Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various
ways. Ultramontanism is, in Europe, a political and not merely a theological word, – its meaning results from its history. Before the Tridentine epoch, the national churches of Europe were still seven candle-sticks, in which glittered the seven stars of an essential personality and individual completeness. The "Church of Rome" still meant the Roman See, and, vast as were its usurpations over the national churches, it had neither reduced them to absolute unity in theology, nor absorbed their individuality into its own. The Roman Church, as we now understand it, was created by the Council of Trent, by a consolidation of national churches, and the quiet substitution of the creed of Pius IV. for the ancient creeds, as a test of unity. This fact explains the position of the Reformed before and after that extraordinary assembly. Till its final epoch, they had never fully settled their relations to the Papal See. The history of England is full of illustrations of this fact. Old Grostete of Lincoln spurned the authority of the Pope, but continued in all his functions as an English bishop till his death, in the thirteenth century. Wycliffe, in the fourteenth, was still more remarkable for resisting the papal pretensions, yet he died in the full exercise of his pastoral office, while elevating the host at Childermas. Henry VIII. himself had the benefit of masses for his pious soul at Notre Dame; and his friend Erasmus lived on easy terms with the Reformed, and yet never broke with the Vatican. Even the English prayer-book, under Elizabeth, was sanctioned by papal authority, with the proviso of her recognition of the supremacy, and for twelve years of her reign the popish party lived in communion with the Reformed Church of England. During all this period the dogmas of popes were fearlessly controverted by Cisalpine theologians, who still owned their supremacy in a qualified sense, and who boldly appealed to a future council against the decisions of the See of Rome. Ultramontanism had then, indeed, its home beyond the mountains, and when it came bellowing over its barrier, it was often met as "the Tinchel cows the game." But modern Ultramontanism is another thing. It is an organised system, swallowing up the nationalities of constituent churches, and giving them the absolute unity of an individual Roman church, in which Jesuitism is the circulating life-blood, and the Italian consistory the heart and head together. Such was the prodigy hatched during the seventeen years of Tridentine incubation. It appeared at the close of those interminable sessions, so different from all that had been anticipated, that it startled all Europe. It had quietly changed everything, and made Rome the sole church of Southern Europe. Quinet has not failed to present this fact very strongly. "That Council," says he, "had not, like its predecessors, its roots in all nations; it did not assemble about it the representatives of all Christendom. Its spirit was to give full sanction to the idea, which certain popes of the middle ages had established, of their pre-eminence over œcumenical assemblies. Thenceforward, what had been the effect of a particular genius, became the very constitution of the church. The great adroitness consisted in making the change without anywhere speaking of it. The church which was before tempered by assemblies convoked from all the earth, became an absolute monarchy. From that moment the ecclesiastical world is silent. The meeting of councils is closed, no more discussions, no more solemn deliberations; everything is regulated by bulls, letters, and ordinances. Popedom usurps all Christendom; the book of life is shut; for three centuries not one page has been added." One would think the school of the Reaction would feel the force of facts so efficiently urged, even in spite of their towering disgust at the purposes for which they are employed. In fact, their own maxims may be turned against them with great power, in this matter of Ultramontanism. De Maistre, in his argument for unwritten constitutions, speaks of the creeds of the church as furnishing no exception to his rule; for these, he argues, are not codes of belief, but they partake the nature of hymns – they have rhythmical beauty, they are chanted in solemn services, they are confessed to God upon the harp and organ. Now this is indeed true of those three ancient creeds which are still chanted in the service of the Church of England; but the creed of Pius IV., which is the distinguishing creed of the Roman church, is absolutely nothing else than a code of belief, and is the only creed in Christendom which lacks that rhythmical glory which he considers a test of truth! Even Quinet notices this liturgic impotence of the Ultramontane religion. "The Roman church," he says, "has lost in literature, together with the ideal of Christianity, the sentiment of her own poetry. What has become of the burning accents of Ambrose and Paulinus? Urban VIII. writes pagan verses to the Cavalier Berni;3 and instead of Stabat mater or Salutaris hostia, the princes of the church compose mythological sonnets, at the very moment when Luther is thundering Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, that Te Deum of the Reformation."
