MONTALEMBERT, CHARLES FORBES RENE DE (1810-187o), French publicist, historian, and academician (1851), was born on March 15, 181o. Montalembert's father, Marc Rene, emigrated, fought under Conde, and subsequently served in the English army; he married Elise Rosee Forbes, and his eldest son, Charles, was born in London. At the Restoration of 1814 Marc Rene returned to France, was raised to the peerage in 1819, and became ambassador to Sweden (where Charles completed his edu cation) in 1826. He died in 1831, a year after the overthrow of the legitimate monarchy. Charles de Montalembert was a Liberal, in the English sense, but was unable to support the Government of Louis Philippe cn religious grounds. He wished to see the Church free from the control of the State, and passionately at tacked the monopoly of public instruction by which the monarchy fortified its position. Montalembert was formally charged with unlicensed teaching. He claimed the right of trial by his peers, and made a notable defence (1832). On the other hand, he thought that the Church should not obstinately oppose new ideas. He col laborated with his friends, Lamennais and Lacordaire, in the newspaper l'Avenir. The Ultramontane party was roused by their boldness, and Montalembert and his two friends then left for Rome. This famous pilgrimage proved useless to mitigate the measures which the Roman curia took against the Avenir. Its doctrines were condemned in two encyclicals (Mirari vos, 1832, and Singulari vobis, 1834), and Montalembert submitted. After the revolution of 1848 he sat in the Chamber of Deputies till 1857. He was recognized as one of the most formidable opponents of the empire. Meanwhile his Liberal ideas had made him irrecon cilable enemies among the Ultramontanes, notably Louis Veuillot, editor of L'Univers. Montalembert answered his attacks by reviv
ing the Correspondant (1855), in which he opposed both the fanatical party of Pius IX. and the Syllabus, and the more or less free-thinking Liberals of the Revue des deux mondes. After the promulgation by the Vatican council of the dogma of papal infalli bility he would not allow himself to be seduced from obedience to the pope; he now severed his connection with Pere Hyacinthe (Loison) as he had with Lamennais, and made the submission expected of him to the council. He died on March 13, 187o.
Montalembert's first historical work, La Vie de Ste Elisabeth de Hongrie (1836), is not so much a history as a religious mani festo. His studies of monarchism in the West bore fruit in his Moines d'occident (186o), which was unfinished at the time of the author's death, but was completed later from some long frag ments found among his papers (vols. vi. and vii., 1877).