#J04 John Dalberg aka Lord Acton

John Emerich Edward Dalberg is Lord Acton.

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John Dalberg, was trained at St. Mary’s College in New Oscott, a Roman Catholic seminary in the Birmingham Archdiocese because Cambridge would not admit Catholics. Dalberg then went to Munich and continued his studies under Johann Joseph von Dollinger, who educated him in the new German methods of historical research.

After graduating from there, he travelled to the United States finally returning to England and settling at the family seat in Aldenham Shropshire where he was elected to the House of Commons (similar to the US House of Representatives) for Carlow but this came to a grinding halt when in 1864 he publicly denounced the doctrine of papal infallibility that espouses that the pope acting as supreme teacher can only under certain conditions and for a limited time, cannot err in matters of faith or morals because he is aided by the sublime spirit of the Holy Ghost as he is speaking ex cathedra (from the chair) of Saint Peter.

The Infallibility Issue

Dalberg barely outlived this outrage without being excommunicated because like his teacher von Dollinger, he was against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Dalberg agreed with von Dollinger, and said infallibility was wrong because it deprives the faithful of pursuing freely scientific, historic and philosophical truth and denies individual liberty. It would also be a sticking point between Roman Catholics and other Christians, something his mentor, felt was the problem with the doctrine. In the end, von Dollinger was excommunicated, but Dahlberg was not.

This issue stopped his current political career, but it created a new one where he continued his thoughts on the importance of individual rights, and freedom. He felt this was something that should be pursued by man as he continues his spiritual journey to union with God (see Galatians Chapter 4 verses 24-29).

The early years

He was born on January 10 1834 in Naples in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (now Italy) to Sir Ferdinand Richard Edward Acton (1801-37) & Marie Louise Pelline von Dalberg, a German heiress. Upon the father’s early death, the mother remarried Granville Leveson-Gower, the 2nd Earl Granville, Leveson was but called Lord Leveson. He became the Liberal foreign secretary under Prime Minister William Gladstone – the political successor to Benjamin Disraeli.

His mother, Mary Louise von Dalberg- Leveson died in 1860. The Dalberg-Leveson marriage had no issue. In 1865 Dalberg married Marie von Arco-Valley of Bavarian lineage and ran for MP (member of Parliament) for Bridgnorth. The couple were happily married and had one son and three daughters. In 1869, PM Gladstone appointed Dalberg, Lord Acton.

Our featured image is of Gladstone and Dalberg meeting in Tegernsee.

Death

In 1892-1895 thanks again to his friendship with Prime Minister Gladstone, he was appointed the Lord in Waiting (private secretary) to Queen Victoria, and in 1895 he was appointed the Regius Professor at, of all places, Cambridge University. He died seven years later while working on his modern history of the French Revolution in Tegernsee, a spa town in the alpine Bavaria region of Germany.

Astro-Analysis

Lord Acton is a bowl temperament type, with all his planets basically on the left-hand side of the wheel facing and spilling out east via the small yellow spout in the fourth house. His distribution of planets is a bit crowded in the first house with a large stellium of Capricornian planets there though his Mars in Sagittarius starts the parade.

This gives the cold organizing logic of Capricorn a lot of weight of how Acton presented himself to the public and it is square Capricorn’s lord in its essential tenth house with Libra up top. This gives Saturn and Venus a close square, though the opposition of Saturn to Pluto is almost exact and thus becomes Acton’s Dynamic aptitude.

Using Jones tightest square theory, because it supposed the greatest crisis in their life, that they feel they must hand. For Acton, this is Venus squared Saturn. In this combination, Saturn is exalted in Libra in his tenth house, where Saturn is also accidentally in rulership. Venus on the hand is in the first house, in detriment and perhaps this aspect is at the crux of the “infallibility issue,” Acton would never accord the Holy Mother the same status of her son and Saviour. It also shows, his high sense of duty of calling out this egregious wrong that he could not find any support for in scripture despite Pope Pius IX’s decree.

Da Plane! The Plane!

We have rectified Lord Acton’s chart to 10 Gemini or Airplane’s Falling, the symbol of man’s capacity to plunge into experience with a complete disregard of personal consequences following instead his belief in individual liberty while ignoring the limitations others find comforting.

This native tends to have the luck of Jupiter (Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter) in crises that end prematurely one avenue by opening up another either equally advantageous or an improvement over the former circumstance.

His Jupiter conjunct the fifth house suggests not only his creative prowess but also his four children while the empty seventh house tells us that most of his works were done with his own cognition and self-reliance.

The Part of Fortune is in the eleventh, conjunct the cusp of the twelfth, highlighting his friends in high places (Gladstone of course) and avoidance of trivial and banal ideological alliances as expressed in this final quote.