Ultramontanism in Yorkshire, 1850–1900

Extract

‘Ultramontanism’, a term which can be used simply to describe a particular attitude towards the Papacy, is frequently used to describe certain kinds of devotional practice, and is sometimes used in connection with other aspects of Catholicism, such as attitudes towards poverty, charity and Protestants, and the growth of authoritarianism in the Church. The second half of the nineteenth century is portrayed as the period during which the Ultramontane clergy took control of the Catholic Church from the hands of the old English clergy and laity, symbolised in the appointment of the Ultramontane Manning to Westminster in 1865 rather than the old English Bishop Clifford: ‘the victory of Ultramontanism and Romanisation’. If this was true of England as a whole, then it must surely be true of Yorkshire, where in 1861 the ‘thoroughly Roman’ Robert Cornthwaite became Bishop of Beverley? Ultramontanism, in all its guises, certainly had an important influence on the Catholic Church in Yorkshire during this period, but there is also evidence of a continued attachment to old English attitudes and practices, even as late as the 1890s. What took place in Yorkshire was not the triumph of Ultramontanism but a gradual acceptance and assimilation of two different kinds of Catholicism, as the gentry who had formerly dominated the Yorkshire Church, and the old English clergy who served them, came to terms with the most Ultramontane of the English bishops and the younger priests who followed his example.