V
The new decree was profoundly uncongenial to the mind of Lord Acton. He had already expressed his sense that recent developments of papal authority were inconsistent with the earlier principles of Christendom, and disastrous alike to freedom of investigation, and to the real interests of the Church. Manning's theories on papal sovereignty were a trial to Lord Acton's historical intellect. Manning simply reproduced the mediæval exaggerations of temporal power which had done incalculable mischief ever since Boniface VIII. endorsed them in his struggle with France.
"You are certainly not too severe on Manning's elaborate absurdities," wrote Lord Acton;[1] "I had no idea he had gone so far. … It is impossible to exaggerate the danger of such doctrines as his. I wish you would take the line of Catholic indignation a little."
While the Council sat, Lord Acton was in Rome, where popular opinion ascribed the Articles in the Augsburg Gazette to his instrumentality. "People do not venture to proceed against Acton," wrote Gregorovius; [2] "but it is known that he writes, and that he pays highly for the materials that are supplied him."
Archbishop Manning had positive knowledge that Lord Acton was in constant communication with Mr Gladstone, supplying him with information hostile to the Council; "poisoning his mind," as Archbishop Manning phrases it, against Papal Infallibility and the Pope's friends and supporters. Lord Acton, as a friend and disciple of Dr Döllinger, had great influence with
