PROFESSOR DAVID KNOWLES'S Creighton Lecture on Cardinal Gasquet as an
Historian (Athlone Press, 3s. 6d.) is, as one would expect, an authori- tative and distinguished piece of work. Gasquet very nearly became Archbishop of Westminster, and was at one time a widely esteemed and in- fluential historian, but he is chiefly remembered today for being the principal target of G. G Coulton. In 1901 Coulton, then unknown, wrote to Gasquet, then at the height of his fame, to ask for chapter and verse for an important generalisa- tion in Gasquet's book, Henry VIII and the Reformation. Gasquet ignored this request, and then began what Professor Knowles calls 'a relentless guerrilla warfare' which lasted nearly thirty years and resulted in Gasquet's writings being 'all but driven into oblivion.' Professor Knowles, himself a Benedictine, has no doubt that Coulton was in the main right. His only complaint against the lengthy lists of errors and falsifications in Gasquet's writings which Coulton used to draw up is that they are not complete. From 1900 onwards 'Gasquet's pages crawl with errors and slips.' He was capable of talking about Gibbon's 'Rise and Fall' and it was largely due to him that the Congregation of Rites was misled into pro- claiming the last Abbot of Colchester a martyr.
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