Acton, John
Acton, John
Professor of modern history at Cambridge, born Naples , Italy , 1834; died Tegernsee, Bavaria, 1902. He studied at Oscott and under Dollinger at Munich, and became Liberal member of parliment for Carlow, Ireland , 1859-1865. At the time of the Vatican Council, he strongly opposed the declaration of the infallibility of the pope. The “Letters of Quirinus” have been attributed to him. The “Cambridge Modern History” was begun under his auspices.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Acton, John
An English canonist, after 1329 canon of Lincoln; born 1350. His name is spelled variously, Achjedune, de Athona, Aton, Eaton; Maitland (Roman Canon Law in the Church of England: London, 1898) and Stubbs write Ayton. He was a pupil of John Stratford (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), and is declared by Maitland (p. 98) to be “one of the three English canonists who after the earliest years of the thirteenth century wrote books that met with any success”. He is best known as a glossator of the legatine “Constitutions” of Cardinals Otho and Ottobone, papal legates to England in the thirteenth century, and contemporary lawyers must have found his notes both full and learned, for many manuscript copies of them are said by Maitland to be still extant at Oxford. They were first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in his edition of William Lyndewood’s “Provinciale” (1496) and partly translated in Johnson’s “Collection of Ecclesiastical Laws” (London, 1720: cf. the English translation of Otho’s “Ecclesiastical Laws”, by J. W. White, 1844). The printed copies must be received with caution, for they contain references to books that were not written until after the death of Acton. His canonical doctrine lends no support to the thesis of a medieval Anglican independence of the papal decretal legislation. “I have been unable”, says Dr. F. W. Maitland in the work quoted below (p. 8), “to find any passage in which either John of Ayton or Lyndewood denies, disputes, or debates the binding force of any decretal” (cf. ib., pp. 11-14) Of Acton the same writer says (pp. 7, 8) that he was “a little too human to be strictly scientific. His gloss often becomes a growl against the bad world in which he lives, the greedy prelates, the hypocritical friars, the rapacious officials.”
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THOMAS J. SHAHAN Transcribed by Michael C. Tinkler
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York