Inspirational Quotes by Charles Forbes Rene de Montalembert (French Historian, Politician)

Charles‐Forbes‐René, comte de Montalembert (1810–70) was a French political writer, liberal politician, publicist, historian, and raconteur. A Catholic layman, he wrote and spoke extensively in support of democratic government and opposed the union of church and state in France during the 19th century.

Born in London, the eldest son of a noble French émigré and his English wife, Montalembert was educated at Fulham and the Collège Sainte-Barbe. In 1830, he joined the French Catholic priests Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais and Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire in instituting L’Avenir, a Catholic liberal newspaper. Montalembert pleaded the cause of religious liberty, despite the papal condemnation of L’Avenir.

Montalembert made a well-known protest-speech against tyranny in 1848. After the February Revolution (1848,) he was elected a member of the National Assembly. He supported Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) until the confiscation of the Orleans property when he became a steadfast opponent of the imperial regime.

Montalembert visited England in 1855 and wrote De l’avenir politique de l’Angleterr (1856, ‘The Political Future of England,’) and many other works on medieval church history and contemporary political topics in an attempt to square Catholicism with liberalism.

Montalembert also wrote Les Moines d’occident (1863–77; ‘Monks of the West,’) a study of the growth of Western monasticism, and Des intérêts catholiques au XIXe siècle (1852; ‘The Catholic Interest in the Nineteenth Century.’)

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