Montalembert was a man whom title, gifts, accom- plishments, fortune, united to make illustrious. The opposite in many respects of his great contemporary, Sainte-Beuve, who preceded him but a little while to the tomb, he laid down his life, with all its brilliancy and all its latter suffering, upon the altar of his faith. " We are dying of the same disease," Sainte-Beuve is said to have remarked; "only I trace it to nature, while Montalembert will ascribe it to Providence." The man was not shallow who saw in life religion and in death Providence ; and it will not be difficult to say which of the two great men has left the most earnest example. Well has it been said that "a braver or more chivalrous spirit never passed from earth. He •was a veritable ' miles Chrisii' — Chevalier de VEglise — as he liked to describe his monastic heroes. He was much besides — a picturesque historian, an eloquent or- ator, a keen and in many respects enlightened politi- cian ; but his religious chivalry was the essence of his nature. No monk of old ever consecrated himself w^ith a more cordial devotion to the service of God and the Church. No knight ever fought more gallantl}' for the cause dear to his heart. Shall we say, in the view especially of his last words on the doctrine of in- fallibilitj' — which he struggled against to the last, and yet was prepared to accept when once proclaimed — no hero of the cloister ever offered as the sacrifice and service of his faith higher powers or a more entire — — only too entire! — self-submission?" (Blackwood's, Nov. 1872, p. 609). On one thing the whole world, irrespective of religious difference of opinion, can unite in praise of Montalembert. " He was the very per- sonification of candor. He had not a shadow of big- otry ; he hated intolerance ; he shuddered at persecu- tion ; he had none of the arrogance or unbending hard- ness of the dogmatist; he was singularly indulgent to what he deemed error; the utmost he would accept from the temporal power, from the state, was a fair field and no favor; the Church, he uniformh- main- tained, far from having any natural affinity with des- potism, could only blossom and bear fruit in an atmos- phere of freedom ; while liberty, rational liberty-, was never safer than under the protecting shadow of her branches —
'Nusqnam Libertas gratior exstat Qnam sub rege pio.'
If he waved the consecrated banner of St. Peter with
the one hand, he carried La Charte, the emblem and guarantee of constitutional government, in the other ; and his life and character would be well worth studv- ing if no higher or more useful moral could be drawn from them than that it is possible to reconcile a dog- matic, damnatory, exclusive system of belief with generosity, liberality. Christian charity, patriotism, and philanthropy" (Land. Qu. Rev. April, 1873, p. 219, 220).
Among publications of his notj'et mentioned deserve to be alluded to his Des Interets catholiques au dix-neii- vi'eme si'ecle (Paris, 1852, 8vo), which gives a rapid and brilliant, though one-sided, review of Catholicism throughout the whole of Europe in that day as com- pared with what it was some fifty years previous, main- taining that upon the whole the progress made is deep, sound, and likely to be lasting : in the same work he expresses himself strongly on the political clianges that had taken place in France, and on the language of the French press in their regard, and thus this publication largely resembles the Political Future of England spo- ken of above. It was translated and published in Eng- lish in 1855. He also republished two articles from the Correspondant — Pie IX et Lord Palmerston and La Paix et la Pai7-ie, and a review of the memoirs of the duke de St. Simon. He was a frequent contributor to the Jievue des deux Mondes and the Encyclopedie Catko- lique.
See Sainte-Beuve, Cat/series du Inndi, vol. i ; Nette- ment, Histoire de la litterature Frangaise; De Lome- nie, M. de Montalembert, par un Homme de Rien (Paris, 1841) ; Mrs. Oliphant, Memoir of Count de Afontalembert, etc. (Edinb. and Lond. 1872, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Duke d'Au- male's Eloge sur Montalembert, read in the Academj"- on April 4, 1873, and the periodicals quoted and re- ferred to ; Lond. Qu. Rev. April, 1856, July, 1861 ; Ed- inb. Rev. Oct. 1861 ; North Brit. Rev. Aug. 1861 ; Blach- u-ood's Magazine, April, 1870 ; also Le Temps (Paris), March 15, 1870 ; Le Journal des Dibats, March 15, 1870. The catalogue raisonne of Montalembert's published writings, including his pamphlets and contributions to reviews, in the Revue Bibliograpliique Universelle, fills five closely printed pages of small type. (J. H. W.)
Montalto, Elias, a Jewish savant, was bom in 1 Portugal in the second half of the 16th century, and, I professing Christianity, went under the name of Felipe ; or Filotheo. About 1598 he went to Italy, where his ' medical skill and fame attracted the attention of Con- I cino Concini, who caused his appointment as principal I ijhysician to Mary de Medici, queen of Henry IV of i France, and this obtained for him the free exercise of his ' religion. He was subsequently physician and counsellor to Louis XIII, and died at Paris in 1616. The queen caused his body to be embalmed, and it was conveyed into Holland by some of his Jewish relations whom he had about him. Montalto not only wrote some esteemed medical works, but also a theologico-apologetical book in the Portuguese language, wherein he defends Judaism against Christianity — his Liv7-o Fayto, ii, 388 sq. He also wrote a tract on Isa. liii, and on Daniel, which are still in MS. See Ftirst, Bibl. Jud. ii, 388 sq. ; De Kossi, Diziunario (Germ, transl.), p. 233; Cassel, Leilfaden fur jiid. Gesch. u. Literatur (Berlin, 1872), p. 100; Basnage, Histoire des Juifs (Engl, transl.), p. 676 ; Lindo, Hist, of the Jeics in Spain, etc., p. 362 sq. ; Griitz, Gesch. d. Ju- den, ix, 521, 524; x, 10; Kavserling, Gesch. d. Juden in Portugal (Leipsic, 1867), p."274 sq., 283,308; Sephar- dim, p. 176, 201 ; his essay, " Drei Controversisten," in Frankel's Monatsschrift, 1858, p. 323 sq. ; Zunz, iJie Monatstage des Kalendei-jahres (Berlin, 1872), p. 9 ; Gei- ger, Jiid. Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaft u. Leben, 1867, p. 184 sq. ; 1868, p. 158* sq. (B. P.)