ultramontanism

ultramontanism [Lat.,=beyond the mountains, i.e., the Alps], formerly, point of view of Roman Catholics who supported the pope as supreme head of the church, as distinct from those who professed Gallicanism or other tendencies opposing the papal jurisdiction. The term was used principally in France by Gallicans, especially before the French Revolution, but it was revived in 19th-century Germany by the group that left the church as Old Catholics after the First Vatican Council . The term is now obsolete, since all those in communion with the pope accept his supremacy. See papacy .

Ultramontanism (Lat., ultra montes, ‘beyond the mountains’, i.e. the Alps). A movement emphasizing the pre-eminence of Roman authority in the Church. It was opposed from the 17th cent. onwards to Gallicanism in France, Josephinism in Austria, and similar attempts elsewhere to promote the development of national churches independent of Roman, but under state, control. In the 19th cent., ultramontanism was closely associated with support for the papacy's temporal power, and for the doctrine of papal infallibility.

Ultramontanism. A tendency in the RC Church which favours the centralization of authority in the Papal Curia as opposed to national and diocesan independence. It developed in the 17th and 18th cents. When national and centrifugal movements such as Gallicanism, Jansenism, and Josephinism became discredited either as involved in definite heresy or as countenancing the liberal anti-Christian movements of which the French Revolution was the logical expression. The main stages of the triumph of Ultramontanism were the revival in 1814 of the Jesuit Order, which was the mainstay of curial as opposed to local authority; the publication in 1864 of the Syllabus Errorum, in which Catholicism and liberalism were held to be incompatible; and the declaration of the First Vatican Council in 1870 that the Pope is infallible when he makes a solemn pronouncement on faith or morals.