xvi OBITUARY NOTICES OF ^lEMBERS DECEASED. 



earlier work on the " History of the Inquisition of the ^liddle xAges." 

 His presidential address to the American Historical Association in 

 1903 was devoted to a vindication of Philip H. of Spain from many 

 of the charges against him, on the ground that men and institutions 

 must be judged by the moral standards of their own time, not ours. 

 He speaks of Motley's condemnation in a certain case as " the lan- 

 guage of a partisan and not of an historian," and declares that Lord 

 Acton's famous appeal, " to suffer no man and no cause to escape 

 the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong," 

 to be based on a mistaken view of the function of history. He 

 points out that " history is not to be written as a Sunday-school tale 

 for children of larger growth." He was more willing, I think, in 

 later than earlier life to tell the story and leave his readers to draw 

 what moral from it they wished. In his own words, "the historian 

 may often feel righteous indignation — or what he conceives to be 

 righteous — but he should strenuously repress it as a luxury to be 

 left to his readers." Yet he did not entirely reject his earlier view, 

 for in December, 1907, only two years before his death he wrote: 

 " I have always sought, even though infinitesimally, to contribute to 

 the Ijettermcnt of the world, by indicating the consequences of evil 

 and of inconsiderate and misdirected zeal. The search for truth 

 has been stimulated by the desire to diminish the consequences of 

 error." 



Yet sincerely as Mr. Lea tried to be impartial in his treatment 

 of the men and institutions of the past, he has been subjected to 

 serious criticism, principally from adherents of the Roman Catholic 

 Church. He has been charged with interpreting medic-eval docu- 

 ments unfairly, giving undue credit to doubtful documents because 

 they supported his views, and of allowing his general opposition to 

 Catholicism to draw him into a partisan presentation of his subject. 

 The changes have been rung on these charges in many dififerent keys, 

 but they are all re(hicible to the^e three forms, unfair interpreta- 

 tion of the records, prejudiced acceptance of documents, and an 

 anti-Catholic propaganda under the guise of history. Much of this 

 criticism has been made by men of no standing in scholarship and 

 may be safely disregarded as unimportant. On the other hand, such 

 criticism as that of Dr. Bhitzer, published in 1890 in the Historisches 



