montanes have pushed everything to extremes, and have argued extravagantly against all independence, whether in the State or in the Church.
"If such systems were not calculated to compromise the deepest interests of religion in the present, and still more in the future, one might silently despise them. But when one forecasts the evils which they will bring upon us, it is hard to be silent and to submit. You have, therefore, done well, sir, to condemn them."
Montalembert's abandonment of the Ultramontanes is strikingly described by Ollivier, the head of the Government in France. According to Ollivier, what Montalembert sought in the Ultramontane propaganda was simply the removal of civil constraints and the liberty of the Church. But when men sought to impose upon him the Infallibilist doctrines of Joseph de Maistre, whose work he had commended without understanding, he found that he had unconsciously promoted the very opinions which he abhorred. The absolute monarchy of the Pope he simply disbelieved and rejected. Yet he saw the forces which he had inspired with enthusiastic devotion to the Papacy advancing the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. Therefore he gathered what strength remained, on his dying bed, in a final protest against any such decree. He was permitted to die before experiencing the necessity to submit—Felix opportunitate mortis.[1]
Pius IX.'s own estimate of Montalembert was very severe. He described him, after his death, as only half a Catholic, whose mortal enemy was pride.
The Italian historian of the Vatican Council, Cecconi, Archbishop of Florence, is more just. Cecconi says that those who knew the deeply Catholic sentiments of Montalembert, unfortunately entangled though they
- ↑ Ollivier, i. p. 451.
