Memoir

Memoir is a biographical and autobiographical volume by or about Henry Charles Lea (1825-1909), the Philadelphia publisher, historian, and reformer who was the leading American scholar of the medieval Inquisition. Lea ran the family publishing firm of Lea Brothers and devoted his evenings and weekends across decades to documentary research in European archives, producing the three-volume History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages and the four-volume History of the Inquisition of Spain, alongside studies of sacerdotal celibacy, auricular confession, and superstition and force in the Middle Ages. Lea was a founder of the American Historical Association and served as its president in 1903. The memoir gathers biographical material on his career, his methods of work, and his role in late nineteenth-century American historical scholarship and Philadelphia civic life. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.