Ultramontanism

ULTRAMONTANISM.

Definition and Use of the Term (§ 1).
Early Foundations (§ 2).
Results Outside and Inside the Church (§ 3).
Effects on Research and Theology (§ 4).
Effects upon the People (§ 5).

A noteworthy definition of Ultramontanism by F. X. Kraus (q.v.) runs as follows: " The distinct-

ive marks of the ultramontane system :. Defini- are comprised in five points: (1) he is tion and an ultramontanist who sets the conUse of the cept of the Church above that of reTerm. ligion; (2) who conceives pope and Church interchangeably; (3) who believes the kingdom of God is of this world, and that the power of the keys, as curialism affirmed it in the Middle Ages, also includes temporal jurisdiction over princes and peoples; (4) who supposes that religious conviction can be coerced through material power, or who may be reduced to submission by such process; (5) who finds himself always ready to sacrifice a clear command of his own conscience to the claim of an alien authority " (by F. X. Kraus, reproduced in E. Hauviller's biography of Kraus, p. 100, Colmar, 1904). The term Ultramontani, at Italian seats of learning during the later Middle Ages, was a term applied to students " from over the mountains," e.g., to Germans. And the same designation was used in Rome of the French cardinals, when sharp opposition had developed in connection with the election of Clement Y. But the same expression was current in Germany during the time of Henry IV. with reference to the followers of Gregory VII. because they served interests " beyond the mountains "; while in France the name occurs with reference to those with curial, not Gallican, aims. In the nineteenth century, the name became quite prevalent, at first in Munich as applied to the party of the elder Görres; afterward in North Germany on occasion of the church strife at Cologne. The controversial question is inevitable, whether the ultramontanists give the adequate expression to the essence of Roman Catholicism which they profess to do. This question can be clearly resolved only through detailed historical examination.

A preliminary question arises as to how far into the past Ultramontanism may be carried. As early as at the Council of Trent (q.v.) some genuine ultramontane aims were set up in the form of papal

assumptions; and if Ultramontanism s. Early did not, as yet, carry the victory along Founds- all the line, still it achieved important tions. results, especially in the canons of the sixth, fourteenth, and twenty-fifth sessions. It was not accidental that these results were won by a Jesuit, since this is the sequel to the transformation of Roman Catholicism from what it had been down to the middle of the sixteenth century, through the genius and activity of the Jesuit order. To be sure this new "Roman type" of Catholicism furnishes nothing absolutely new; and, on another side, even without the direct cooperation of the Jesuits, a phase of papalism was espoused about the middle of the sixteenth century which can not be distinguished from Ultramontanism as defined by Kraus. For instance, in the bull

Cum ex apostolatus officio, promulgated by Paul IV., 1559, where " out of the fulness of apostolic authority" it is stated that " the pope, who is vice-gerent of God and of Christ on earth, and has the supreme power over kingdoms and peoples, and judges all, can be judged by no one . . . . All hierarchs and all sovereigns and princes even to the emperor, the moment they fall into heresy or schism, are by that very fact, and without need of a particular judicial procedure, throughout and for. everforfeit of their position and its honors and revenues, also thenceforth and for ever unfit to be vested therewith "

. . (cf. Mirbt, Quellen, under no. 288). If this bull be combined with the bull In caena Domini (q.v.), there is a nearly integral configuration of the ultramontane papal principle. And far back of this it exists in fact in the bull Unam sanctam (q.v.) of the year 1302. What lies at loose ends in the Dictatus of Gregory VII. stands here compact; and papalism spans its highest arch on a religious foundation: "We declare all human creatures to be subject to the Roman pontiff . . . . Such is the indispensable condition of salvation." In such terms Ultramontanism is set up for a ruling principle alike in regard to the pope's political status, and in regard to the religious relationship of believing Roman Catholics toward the pope. True, J. Hergenröther, in Anti-Janus (Freiburg, 1870; cf. J. F. v. Schulte, Altkatholizismus, pp. 331 sqq., Giessen, 1887), has contended that this bull should not be regarded as infallible; and in Kirchenstaat, pp. 300 sqq., 751 sqq. (Freiburg, 1860), he has brought forward every available argument to the end of annulling its importance in respect to this question. But this was all in vain; the third of the distinctive marks of Ultramontanism enunciated by Kraus has its foundation in the bull of 1302; and thereon rests even in modern times the tendency not to separate the two jurisdictions, but to treat temporal matters constantly according to the synchronous interests of the Church.

