Ultramontanism and French-Canadian nationalism: an analysis based on the newspaper Le Courrier du Canada (1857–1858).

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the historiographical approaches that have been reshaping the understanding of Ultramontanism for the American context. To this end, it examines the case of French Canada, a region that has been largely overlooked in Brazilian academic literature, particularly in studies of nineteenth-century Catholicism. Embedded in a global context in which the Holy See formulated and disseminated its uncompromising response to the advances of secularization, Ultramontanism flourished in this part of the British domains of North America during the second half of the nineteenth century, guiding the actions of clergy and laity through the Catholic press, which served as a platform for the discursive battle against the Church's supposed enemies. In the province of Quebec, this struggle manifested original combinations of European ultramontane references and Francophone Catholic nationalism, as analysed through the newspaper Le Courrier du Canada. Published by the Archdiocese of Quebec between 1857 and 1901, this periodical displayed its most combative and ultramontain tendencies under the editorship of Joseph-Charles Taché between 1857 and 1858 — a period that is particularly relevant for this analysis. To highlight the links between ultramontainism and the conditions for the construction of a French-Canadian nation in this part of the American continent, the methodological perspective is based on 'scale games' of observation, which are useful for continuing our reflection on the simultaneously global and specific condition of ultramontane Catholicism.