author
Charles Michael Baggs
1806–1845
A learned 19th-century Catholic bishop, he combined church leadership with a real passion for scholarship and antiquarian study. His career was brief, but he left behind a reputation as a controversialist and writer as well as a churchman.
1 Audiobook
The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome
by Charles Michael Baggs
About the author
Born in County Meath, Ireland, in 1806, Charles Michael Baggs became a Roman Catholic bishop, scholar, controversialist, and antiquary. He is best known for serving briefly as Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of England from 1844 until his death in 1845.
He spent an important part of his career in Rome, where he built a reputation for learning and wrote on Catholic subjects, including liturgy and church history. Sources also describe him as an antiquary, suggesting a serious interest in the older religious and historical world as well as in day-to-day church debate.
Baggs died in 1845 at only 39 years old, so his time in senior leadership was short. Even so, he is remembered as a figure who brought together pastoral office, scholarship, and energetic religious argument in an era of intense Catholic discussion in Britain and Europe.