No wonder France was reluctant to acknowledge a Council which had thus imposed a new creed on Christendom, and which dictated a new organisation to the ancient churches of Southern Europe. While other nations subscribed with artful evasions, she hesitated and submitted, but gave no formal assent. Rome had come over the Alps to absorb her, and she was loth to yield her birthright. She stood long in what Schlegel calls "a disguised half-schism," struggling against dissolution, the last lump to melt away in the Tridentine element. But where now is the church which St Louis left to France, strong in her anti-papal bulwarks? Where now are those bulwarks, the labour of his life, and the chief glory of a name which even Rome has canonised? As for Spain, Ultramontanism was riveted upon her by the Inquisition, and she is twice dead. One sees no more the churches of Western Christendom, fortified by Pragmatic Sanctions, and treated with as younger sisters, even by domineering Rome! They have disappeared; and the only light that lingers in their places is the sad sepulchral flame that owes its existence to decay.
Such is Ultramontanism. Follow its history, in connexion with political events in France, and you cannot fail to charge it with all the responsibility of French infidelity, and, consequently, of the present lamentable condition of the nation. Thrice has the spirit of France been in deadly collision with it – in the fire, in the wind, and in the earthquake. Its first antagonists were the Huguenots, and over them it triumphed by the persecutions of Louis XIV., following up the policy of Catherine de Medicis. It was next confronted by Jansenism under Louis XV., and that it overcame by intrigue and by ridicule. Under Louis XVI. it was obliged to meet the atheism of the Encyclopædists, which it had itself produced, and which terribly visited upon its head its own infernal inventions. To overwhelm the Port-Royalists, it had resorted to low caricatures and epigrams, and to philosophical satires upon their piety. Voltaire took from these the hint of his first warfare against Christianity. This was first a joke and a song, and then Ca Ira and A la lanterne; first the popguns of wit, then the open battery of Ecrasez l'infâme, and then the exploding mine of revolution. It merely reversed the stratagems of Ultramontanism, which began in massacre, and finished its triumphs with a jest; and both together have stamped the nation with its indelible character of half tiger and half monkey. The origin of such an issue of infamy cannot be concealed. France owes it all to her conduct in the crisis of the Reformation. Had the Gallic Church, under Henry of Navarre, fully copied the example of England, or had she even carried out her own instincts, repudiating the Council of Trent, and falling back upon the Pragmatic Sanction for a full defence of her independence, how different would have been her history, and that of the monarchy to which she would have proved a lasting support! Let the difference between Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze, between Sully and Richelieu, illustrate the reply. Or it may be imagined, by comparing the campaigns of Cevennes with the peaceful mission of Fenelon to the Huguenots of Saintonge. Where now both church and state appear the mere materials of ambition to such as Mazarin and Dubois, or where even the purer genius of such as Bossuet and Massillon is exhibited in humiliating and disgraceful associations, the places of history might have been adorned by such bright spirits as were immured at Port-Royal, or such virtue as sketched the ideal kingdom of Télémaque, and rendered illustrious a life of uncomplaining sorrow in the pastoral chair of Cambray. Where the court can boast one Bourdaloue, there would have been, beside him, not a few like Pascal; and in the rural parishes there would have been many such as Arnauld and Nicole, training in simple piety and loyal worth the successive generations of a contented people. As for the palace, it would never have been haunted by the dark spirit of Jesuitism, which has so often hid itself in the robes of royalty, and reigned in the sovereign's name; and the people would have known it only as a fearful thing beyond the Pyrenees, whose ear was always in the confessional, and whose hand was ever upon the secret wires of the terrible Inquisition. The capital would have been a citadel of law, and the kingdom still a Christian state. Its history might have lacked a "Grand Monarque,"
He surely means