Charles de Montalembert

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Charles de Montalembert.

Charles-Forbes-René, comte de Montalembert (born April 15, 1810 in London , † March 13, 1870 in Paris ) was a French historian and politician.

Origin and life

Charles de Montalembert came from a long-established Angoumois family that produced numerous personalities, including his great-uncle, the engineer and fortress builder Marc-René de Montalembert .

His father Marc-René de Montalembert fled the reign of terror in 1792 and fought the French Revolution on the side of the royalists .

In 1808 he married Élise Rosée Forbes, daughter of a Protestant Scot who had undertaken research trips to India and Africa. Charles was born in London as the firstborn in 1810 and grew up with his maternal grandfather in Stanmore, a district of London, until 1819.

After arriving in Paris, he first graduated from the Lycée Bourbon and soon became a gifted student. Influenced by the British political system, he developed liberal ideas. The conversion of his mother converted to Catholicism in 1822 strengthened his religious affiliation.

As a student he found time to form an important intellectual and sophisticated circle of friends. He frequented Delphine Gay's salon and attended Victor Cousin's philosophy lectures .

Together with Félicité de Lamennais and Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire , he founded the magazine “L'Avenir” in 1830, which advocated freedom of conscience, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in the context of the July Revolution of 1830 . In 1831 he became peer of France . After the revolution of 1848/49 he became a member of the constituent assembly and the legislature of the Second French Republic and the legislature in the Second Empire .

He was an advocate of constitutional monarchy and liberalism . As one of the most important French theorists of liberal Catholicism (1863, he called on the Catholic Congress in Mechelen, the freedom of conscience ), he stood up for the press and freedom of association as well as the self-determination one.

In 1851 he was appointed a member of the Académie française .

Relationship with Germany

Montalembert's contact with the German language and culture began early: at the age of ten he lived for a long time in Stuttgart, where his father was ambassador to the Württemberg court. In Munich in 1832 he met the Eos Circle, which he visited with Lamennais and Lacordaire. Montalembert in particular kept in touch with Ignaz von Döllinger , whom he had met there. After the condemnation of Lamennais' writings and concerns by Pope Gregory XVI. his extensive travels through Germany offered him a certain distraction. He was particularly enthusiastic about the Rhineland and southern Germany. Montalembert's romantic mind turned primarily to those German intellectuals who stood for a renewal of German Catholicism based on the Middle Ages. In addition to Joseph Görres and Döllinger, he made the acquaintance of Dorothea Schlegel and her son, the painter Philipp Veit . Johann Friedrich Heinrich Schlosser and his wife Sophie with their circle at Stift Neuburg and Clemens Brentano should also be mentioned. But he also came into contact with Protestant Germany: I only mention Wilhelm von Humboldt , whom he visited twice in Berlin, and Ludwig Uhland in Tübingen, who for him was the greatest German poet of his generation.

Montalembert's extensive travels through Germany served not least to erect a literary monument to the “Allemagne religieuse”. Originally planned under the title “Pèlerinages d'un catholique au dix-neuvième siècle”, this plan was actually implemented through Montalembert's great work on Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who is called Elisabeth of Thuringia in Germany . This romantic view of life lived off the enthusiasm for the religious world of the Middle Ages. Floating between legend and history, it also inspired religious enthusiasm in Germany. An authorized German translation appeared in 1837 and had at least five editions by the end of the 19th century. Montalembert's work also stimulated the establishment of the charitable "Elisabeth Conferences" in the German parishes and had a general impact on German social Catholicism.

In terms of Montalembert's relationship to the ultramontane movement in Germany, there was initially a great deal of agreement with the important journal “ Der Katholik ”. Due to his parliamentary-liberal stance, Montalembert saw with regret that a Catholic-liberal alliance like the one in Belgium seemed impossible in Germany. In particular, the influential historical-political papers for Catholic Germany favored the reactionary politics of Austria and Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich before 1848 , which led to direct tensions between Montalembert and the "Blätter" and also with Joseph Görre. Nevertheless, Montalembert was able to initiate the establishment of the Catholic faction in the Prussian state parliament through his connection to the Rhinelander August Reichensperger , whose political mentor he remained for twenty years, and thus also contributed significantly to the emergence of the Center Party .

