Introduction
In 1887, historian Mandell Creighton published the third volume of his monumental study of the Papacy. Fellow historian Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic troubled by the recent declaration of Papal Infallibility, criticised him for being too soft on the crimes of the Popes: the historian who easily excuses the tyrants of the past, he warned, may also hire himself out to excuse the tyrants of the present.
YOU say that people in authority are not to be snubbed or sneered at from our pinnacle of conscious rectitude.* I really don’t know whether you exempt them because of their rank, or of their success and power, or of their date. But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly about the impropriety of Carlylese* denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favoured presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.* Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Précis
Shortly after Mandell Creighton’s multi-volume History of the Papacy came out, fellow historian Lord Acton wrote to him to complain that he had pulled too many punches. Power is a great corrupter of men, he said, and historians had a responsibility to hold the Great and the Good to account, especially if none had dared do so in their lifetimes.
(60 / 60 words)
Shortly after Mandell Creighton’s multi-volume History of the Papacy came out, fellow historian Lord Acton wrote to him to complain that he had pulled too many punches. Power is a great corrupter of men, he said, and historians had a responsibility to hold the Great and the Good to account, especially if none had dared do so in their lifetimes.
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