Cisalpine

Approximately 150 Cisalpine Celtic inscriptions are known, which are almost exclusively engraved in the Lugano script—one of many derived from the northern variety of the Etruscan script. […] Of the total of 150 Cisalpine inscriptions, there are about 140 ‘Lepontic’ inscriptions, which are attested from c. 575 bc to the end of the 1st millennium bc; the remaining ‘Cisalpine Gaulish’ inscriptions probably date from c. 150–c. 50 bc. Most Cisalpine Celtic inscriptions are of the proprietary or funerary type.

The antiquarian [Marcus Terentius] Varro, quoting Cato [the Elder], says that the Insubres grew pigs so fat that they could barely stand, and both Polybius and Strabo say that Cisalpine pork fed all Italy. Strabo further says […] that the viticulture there was so prosperous that Cisalpine wine casks were as big as houses.

They [volume XIII of the works of Henri François d'Aguesseau] shew the conflict between the cisalpine and transalpine opinions on papal power, so late as the reign of Lewis XIV, and the great difficulty, by which, even at that period, the former obtained the ascendant.

In pointing to some of these excesses on both sides, I have it not in contemplation to canvass, argue or even to refute errors either ultramontane or cisalpine, but merely to secure to myself a tenable position, […]

[N]ot being swayed by the spirit of either the ultramontane or the cisalpine school, by impracticable philosophical Jansenism, by abominable, gross, and hypocritical Jesuitism, nor by a collection of irrelevant doctrines based on contested principles, let us fix the following ones, which are essential......

[T]he "Constitutions of Narbonne" […] detailed further measures for governance in a collegial spirit by establishing a fixed triennial interval for the convening of general chapters and instated alternating locations for chapter meetings, oscillating between cisalpine and ultramontane provinces.

They [volume XIII of the works of Henri François d'Aguesseau] shew the conflict between the cisalpine and transalpine opinions on papal power, so late as the reign of Lewis XIV, and the great difficulty, by which, even at that period, the former obtained the ascendant.

[N]ot being swayed by the spirit of either the ultramontane or the cisalpine school, by impracticable philosophical Jansenism, by abominable, gross, and hypocritical Jesuitism, nor by a collection of irrelevant doctrines based on contested principles, let us fix the following ones, which are essential......

Within the first decades of the Sixteenth Century the University of Padua had secured a primacy in Europe which was to last for close upon three hundred years. […] [T]he academic pilgrimage, […] had become a daily, crowded transaction, in which the newcomers, no longer strangers and pilgrims, but fellow-citizens indeed, met the Cisalpine students on equal terms. As jurists or artists they were incorporated according to their place of origin into one or other of the Ultramontane "nations," each of which possessed its statutory rights and customs and shared in the administration of university business and in the privileges which the City-Commune was always eager to bestow.

One of the best arguments for the Anglican position can be found in Gallican or Cisalpine Catholicism, whose roots go back to Roman Gaul but whose branches stem from the Port-Royal movement of the 17th century.

[T]he "Constitutions of Narbonne" […] detailed further measures for governance in a collegial spirit by establishing a fixed triennial interval for the convening of general chapters and instated alternating locations for chapter meetings, oscillating between cisalpine and ultramontane provinces.

In pointing to some of these excesses on both sides, I have it not in contemplation to canvass, argue or even to refute errors either ultramontane or cisalpine, but merely to secure to myself a tenable position, […]

Lord Stourton [i.e., Charles Stourton, 17th Baron Stourton] had declined to join the Cisalpine Club, which consisted of men opposed to what they considered the excessive claims of an ultramontane section, but he remained a supporter of the views held by the dissolved Catholic Committee; […]

Cæsar had by this time nearly 30,000 men. The Cisalpine territories in mere enthusiasm had raised twenty-two cohorts for him.

Yes, 'tis old Gallus owns the heritage / Seen on the side of yon Cisalpine slope; / The homestead with the spreading pine for cope, / The thatched roof covers but a single stage.

The antiquarian [Marcus Terentius] Varro, quoting Cato [the Elder], says that the Insubres grew pigs so fat that they could barely stand, and both Polybius and Strabo say that Cisalpine pork fed all Italy. Strabo further says […] that the viticulture there was so prosperous that Cisalpine wine casks were as big as houses.

Some of the Cisalpines carried their opposition to the monastic orders so far as to be very unfriendly to the French émigrées nuns, for whose expulsion from England Sir J. Mildmay introduced a Bill in 1800.

But the Cisalpines began to be overshadowed by the ultramontane spirit in the 1830s, and it was not until after the Second Vatican Council a hundred and thirty years later that English Roman Catholics again asked themselves whether they were primarily English or primarily Roman.

Just as with the Blackloists and Jansenists (and perhaps even more so), suspicion of the supernatural came to characterize the Cisalpines, although this time it had little to do with their doctrine of grace and more to do with the Cisalpines’ desire to make Catholicism comprehensible to a sceptical age.