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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
In the monastic refectory at Downside the two portraits of the abbey’s great Victorian prelates, William Bernard Ullathorne and Francis Aidan Gasquet, dominate the scene, placed as they are above the abbot’s table on either side of the crucifix. Ullathorne, in the prime of life, looks alert and full of purpose. Gasquet, in decline, looks sour and tired. ‘The Cardinal,’ wrote the Venerabile obituarist, ‘used to walk down the corridor (of the English College) with tightly compressed lips and irritable-looking lines above his nose, while his eyes, which were partly hidden beneath frowning brows, scanned us searchingly the while: in a word, with none of that graciousness of age which is the common memory of all who knew him.’ Gasquet, the only English Cardinal to make a significant impact in the Roman curia in the twentieth century, remains an ambiguous character, now little known and if remembered at all associated with poor historical scholarship. Yet, Gasquet’s influence was considerable and owed much to his amiable personality and ready wit, his ability to make friends and to influence those in the highest echelons of church and state. Indeed, in 1903 Francis Aidan Gasquet was very nearly appointed as the first Benedictine Archbishop of Westminster. Instead, the somewhat colourless Francis Alphonsus Bourne succeeded Cardinal Vaughan and Gasquet had to be content with a life as varied and interesting as the church could offer.
1 See Bellenger, D. A., ‘Monastic Portraits at Downside’, EBC History Symposium 14 (1996), pp. 67–109 Google Scholar.
2 Smith, R. L., ‘Cardinal Gasquet’, The Venerabile 4, (1929), p. 264.Google Scholar Hubert van Zeller (1905–84), with an artist’s sensibility described Gasquet’s head, as he saw it in 1925 at the opening of the nave of Downside Abbey Church. ‘That heavy head, nodding where the favour of a smile is called for, is a head to be taken seriously. Patrician? Senatorial? Patriarchal? Something of all three. If the face is a fastidious one, it is not one which is supercilious or mean. It is the face of a critic, a man of sensibility, a man whose native intolerance has been disciplined by Christian charity. Almost it is a noble face. Certainly it is a wise one’. (H. van Zeller, Downside By and Large, London. 1954, p. 110). Another view is provided by the critical G. G. Coulton, who had ‘studied his face with great interest’ adding that ‘it was handsome, with the added dignity of a man who has lived consistently in view of a not ignoble ideal, and who was accustomed to represent that ideal officially in all his public words and actions…There was also a plain note of personal vanity; something of the ‘proud prelate’ after Wolsey’s pattern’. (Coulton, G. G., Fourscore Years, Cambridge, 1943, pp. 329–330)Google Scholar.
3 Leslie provides an anecdotal life of great wit and little analysis. An intimate pen-picture of the Cardinal is provided by a non-monastic friend de Navarro, M. A., A few More Memories, London, 1936, pp. 194–203 Google Scholar. ‘Only once we saw him sad, ‘she writes, ‘and that was when, in 1914, he was made Cardinal and had to leave his beloved England to live in Rome’. (p. 197)
4 See Leslie, pp. 80–90.
5 Mrs. Arthur Strong, as she was generally known, was a formidable presence as Assistant Director at the British School and social life there centred on her. Indeed a student of the time suggested hers was ‘the salon of a great lady’. (See. Wiseman, T. P., A Short History of the British School at Rome, London, 1990, p. 15)Google Scholar Gasquet, pace Mrs. Strong and Mrs. De Navarro (n. 3), ‘always had a great effect on ladies of position’ (Mathew, D., Lord Acton and his Times, London, 1968, p. 360)Google Scholar ‘He had’, Acton’s biographer continues, ‘a quality of charm, but without humility’.
6 Leslie, p. 257.
7 Ibidem, p. 21.
8 For the English Benedictines in the nineteenth century see Rees, D. (ed.) Monks of England, London, 1997 Google Scholar, especially chapters 12 and 13.
9 For Prior Murphy see Downside Review, Centenary Number (vol. 33, June 1914), pp. 58–61. The same number has an assessment of Gasquet’s work at Downside, pp. 61–65.
10 ‘Pugin’s dream of the future of English Catholicism at last come true,’ Pevsner, N., North Somerset and Bristol (Buildings of England), Harmondsworth, 1958, p. 183.Google Scholar
11 For an overview of the debate surrounding monastic reform see, A. Clark, ‘The return to the Monasteries,’ in Rees, op. cit., pp. 213–234.
12 For Edmund Bishop see Abercrombie, N., The Life and Work of Edmund Bishop, London, 1959.Google Scholar Bishop, an autodidact, writing to Baron Friedrich von Hügel in 1906 spoke of his ‘profound and permanent conviction, that the ‘redemption’ of the modern Catholic on the intellectual side can be wrought out only through the scientific pursuit of history. Though the positive not the speculative ‘history’, to Bishop, was not the ancilla theologiae, and the historian, ‘to do his work aright must be free.’ (Quoted by Vidier, A. R., A Variety of Catholic Modernists, Cambridge, 1970, p. 137)Google Scholar. Lord Acton, the great liberal Catholic historian, supported Gasquet’s scholarship in his latter years (Mathew crit, p. 237) but Gasquet’s contribution, to The Cambridge Modern History on Catholic England before the Reformation even if completed was not published (ibiden, p. 360). Mathew judges Gasquet harshly: ‘His historical studies were invariably undertaken for some ulterior motive’ and ‘the conception of pure history was unknown to him’ (ibidem).
