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egacy His library—preserved on Van Pelt’sL sixth floor—is one of the great campus spaces, Mr. Lea is not stopped,” Benjamin Disraeli once but there’s a lot more than that to know warned, “all the libraries of Europe will be removed to Philadelphia.” In the end, the libraries of Europe about historian and civic reformer “If stayed home, but the only thing that could stop Henry Charles Henry Charles Lea. Lea was that which stops us all. During his long life (1825-1909), Lea acquired an estimated by dennis drabelle 20,000 books, many of them rare, on his subjects of interest: medieval history, legal history, ecclesiastical history, the Inquisition, and witchcraft—with special attention to the per- secution of dissidents and eccentrics in the name of religion. 58 MAR | APR 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG BENSON THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAR | APR 2014 59 And when he couldn’t buy or borrow a Bradley C’19 Gr’25, as “a mere youth Lea collecting books, especially ones on the desired item, he paid to have it copied. discovered and named no less than 133 ecclesiastical topics that came to fasci- His collecting was no mere hobby. He new species of mollusks, and, what is still nate Lea. The French Revolution and the mined old books and documents to write more remarkable, 2 new genera.” The lad revolutions of 1848 had stripped church- new ones of his own. This passion for also produced poems, literary criticism, es and monasteries of their possessions, original sources set Lea apart from most and translations from classical Greek books included, and he benefited from of his peers, helping to make him—in the while mastering Latin and assorted mod- the consequent flooding of the market. words of Edward Peters, a Penn history ern languages. (As a full-fledged scholar, In 1858, Lea published his first work of professor emeritus who is an authority he was able to read Greek, Latin, French, historical analysis, a review of a book called on Lea and his library [“The Immeasurable Spanish, and Italian with ease, and could The History of Normandy and England. Curiosity of Edward Peters,” May|June deal with Hebrew, German, Dutch, and Meanwhile, he made partner in the family 2003]—America’s “greatest scholarly his- Sanskrit.) But this polymathic precocity firm and then, in 1865, became its sole torian of the nineteenth century.” took its toll. Unable to rein in his lunging owner. Despite Dr. Mitchell’s cautions, not Though Lea owed his education to his curiosity, the boy suffered from frequent to mention the burdens of being a husband parents, a private tutor, and his own wide and father, Lea took on a plethora of civic reading, rather than to institutions, he duties, notably at the Union League, which became a Penn supporter and trustee. In he and others founded after the Civil War 1925, his children Arthur and Nina carried broke out. As a Philadelphia gadfly and out a wish expressed in Lea’s will by giving reformer, his greatest coup was helping to the scholarly portion of his library to the bring down the Gas Trust that had domi- University and, for good measure, throwing nated the city’s economy and politics for in an endowed professorship in his name. decades. On the national level, he was so They sent over to Penn not only the books, disgusted by federal patronage abuses that but also their habitat: the two-tiered, shelf- he served as president of the Civil Service lined Victorian Gothic reading room incor- Reform Association. porated into the Lea residence at 2000 Until his retirement from publishing in Walnut Street in 1881. For many years the 1880, Lea had to cram his historical donated books and room were housed in research into what Peters describes as the old Furness Library (now the Fisher Fine “the odd hours he had remaining after Arts Library), whose 34th Street façade is the several other lives he led had exhaust- still inscribed “THE HENRY CHARLES LEA ed their claims on him.” Striking a similar LIBRARY AND READING ROOM.” When note at a 1911 commemorative tribute to Van Pelt Library was completed in 1962, the Lea, the Shakespeare scholar Horace Lea legacy migrated to the top floor, where Howard Furness asked rhetorically, it remains—a tenebrous sanctum in which “Would not an historian of Philadelphia you almost expect a raven to come flapping express his conviction that there were down and croak, “Nevermore”—unchanged headaches. He joined the family business here during the last half century two men amid the rest of the floor’s recent extensive in 1843 but continued to pursue his avoca- both bearing the identical name, one striv- renovations [“Gazetteer,” July|Aug 2013]. tions. After four years of capping off a ing and prominent in the heady fight of full day’s work with