Background
He was born John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, at Naples on Jan. 10, 1834, the only child of Sir Richard Acton and Marie Louise Pellini de Dalberg.
He was born John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, at Naples on Jan. 10, 1834, the only child of Sir Richard Acton and Marie Louise Pellini de Dalberg.
The Actons, a Roman Catholic family, sent their son to Oscott College, then under Dr. Nicholas (later Cardinal) Wiseman; but his most important education and inspiration came from the four years, 1850-1854, that he spent in Munich as the private pupil of the celebrated historian and theologian, J. J. I. von Döllinger.Dollinger. From him Acton gained an appreciation of meticulous historical method and also the strong antipathy to the political and temporal ambitions of the papacy that led him bitterly to oppose the dogma of papal infallibility which was pronounced in 1870.
He remained a Roman Catholic, though he tried to emphasize the possibility of being at the same time a liberal. These views inspired a series of periodicals that he edited or to which he contributed, which were unpopular with the ecclesiastical authorities of his Church: the Rambler, 1858-1862; the Home and Foreign Review, 1862-1864; the Chronicle, 1867-1868; and the North British Review, 1868-1872. From 1859 to 1865 Acton was a member of Parliament, and in 1869 he was raised to the peerage. He was appointed Regius professor of modern history in the University of Cambridge in 1895. During his lifetime Acton published very little, although he planned the Cambridge Modern History and edited the first two volumes. After his death his essays and lectures were collected as Lectures on Modern History (1906), The History of Freedom and Other Essays (1907), Historical Essays and Studies (1907), and Lectures on the French Revolution (1910). His influence on contemporary historians was great, although he left little to be read by later generations. One historical remark, which he made in a letter, has become famous: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." He died at Tegernsee, Bavaria, June 19, 1902.
