Ultramontanism was a socio-religious movement within the 19th-century Catholicism. Its name reflects the popularity it enjoyed in countries to the north of the Alps, i.e. beyond the mountains from the perspective of Rome (ultra monies). In Germany, where the term had been coined, it was usually used pejoratively. Ultramontanism was a reaction against various forms of Erastianism (Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephinism) in countries where the local churches, exposed to the increasing pressure of modern civil governments and secularization, were looking for support in an invigorated papacy. As the movement got more radical, antidemocratic tendencies began to determine its attitude towards modern civilisation. The ultramontanists hoped to regain lost ground by reforms that would broaden the papal prerogative, strengthen the prestige of the Apostolic See and centralize the Catholic Church. At the same time anything that weakened the Church was to be rejected. The 1860’s and 1870’s were the heyday of the ultramontanists in Galicia. They were quite successful in propagating their views through the press. The leaders of the movement Fr. Z. Golian, M. Dzieduszycki and M. Mann published regularly in Przegląd Lwowski ,Warownia Krzyża, Czas, Unia, or Tygodnik Soborowy. In their polemics with the liberal press they argued that the preservation of the faith and the Catholic Church depended on the acceptance of the „Roman idea”. In practice it meant that anybody who failed to support the secular power of the Pope, i.e. the existence of the Papal State, was declared an enemy of the Church. The ultramontanists’ insistence on that point led to a controversy between Fr. Z. Goliana and Fr. W. Serwatowski, who openly questioned the idea of the Pope’s secular power. A spin-off from that debate was a letter of support to Ignaz Dellinger of Munich, the leading opponent of the trend to reassert the papal authority. The letter, drawn up in Cracow by Dr. K. Gilewski, provoked some disturbances. Yet the ultramontanists were disappointed by the scale of popular indignation and blamed the Galicians for being luke warm in their support of the dogma of papal infallibility pronounced by the Vatican Council in July 1870. Nor were the ultramontanists happy with the level of support for the Pope himself whom they had been assiduously presenting in an idealised light. From their point of view even the Cracow conservatives from Przegląd Polski offered only a feeble proof of their faith and loyalty to the Church. After the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility, which was a triumphal fulfilment of the ultramontanist endeavours, their movement lost its momentum and began to wane.