hours of study and politics and reform; the other a modest was the son of a mixed mar- writing, he collapsed. and sequestered scholar, leading a clois- Lea riage: Quaker on his father’s For relief he turned to an old friend, Dr. tered life of historical research?” Not side (the primordial American Leas came S. Weir Mitchell, the foremost American surprisingly, in later life the one-man duo over in 1699 on the same ship that brought neurologist of his day [“The Case of S. Weir had been plagued by headaches again, William Penn to the New World for good) Mitchell,” Nov|Dec 2012]. Mitchell pre- along with spells of impaired vision. and Catholic on his mother’s (the Careys scribed his old standard for this sort of founded the Philadelphia publishing thing, the rest cure, but the best Lea could Health permitting, Lea focused on medieval house that became the Lea family’s main- manage was to slow down for a few years— history and law, which led him naturally stay and lasted, under various names, a period in which he continued to hold his to the Christian Church, with its powerful until 1994). Henry and his older brother day job, got married, and read voraciously. influence on trial and punishment. His enjoyed a comfortable and stimulating After dropping poetry and science to first book, Superstition and Force: Torture, childhood, with their tutor accompanying concentrate on history, Lea prepared to Ordeal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval them on European tours that brought to resume scholarly work by acquiring Law, which came out in 1866, gives a good life the history he taught them. books from American and European deal- sense of Lea’s interests and range. The The precocious Henry was still a teen- ers. In doing so, he joined a wave of book- book’s overarching subject is the judging ager when he began publishing scien- buying that filled out many an American of earthly disputes not by humans but by tific papers; according to his biographer, university library. Indeed, the mid- to God, who is thought to express his will by the late Penn English professor E. Sculley late-19th century was a fine time to be awarding victory or loss in a contest of 60 MAR | APR 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE some sort, or by the occurrence or non- subjected to a form of ordeal by water, in occurrence of an event. In the ordeal chap- which one’s veracity was put to a sink-or- ter, Lea’s erudition carries the reader from swim test. In 1583, magistrates of Lemgow ancient Rome, where a holy snake was in Lower Saxony stripped three accused called upon to settle disputes by either witches naked and threw them into a eating or spurning a proffered cake, to stream, in which they “floated like logs of 15th-century Florence and the fate of wood.” Although their buoyancy might well Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), an have been greeted as a sign of divine favor, excommunicated Dominican preacher and this was not the case. Lea sums up the pre-Reformation scourge. twisted logic by which the floaters were As Lea tells it, an outdoor competition convicted: “Sorcerers, from their inter- was set up to test the validity of Savonarola’s course with Satan, partake of his nature; claim that the Church could do with a thor- he resides within them, and their human ough house-cleaning. Two champions, one attributes become altered to his; he is an representing Savonarola and the other his imponderable spirit of air, and therefore Franciscan rivals, would walk through a they likewise become lighter than water.” bonfire, and whichever fared better could Thus, the deck was stacked against the claim victory for his side. On the appoint- poor women before the ordeal started: the ed day, however, “quibbles arose about very thing that would proclaim their inno- permitting the champions to carry cruci- cence—sinking—might also drown them. fixes, and to have the sacrament with them, This is grim stuff, but Lea could display about the nature of their garments, and ardor by affirming that Savonarola had a sense of humor when appropriate, as other like details, in disputing which the endeavored to commit the sacrilege of he did in a satire written during the Civil day wore away, and at vespers the assem- burning the sacrament … [Savonarola] was War. The Episcopal bishop of Vermont blage broke up without result.” The popu- taken prisoner, and after undergoing had authored “Biblical View of Slavery,” lace felt so cheated of a good show that frightful torture, was hanged and burned.” a pamphlet arguing that since slavery they “easily gave credit to the assertions Given the people’s blood-lust, Savonarola was countenanced in both the Old and of the Franciscans, who stimulated their probably never had a chance.

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