Francis Aidan Gasquet

Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet, OSB
Vatican Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church
Orders
Ordination	19 December 1874 (Priest)
Created Cardinal	Cardinal deacon 25 May 1914; elevated to Cardinal priest 18 December 1924
Rank	Cardinal deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro (1914–1915); Cardinal deacon, later Cardinal priest, of Santa Maria in Portico (1915–1929)
Personal details
Born	5 October 1846 Somers Town, London, England
Died	5 April 1929 (aged 82) Palazzo San Callisto, Rome, Italy
Buried	Downside Abbey, Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset, England
Nationality	British
Denomination	Roman Catholic Church
Parents	Raymon Gasquet and Mary Apollonia Gasquet (née Kay)

Francis Aidan Gasquet, O.S.B. (5 October 1846 – 5 April 1929 in Rome) was an English Benedictine monk and historical scholar.^[1] He was created Cardinal in 1914.

Life

Educated at Downside School, he entered the Benedictines in 1865 at Belmont Priory. He moved to Downside Abbey where he was professed and, on 19 December 1871, ordained a priest. From 1878 to 1885 he was prior of Downside Abbey, resigning because of ill health.

Upon his recovery he became a member of the Pontifical Commission to study the validity of the Anglican ordinations (1896) leading to Apostolicae curae, to which his historical contribution was major. In 1900, he became abbot president of the English Benedictines. He was President of the Pontifical Commission for Revision of the Vulgate, 1907. He also authored the major history of the Venerable English College at Rome.

He was created Cardinal-deacon in 1914 with the titular see of San Giorgio in Velabro. He was conferred with the titular see of Santa Maria in Portico in 1915.

In 1917, he was appointed Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives. In 1924, he was appointed Librarian of the Vatican Library and elevated to Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria in Portico.

As a historian

His historical work has been attacked by later writers. Geoffrey Elton wrote of "the falsehoods purveyed by Cardinal Gasquet and Hilaire Belloc."^[2] His collaboration with Edmund Bishop has been described as "an alliance between scholarship exquisite and deplorable."^[3] A polemical campaign by G. G. Coulton against Gasquet was largely successful in discrediting his works in academic eyes.^[4] One of his books contained an appendix "A Rough List of Misstatements and Blunders in Cardinal Gasquet's Writings.^[5]

David Knowles wrote a reasoned piece of apologetics on Gasquet's history in 1956, Cardinal Gasquet as an Historian.^[6] In it he speaks of Gasquet's "many errors and failings", and notes that he "was not an intellectually humble man and he showed little insight into his own limitations of knowledge and training." Coulton, though, he felt was in error, through over-simplifying the case.^[7]

Eamon Duffy said in an interview:

“

...Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet, a great Benedictine historian, was both a bad workman and not entirely scrupulous about what he said. So you can be a churchman and a lousy historian.[8]

”

Works

• The Old English Bible and Other Essays, John C. Nimmo, 1897.
• Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, John Hodges, 1888.
• Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, John Hodges, 1890 (with Edmund Bishop).
• The Eve of the Reformation, G. Bell & Sons, 1923 [1st Pub. 1900].
• Parish Life in Mediæval England, Methuen & Co., 1922 [1st Pub. 1905].
• The Greater Abbeys of England, Chatto & Windus, 1908.^[9]
• The Last Abbot of Glastonbury and Other Essays, George Bell & Sons, 1908.
• The Black Death of 1348 and 1349, George Bell & Sons, 1908.
• A History of the Venerable English College, Rome, Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
• Monastic Life in the Middle Ages, G. Bell & Sons, 1922.
• His Holiness Pope Pius XI, Daniel O'Connor, 1922.
• The Religious Life of King Henry VI, G. Bell & Sons, 1923.

Articles

• "Roger Bacon and the Latin Vulgate." In: A.G. Little (ed.), Roger Bacon Essays. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1914.

Miscellany

• William M. Cunningham, The Unfolding of the Little Flower, with a Preface by Cardinal Gasquet. London: Kingscote Press, 1916.
• Father Stanislaus, Life of the Viscountess De Bonnault D'Houet, with an Introduction by Cardinal Gasquet. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1916.

Notes

1. "Gasquet, Right Rev. Francis Aidan". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. pp. 662–663.
2. Elton, Geoffrey Rudolph (2002). The Practice of History. Oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, p. 96.
3. Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke et al. A History of the University of Cambridge: University to 1546 (1988), p. 420.
4. Nicholson, Ernest Wilson (2003). A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 172.
5. Coulton, G.G. (1915). "A Rough List of Misstatements and Blunders in Cardinal Gasquet's Writings." In: Medieval Studies. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.
6. Reprinted in David Knowles, The Historian and Character, and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press, 1963, pp. 240–263.
7. Knowles (1963), pp. 261–2.
8. "Confronting the Church's Past: An Interview with Eamon Duffy," Commonweal, Vol. 127, No. 1, January 2000.
9. "Review: The Greater Abbeys of England by Abbot Gasquet". The Athenaeum. No. 4208. June 20, 1908. pp. 767–768.

References

• Bellenger, Dominic Aidan (2004). "Gasquet, Francis Neil (1846–1929)." In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
• Benson, Robert Hugh (1914). "Cardinal Gasquet," The Dublin Review, Vol. CLV, pp. 125–130.
• Escourt, R. (1921). "The Work of Cardinal Gasquet in the Field of Pre-Reformation History," The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 183, pp. 353–371.
• Grange, A. M. (1894). "Dom Gasquet as a Historian," The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XIX, No. 75, pp. 449–464.
• Guilday, Peter (1922). "Francis Aidan Cardinal Gasquet," The Catholic World, Vol. CXV, pp. 210–216.
• Leslie, Shane (1953). Cardinal Gasquet, A Memoir. London: Burns, Oates.
• Knowles, David (1957). Cardinal Gasquet as an Historian. London: University of London, Athlone Press.
• Jacob, E. F., Lewis Bernstein Namier, Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett, Hugh Hale Bellot, W. K. Hancock, David Knowles, and John Goronwy Edwards (1952). The Creighton Lectures, 1951–57. London: University of London, Athlone Press.

External links

• Schaff-Herzog entry
• Catholic Hierarchy entry
• Works by Francis Aidan Gasquet at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Francis Aidan Gasquet at Internet Archive