however, printed. Professor Gross had been the translator of Lavisse's Political History of Europe." Though a Resident Member of the Society for over eight years, the records show that he was an infrequent attendant, his name appearing among those present at eleven meetings only. He never served on any committee, nor did he act as a member of the Council.

The PRESIDENT then called attention to the fact that the January meeting would complete a half-century since the election of Dr. Green, senior Vice-President and Librarian of the Society, as a Resident Member. He would at that time only call attention to this fact, with a view to putting here on record a suitable notice of it.

Professor HASKINS paid the following tribute to the late Henry Charles Lea:

The death of Henry Charles Lea removes from the Society's roll of Honorary Members the name of one who, for more than forty years, has brought honor to American historical scholarship. Born in 1825, the son of Isaac Lea and the grandson of Mathew Carey, Mr. Lea represented the best intellectual traditions of Philadelphia and showed his early bent toward the things of the mind by publishing an article on conchology in the "American Journal of Science" at the age of fifteen; but his health as a youth was not strong and he never had a formal academic education. In 1851 he became a partner in the publishing house of Lea Brothers, with which he retained his connection until 1880, the greater part of this time as the active manager of the business. During the Civil War he was an efficient member of the military committee of the Union League and served as bounty commissioner; on the organization, in 1871, of the first association for the reform of municipal government in Philadelphia he was made its president; and throughout his life his influence was steadily exerted toward better political conditions in city, state, and nation.

Mr. Lea's first publications in the field of history were certain essays on early law which began to appear in the "North American Review" in 1859, and were expanded into a volume in 1866 under the title of "Superstition and Force." This was followed the next year by a "History of Sacerdotal

12 Proc., XIX. 167.

Celibacy in the Christian Church," enlarged in a subsequent edition (1907) to two volumes, and in 1869 by a collection of "Studies in Church History." The direction of Mr. Lea's studies was now defined, but eighteen years elapsed before the appearance of his next book, a period occupied partly with the responsibilities of business, and partly with laying broad and deep the scholarly foundations of the works upon which his reputation as an historian chiefly rests. These are: "A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages" (1888); "Chapters from the Religious History of Spain" (1890); "A Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary" (1892); "A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church" (1896); "The Moriscos of Spain" (1901); "A History of the Inquisition of Spain" (1906-1907); and "The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies" (1908). In all, not counting new editions, Mr. Lea's published work fills eighteen substantial volumes, beside a number of monographic articles and a small volume of "Translations and Other Rhymes," privately printed in 1882.

Looked at broadly, the central theme of Mr. Lea's histories is the Latin Church, which was to him "the great fact which dominates the history of modern civilization," and within the Church the development of those institutions which have established and maintained its power over the intellect and conscience of men. These institutions interested him, not as legal or theological abstractions, but as actual working forces, reflected, it is true, in the jurisprudence of the Church, which offers "the surest basis of investigation for a given period," but really understood only when studied in the concrete detail of daily life. This detail, the real warp and woof of history, does not lie on the surface, but must be sought beyond code and statute in scattered chronicles and charters and fugitive publications, and in the dusty records of tribunals. In other words, any treatment of these subjects which was to be anything but superficial and temporary involved years of labor in the great folio collections of law and theology, in outof-the-way tracts and pamphlets, and in the libraries and archives of every part of Europe. From this life of patient toil Mr. Lea never shrank. Remote from the original materials, with none of the formal training of the historian, this self-made scholar set himself to attack some of the hardest

problems of the world's history, whose difficulties were to
prove the measure of his success. From the outset he formed
the habit of going directly to the original sources, and while
he never left Philadelphia for purposes of research, his large
fortune enabled him to bring together an exceedingly valuable
library of printed works and to maintain searchers and copyists
in all the collections of manuscripts which were important for
his purpose. Dealing with matters which have long been
the subject of bitter polemic, he deliberately abstained from
reading modern writers lest they should obscure or distort his
vision of the past, and he carried this practice so far as to
neglect even the non-controversial writings of contemporary
historians. This disregard of modern material proved a dis-
advantage, not only in such matters as his awkward mode of
citing authorities and his failure to use recent editions of texts,
but especially in his treatment of the early Church, where
the original records cannot be properly studied without con-
stant reference to the results of critical scholarship; but the
fault was the defect of an admirable quality, and few are in
danger of repeating it. The late Frederic W. Maitland, the
greatest writer on the history of law that the English-speaking
world has produced, once said, "It is Dr. Lea's glory that he
is one of the very few English-speaking men who have had
the courage to grapple with the law and the legal documents
of continental Europe. He has looked at them with the naked
eye instead of seeing them a much easier task — through
German spectacles. We trust him thoroughly because he
keeps his gaze fixed on the middle ages, and never looks
round for opinions to be refuted or quarrels to be picked.
This is not exactly the policy that we could recommend to
any but a strong man. Dr. Lea, however, is strong, and
sober, and wary." 2