The practical operation of the ultramontane tendency during the progress of time has been twofold, outside and inside the ecclesiastical system. On the

former side, illustration is furnished 3. Results by the conflict between empire and

Outside papacy. By degrees the ultramontane and Inside idea as to the superiority of the papacy the Church. was introduced into the sphere of secular affairs, and became part of the belief of the faithful, priests and laymen. So that Innocent III. could say without encountering opposition, "The Lord committed not only the Church but the entire secular era to Peter's administration." In answer to the question whether this idea belongs exclusively to the Middle Ages or is of present application, the answer must be that it is only in exceptional cases that such assumptions can still find actual enforcement. Yet even in more modern times the popes have often declared civil laws invalid, as in the case of the Austrian statute law of 1867, and the Prussian " Falk laws " or " May laws " of 1872-75,* although those laws neither hindered

* These laws, which were carried through the Prussian diet

by Dr. Falk, minister of public instruction in Prussia, transferred oversight of the schools from the Church to the State,

individual piety nor had anything to do with dogmas of the Church. Where, then, is the limit of "ecclesiastical interests"? The claim of power to release civil subjects from obedience to the civil government, for the sake of those interests, was still essentially maintained in 1805 by Pius VII. On the other side, the reaction of Ultramontanism upon

affairs within the Church came still earlier to light.

The triumph of Gregorian ideas eliminated the an cient episcopal trend; and, together with the free dom of the bishops, they abolished what independ ent arrangements there still existed in the national churches. The pope came to be not only supreme,

but sole lawgiver; he bears, as Boniface VIII. ex

presses it, "all rights in the shrine of his breast"

(book vi., cap. 1, De Const. L, 2). It was only tran siently, under stress of the times, that a sort of new episcopal regime took shape during the schism through the great reforming synods; this novelty, however, was condemned and terminated by the

Fifth Lateran Council. The Council of Trent still found existent potent expressions of the episcopal drift, but the Vatican Council stopped them once

for all. Similarly the Gallican policy, and every

thing like "Josephinism" or philosophic paternalism (see Joseph II.), was ended forever. The sole reaction against such despotism within the Church

is nowadays found among the Old Catholics (q.v.).

As concerning the suppression set afoot by Ultra montanism against freedom in scientific theology, the most important example is afforded by the his

. Effects on Research and Theology.

tory of German Roman Catholic theology. In Döllinger's address of Sept. 28, 1863, before the Roman Catholic

academic assembly in Munich (see Doellinger, Johann Josef Ignaz von, § 6), the points were brought for ward that the sixteenth century indicates a flourishing period for Roman Catholic theology, whereas with the seventeenth century in Spain, and with the eighteenth in France, decay set in; and that al

though still high tasks were incumbent upon Ger

many's theology, these could not be even approached

if her freedom of movement were denied. When

Döllinger said this, he did not surmise how soon

this refusal was to come, that even in the following

year, by terms of the Syllabus errorurn, again in 1870 through the definition of papal infallibility, all free dom was to be taken away from the theologians.