From the 1850s onwards, the relationship between Montalembert and Ignaz von Döllinger played an important role. Through his student Josef Edmund Jörg, this had a moderating effect on the “historical-political papers”, where Montalembert's anti-Bonapartism and his criticism of Caesarism by Napoleon III. was now eagerly received. The show trial of Montalembert initiated by imperial ministers in 1858 also met with a great response in Germany and strengthened his moral authority among German Catholics. In addition, Döllinger and Montalembert were connected in a common Anglophilia , which in both - in contrast to some German ultramontanes - included the high esteem of the English constitution. In 1855, Döllinger and his young friend Sir John Acton visited Montalembert in La Roche-en-Brenil, which established a warm bond between the two. Although they are in the question of the necessity of the Papal States differed in nuances, the impression was not unintentionally a certain parallel action of the two in terms of the so-called liberal Catholicism. Montalembert's affect against a growing centralism in church and state had its counterpart in Döllinger's advocacy of a relatively free theology as an authority for public opinion in the church. Döllinger did not accept Montalembert's invitation to the famous Catholic Congress of 1863 in Mechelen. With the almost simultaneous, equally famous Munich scholars' meeting, however, he set a similar accent. As the research of Giacomo Martina has shown, they were both allowed to rightly get through the Syllabus errorum Pius' IX. see taken from 1864. Montalembert died early enough that his friendship with Döllinger could have been put to the test by the Franco-German War of 1870/71. In contrast to Döllinger, due to his death, he did not have to develop a final stance on the results of Vatican I.

Fonts (selection)

  • Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hesse (1207-1231). Translated from the French of the Count of Montalembert, Pair of France, in agreement with the author, and with constant consideration of printed and unprinted sources, and with additional comments by John. Ph [ilipp]. Städtler, Aachen, Leipzig, Brussels 1837
  • The life and philosophy of Saint Anselmus. In: Catholic magazine for science and life. Volume 1. Coppenrath, Münster 1845, pp. 117-134 and 138-152.
  • Catholic interests in the 19th century. 1853.
  • The monks of the west from h. Benedict until h. Bernhard (translation of the French first edition from 1860 ff. By Paul Brandes). 1st volume, Regensburg 1860; 2nd volume, Regensburg 1860; 3rd volume, Regensburg 1866; 4th volume, Regensburg 1867; 5th volume, Regensburg 1868; 6th volume, Regensburg 1878; 7th volume, Regensburg 1878 (volumes 1 to 5: digitized version )
  • The Polish Uprising (German translation by Franz Furger), 1863.
  • Speech on freedom of instruction (French, September 18, 1848)
  • On the Duty of Catholics on Freedom of Education (French, 1843)

literature

  • Montalembert, Charles Forbes René de . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 18 : Medal - Mumps . London 1911, p. 751 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Victor Conzemius : Montalembert et l'Allemagne. In: Revue d'Histoire de l'église de France 56 (1970), pp. 17-46
  • Claus Arnold , Charles de Montalembert (1810-1870) and Germany. Aspects of a relationship in life and afterlife. In: Katharina Krips / Stephan Mokry / Klaus Unterburger (eds.): Aufbruch in der Zeit. Church reform and European Catholicism (= Munich Church History Studies. New Part 10), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2020, pp. 51–61

Web links

Commons : Charles de Montalembert  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Franz Xaver Bischof : Theology and History. Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890) in the second half of his life. (= Munich Church History Studies 9), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1997, p. 480
  2. ↑ Cf. on this Victor Conzemius (ed.): Ignaz von Döllinger, Briefwechsel [with] Lord Acton 1850 - 1890. Vol. 1: 1850 - 1869, Munich 1963
  3. ↑ Georg Essen - Franz Xaver Bischof (Ed.): Theology, church teaching and public opinion. The Munich meeting of scholars of 1863 and its consequences. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015
  4. ^ Giacomo Martina: Verso il sillabo. Il parere del barnabita Bilio sul discorso di Montalembert a Malines nell'Agosto 1863 , in: Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 36 (1998), pp. 137-181
personal data
SURNAME Montalembert, Charles de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Montalembert, Charles-Forbes-René comte de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French historian and politician, member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1870
Place of death Paris