Mr. Lea's style is clear and at times forcible, and his matter does not lack interest, but his books are read by scholars

1 The volume of Monsignore Baumgarten mentioned in a subsequent note affords a curious example of a priori criticism. He says (p. 11): “From his works it is apparent that Lea must have a card index of extraordinary dimensions, which afforded him ready, though sometimes misleading, answers to most of his questions. Whenever he crossed the ocean he has brought back with him considerable additions to his book treasures." Mr. Lea did not have a card index, and he did not build up his library by journeys to Europe.

2 English Hist. Rev., viii. 755.

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and by thoughtful readers rather than by the general public. His theme is naturally better suited to interest a European than an American audience, and it is not generally realized among us that probably no American writer of history is so widely known and read on the Continent of Europe. Even in his native city he was better known as a man of affairs than as a man of learning, and Philadelphians of some reading were likely to be surprised when they were told that the excellent judge of city real estate who lived at Twentieth and Walnut streets was one of the greatest scholars of his time. While, however, Mr. Lea's fame was mainly European and his erudition of the kind more commonly found in Europe, his career as a man of affairs who trained himself to be an historian was characteristically American; and there can be little doubt that his business experience helped to give him a sense of reality, an ability to see straight amid a mass of complicated detail, and a solidity of judgment which are often lacking in writers of a more academic type.

In America his best-known book is probably his "Superstition and Force," which is familiar to a large number of lawyers who have more than a practitioner's interest in their profession. This has passed through four editions and still remains, in spite of all that others have done to illuminate the early history of legal procedure, the best comprehensive account in any language of the methods of trial embodied in the ordeal, compurgation, judicial combat, and torture. In Europe his best-known work is the "History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages." Appearing at a time when the most distinguished French student of the Inquisition had pronounced such an undertaking chimerical, this was speedily recognized as the standard authority on the subject, and while it needs to be corrected from time to time with the progress of monographic investigation, there is no prospect of its being superseded. It has been translated into French, a German edition. is in process of publication, and it is understood that arrangements have been made for an Italian version. Mr. Lea's most mature work is the "History of the Inquisition of Spain," toward which all the efforts of his later years were directed. The subject is intricate and thorny; the materials were for the most part unprinted and uncalendared; and except for certain publications of the author, scarcely anything had been

done in the way of preliminary exploration or monographic
investigation. Under such conditions the historian was obliged
to be quarry-man as well as architect, and the four solid vol-
umes which he produced were fashioned out of the solid rock
of original documents. It was characteristic of the author
that when he found the first draft of the work too long for
purposes of publication, he took up calmly the task of rewrit-
ing the whole at the age of nearly eighty. Rarely has so sig-
nificant an institution been so sanely and comprehensively
studied, and rarely has the reader been placed in so good a
position to observe its workings and draw his own conclusions.
from the evidence presented. There is no striving for dramatic
effect; the nature of the Holy Office is manifested in its nor-
mal operations rather than in the sensational episodes of its
history, and its significance is shown to lie "not so much in
the awful solemnities of the auto da fe, or in the cases of a few
celebrated victims, as in the silent influence exercised by its
incessant and secret labors among the mass of the people and
in the limitations which it placed upon the Spanish intellect."
The narrative is sober and self-contained and there is little mor-
alizing, but the general tendencies of the system are impres-
sively pointed out, and the great lesson taught by the history
of the Inquisition is declared to be "that the attempt of man
to control the conscience of his fellows reacts upon himself,"
and that "the unity of faith which was the ideal of statesmen
and churchmen alike in the sixteenth century is fatal to the
healthful spirit of competition through which progress, mate-
rial and moral, is fostered."

Such a conclusion will not command universal assent, and much of Mr. Lea's work has been sharply attacked from the side of the Catholic Church. Such institutions as the Inquisition, the confessional, and the celibacy of the clergy have long been the subject of acute controversy, and their history touches issues of living moment. Mr. Lea might assert his lack of polemic purpose and declare his ideal of history to be a serious attempt to ascertain the severest truth as to the past and to set it forth without fear or favor"; he might mitigate the conventional horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, and even contrast its enlightened treatment of the witch-delusion with the witch-burnings of protestant Europe; but the deductions from his investigations were generally unfavorable to

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