Even before that definition was pronounced, on

July 19, 1870, Döllinger had discerned what in

effect became the fate of Roman Catholic theology

in consequence of the dogma. "So then," he says

at the close of his Pope and the Council (London,

1869), " the newly coined article of faith must plant and settle itself as foundation and cornerstone of the whole Roman Catholic doctrinal structure; the activity of the theologians must reduce itself to the secondary task of finding whether a papal utter ance for a given doctrine is extant or not. . . To what purpose any further toilsome delving in the

Bible, to what end the labored study of tradition,

prohibited members of religious orders from teaching in the public schools, limited the episcopal powers over the clergy and clerical powers over the laity, changing, in fact, the ecclesiastical law of the land.

if a single utterance of the infallible pope has power to demolish the conscientious theological work of a generation? " As regards the more modern Roman Catholic Biblical research, nobody will call attention, by way of refuting Döllinger, to the "Commission in behalf of advancing Biblical Studies," organized by command of Pope Pius X., as though this were an instrument for advancing such studies. For that this is merely an instrument for shackling them appears from the Motu proprio " Prcestantid " of Sept. 18, 1907 (cf. Osservatore Romano of Nov. 21, 1907), as is elsewhere patent from "decisions" hitherto announced in relation to weighty matters of Biblical introduction (Mosaic composition of the Pentateuch [1905]; historic integrity of John's Gospel [1907]; authorship of the Book of Isaiah [1908]); [verbal agreement of the extant Greek text of Matthew with the lost Aramaic original (1911)]. But still far more comprehensive is the curb that was applied to more liberal, theologically technical verifications of results by the two pronouncements against the "Modernists" (see Modernism), namely, the decree of the Congregation of Inquisition, Lamentabili, of July, 1907; and the papal encyclical, Paseendi Dominici gregis (Eng. transl. in Programme of Modernism, pp. 149 sqq., New York and London, 1908), of Sept. 8,1907. That the matters involved do not turn on theoretical exercises of the Curia's rhetoric appears from the extremely sharp measures devised against all " Modernists." For it was principally against Roman Catholic scientific " palpitations " in those countries that the entire procedure was directed, although the first man to use his pen against these decrees was an English scholar, George Henry Tyrrell (q.v.; he wrote in the London Times, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 1907). He was then followed by individual Italian sympathizers in the Programma dei Modernisti (Rome, 1907; Eng. transl., Pro gramme of Modernism, New York and London, 1908), and in Rinnovamento (Milan, since 1907); but the main focus of the cause is to be sought in France. In Germany, where, during the spring of 1908, the Internationale Wochenschrift published a series of articles elucidating the importance of the foregoing decrees, the number of deliberate and steadfast modernists among the Roman Catholic theologians is exceedingly small.

If Ultramontanism, therefore, has shackled the motions or aspirations of scientific freedom, the question still remains as to its effects upon the mass of Roman Catholics. In this connec-

5. Effects tion, the scope of this examination emupon the braces that materializing and artifiPeople. cialism of religion which inheres in Roman Catholicism, in so far as the devotional methods which for centuries past have been customary are employed to the end of increasingly extended propagation and fostering of the ultramontaTie spirit. Some of these devotional methods and devices were set forth by Reusch, both old and newly invented ones, in his Die deutschen Bischofe und der Aberglaube (Bonn, 1879). These and countless others are utilized by Ultramontanism for the sake of advancing its political aims by exciting confessional passion. An advantageous vehicle for the fostering of the ultramontane spirit

in that country has been conspicuous for sixty years past in the regularly recurring Roman Catholic conventions, employing a comprehensive daily press, a calculated and apposite pamphlet press, and the literature of art and culture. The fraternizing cause has been developed on the largest scale through all kinds of industrial and professional associations, so that the "Chinese wall" that barricades Roman Catholicism against Protestantism becomes ever higher and higher. But that Roman Catholicism shall stand forth as an outward power along ultramontane lines is carefully provided for by imposing church feasts and processions. The attitude of modern Jesuitical Roman Catholicism (i.e., of Ultramontaniam) toward modern culture is negatively comprehended in the Syllabus errorurrt of 1864 (text and Eng. transl. in Schaff, Creeds, ii. 213-233), to which the decree Lamentabili, together with the encyclical Pascendi, forms a complement. In sum, the spirit out of which the reaction against Modernism has proceeded in the broadest sense is to be sought in the Spanish type of Roman Catholic "religiosity" that was embodied in Ignatius Loyola, then organized and systematized, until eventually it became instilled into the veins of Roman Catholicism at large and complete.

K. Benrath.

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