, primate and professor, against the general of the Capuchins & the imperial preacher; against the first candidate in the conclave, and the president of the oecumenical council. Under altered conditions, the rules varied & even principles were modified."

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