13 Leslie, p. 36, quoting Cardinal Gasquet’s unpublished autobiography (DAA, G).
14 G. G. Coulton, op. cit. Chapter 34, An Extreme Case’. Also see, among other publications, Coulton, G. G., Romanism and Truth, London, 1931.Google Scholar ‘Gasquet has considerable literary ability, and had been laborious in his own way; but from the first he was superficial, and inaccuracy grew upon him like a crust’. Fourscore Years, p. 142.
15 Coulton, G. G., The Scandai of Cardinal Gasquet A Sequel to Sectarian History, Taunton, 1937.Google Scholar
16 M.S. Letters dated 1 and 4 November 1938, bound in with Coulton, Scandal…, in Downside Abbey library.
17 Appendix to Coulton, Scandal, printed copy of letter from Douglas Woodruff, editor of The Tablet to Rev. John Simcox, 14 October 1937. ‘But it would be a good plan if someone from Downside, like Dom David Knowles, would set out on a revision, embodying criticisms that ought to be accepted’.
18 Quoted by Morey, A., David Knowles, London, 1979, p. 121.Google Scholar
19 Knowles op. cit.
20 Coulton, Scandal, p. 6.
21 Knowles, p. 254.
22 Duffy, E., Stripping the Altars, London and New Haven, 1991.Google Scholar
23 Knowles, p. 262.
24 See Franklin, R. W., Anglican orders. Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae 1896–1996. London, 1996 Google Scholar, which takes a positive line towards the ‘validity’ of Anglican orders. Gasquet remained determined in his stand against Anglican orders and once, at the Venerabile, when ‘a prominent continental Catholic’, who had taken part in the Malines Conversations, came to visit the Cardinal, Gasquet asked why he has joined in. ‘Because the Anglicans asked me’, answered his visitor. ‘But why did they ask you?’ continued the Cardinal with unusual persistency. The other shrugged his shoulders: ‘How am I to know?’ The Cardinal looked at him squarely. ‘Don’t you think it was because you once wrote a book which was put on the Index, and so they hoped to find you sympathetic?’ ‘And do you know,’ he added, ‘he was quite annoyed.’ (R. L. Smith, art cit., p. 21).
25 Gasquet, A., Leaves from my Diary, London, 1911, p. 43.Google Scholar
26 Quoted by Chadwick, O., Catholicism and History. The Opening of the Vatican Archives, Cambridge, 1978, p. 140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Chadwick points out that Gasquet himself as archivist was to improve access to the archives by extending the open period from 1815–1830. He had removed the placard of excommunication against persons entering the archives (ibidem, p. 135). He also in 1921, agreed to the publication of all the letters of Pope Alexander VI including those with Julia Farnese. Ludwig Pastor (1858–1928), the great papal historian, wrote, on Gasquet, following this permission, in his diary for 23 May 1921, ‘All the truth is now his watchword too’. (Ibidem, p. 136).
27 D.A.A.(G) Printed Prospectus appealing for American funds for ‘The Revision of the Latin Version of the Bible entrusted by Pope Pius X to an International Commission under the presidency of Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B.
28 See note 11.
29 Kelly, J. N. D., Oxford Dictionary of the Popes, Oxford, 1986, p. 316.Google Scholar
30 Duffy, E., Saints and Sinners. A History of the Popes, London, 1997, p. 255.Google Scholar
31 Leslie, pp. 15–16.
32 Ibidem, p.214. Gasquet pointedly called by his enemies II punto di nero, the black spot, referring to the Benedictine black of his dress (p. 217).
33 Ibidem, p. 30.
34 Gasquet’s close personal relations with Sir Henry Howard (1843–1921), who had acted as Gasquet’s gentiluomo when he was elevated to the cardinalate, were crucial in his diplomatic work. Howard had been a pupil at Downside from 1857 to 1860 and entered the Diplomatic Service in 1865. Before his retirement in 1908 he had been, since 1896, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Hague. He spent his retirement in Rome and became the first British Minister accredited to the Holy See since the time of James II: ‘In this capacity he laboured unceasingly for nearly two years, maintaining the good relations between Great Britain and the Vatican and successfully combating enemy propaganda.’ (Downside Review 40, 1921, p. 139).
35 D.A.A.(G)., 888 Rome, contains much material on the Venerabile and the Beda.
36 Williams, M E., The Venerable English College Rome, London, 1979, p. 235.Google Scholar
37 Ibidem, pp. 153–154.
38 D.A.A.(G), 888 Beda College Correspondence.
39 Ibidem. Burton to Gasquet, 1 October 1928. Charles Duchemin was to be rector of the Beda from 1928 to 1961 and died in 1965. ‘Shy and unobtrusive in his manner, he was greatly liked by the British and Commonwealth residents in Rome, and was often called upon by the Italian press to provide information about British Catholic affairs,’ The Tablet, 11 December 1965.
40 D.A.A.(G). Roman Association of English College. Burton to Gasquet, 18 December 1918.
41 Gasquet’s ‘defence’ of Lord Acton (1834–1902) in his Lord Acton and his Circle (London, 1905) is undermined by his editorial blunders. See Watkin, A. and Butterfield, H., ‘Gasquet and the Acton Simpson Correspondence,’ Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1950), pp. 77–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 F. Murphy, ‘Can there be a Catholic History today?’ in Caldecott, S. and Morrill, J., Eternity in Time, Christopher Dawson and the Catholic idea of History, Edinburgh, 1997, p. 128.Google Scholar
43 See n. 12.
