Charles Anselm Bolton (born, obituary published 2 December 1970) was for many years a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, being the Priest of Salford Diocese in 1950,[1] as well as author of numerous books and articles, mostly relating to the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
He was born at Longridge, a small town and civil parish in the borough of Ribble Valley in Lancashire, England.[2] His education was continental, beginning with a Bachelor's Degree from Belgium's Louvain, and with theological diplomas from the Institut Catholique de Paris and from Rome's Collegio S. Anselmo.[1] [2] He was ordained as a priest in 1930.[3]
He was a professor of history and of the English, French, Russian and German languages at St Bede's College, Manchester, where he taught for over 20 years.[2] He left after the first year to attend Oxford University, obtaining a master's degree in history and a diploma in education in 1932, and returning to St Bede's.[2]
In 1950, he wrote a history of the diocese of Salford.[2] He was then appointed to the parish at Clayton-le-Moors, a small industrial town two miles north of Accrington in the borough of Hyndburn, his first appointment as a parish priest.[2] He was later made parish priest of the Heaton Norris parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester.[2] He then moved to St. Louis, Missouri to teach at a Benedictine school.[2] Finally, he went to Belmont Abbey, Herefordshire, from which he retired from the priesthood.[2]
He later followed Friedrich Heiler and others in preaching Reformation doctrines, and became a professor of modern languages at Houghton College, New York.[1] By 1963, Bolton was described in a Delaware County Daily Times article as a "former Catholic priest."[3] [4] A 1963 advertisement in the Mansfield, Ohio News-Journal promoted a series of sermons by Bolton, described as "a Modern Martin Luther" who had been ordained to Roman Catholic priesthood in 1930 and converted to evangelical faith in 1962,[5] and the next year an advertisement in The Boston Globe promoted a sermon by Bolton as "the amazing story of a religious leader whose life was changed by reading the Jansenist Reformers."[6]
He died in Pontypridd, Glamorgan at the age of 66.[2]