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The scholarly career of an eminent American historian, author of the monumental History of the Inquisition.
Excerpt from Henry Charles Lea, 1825-1909 Creighton to gauge the real value of Mr. Lea's works, and to express an opinion of their interest and importance. Such a tribute from one historian to another working in the same field may well be looked on as the highest praise a sound scholar can have as his reward. That his works have also won the approbation of scholars on the Continent of Europe may be gathered from the opening remarks in an extended notice of his last book in the Jewish Quarterly Review for April, 1908: It is the fashion in American universities to give their professors a Sabbatical year one year of rest in every seven. A Harvard Don spent his year in travelling through Europe....
This biography offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of America's most influential historians. Henry Charles Lea's work on the Inquisition and the history of the Catholic Church helped to shape modern historical scholarship, and his impact is still felt today. This book provides a detailed account of his life and his contributions to the field of history. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Writing in 1868, the Philadelphia publisher-cum-historian Henry Charles Lea informed a friend, “I am trying to collect the materials for a history of the Inquisition.” The collecting of these materials—books, manuscripts, and copies of thousands of pages of documents housed in musty European archives and libraries—would occupy Lea (1825–1909) for the remainder of his life. It also led to publication of A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1884–87) and his acknowledged masterpiece, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (1906–7). Regarded as classics, these path-breaking books inaugurated better understanding of the history of an institution whose aims and methods tro...