Etymology PIE word *ḱís Learned borrowing from Latin cisalpīnus (“cisalpine”) + English -ine (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’). Cisalpīnus is derived from cis (“on or to this or the near side of”) + Alpīnus (“of or pertaining to the Alps, alpine”) (from Alpēs (“Alps”) (ultimate etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- (“to grow; to nourish”), Celtic, or a pre-Roman Alpine substrate) + -īnus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’)). The English word is analysable as cis- + Alpine.
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On this side of the Alps (chiefly the south side where Rome is located).
[T]he ſaid floud of Rubicon diſſeuereth the Galle Ciſalpine from Italie.1564 February, Erasmus, “The Saiynges of Iulius Caesar”, in Nicolas Udall [i.e., Nicholas Udall], transl., Apophthegmes, that is to Saie, Prompte, Quicke, Wittie and Sentẽcious Saiynges, […], London: […] Ihon Kingston, →OCLC, book II, folio 191, verso, paragraph 7:
How I had been robbed in the valley, I informed the Senators, who told me that, in very truth, the people of that side were bad livers, and naturally theevish, whereby I perceived well, that as we have with us the Countreys cisalpine and transalpine, that is, behither and beyond the mountains, so have they there the Countreys cidentine and tradentine, that is, behither and beyond the teeth: but it is farre better living on this side, and the aire is purer.1653, Francis Rabelais [i.e., François Rabelais], translated by [Thomas Urquhart, Peter Anthony Motteux], “How Pantagruel with His Tongue Covered a Whole Army, and what the Author Saw in His Mouth”, in The Works of Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel. […], London: […] [Thomas Ratcliffe and Edward Mottershead] for Richard Baddeley, […], →OCLC; republished in volume I, London: […] Navarre Society […], [1948], →OCLC, 3rd book, page 308:
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[A]n Entrenched Camp is forming under the direction of the French, in the Cisalpine Territory towards the Frontiers of His Imperial Majesty's new acquisitions; […]1798 April 16, “Foreign Intelligence”, in The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner. […], 4th edition, volume II, number XXIII, London: […] J[ohn] Wright, […], published 1799, →OCLC, page 175:
Northern Italy was still excluded, being not called Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul. South of the Po distinctions of citizenship ceased to exist.1879, James Anthony Froude, chapter VII, in Cæsar: A Sketch, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 67:
Cæsar had by this time nearly 30,000 men. The Cisalpine territories in mere enthusiasm had raised twenty-two cohorts for him.1879, James Anthony Froude, chapter XXI, in Cæsar: A Sketch, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 356:
The authors present evidence to show that the acute form of redwater in cattle which has occurred for many years throughout probably the whole of the cisalpine regions of northern Italy is due to a piroplasm of a type other than Piroplasma bigeminum.1919 June, “Recent Work in Agricultural Science”, in E. W. Allen, editor, Experiment Station Record, volume XL, number 8, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office [for the States Relations Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 782:
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Alternative letter-case form of Cisalpine (“of or pertaining to Gallicanism, the doctrine that the church of France is autonomous, especially in relation to the pope; or cisalpinism, a movement in 18th–19th century Britain among Roman Catholics which took the view that allegiance to the Crown was compatible with allegiance to the pope”).
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.1821, Charles Butler, “The English Jesuits—Father [Robert] Persons”, in Additions to the Historical Memoirs Respecting the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, from the Reformation to the Present Time, volume III, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, footnote *, page 157:
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, […]1824, Francis Plowden, “Of Tithes and Other Church Property”, in Human Subordination: Being an Elementary Disquisition Concerning the Civil and Spiritual Power and Authority, to which the Creator Requires the Submission of Every Human Being. […], Paris: Printed by J. Smith, […], and published by W[illiam] Simpkin and R[ichard] Marshall, […], →OCLC, page 72:
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[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......1845 June, “Art. IV.—1. Revelations of Spain, in 1845. By an English Resident, 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1845. Colburn. […] [book reviews]”, in The Dublin Review, volume XVIII, number XXXVI, London; Dublin: Thomas Richardson and Son [et al.], →OCLC, pages 403–404:
[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.2014, Nicholas W. Youmans, “Non sic erit inter frateres. Internal Structures of Obedience in Early Minorite Relational Constructs”, in Mirko Breitenstein, Julia Burkhardt, Stefan Burkhardt, Jens Röhrkasten, editors, Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life (Vita Regularis: Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter [Ordered Life: Orders and Interpretations of Religious Life in the Middle Ages]; treatise 60), Berlin: LIT Verlag, →ISBN, part I (Creation of Norms), page 35:
Etymology The adjective is derived from cisalpine (“on this side of the Alps (chiefly the south side where Rome is located)”). Adjective sense 2 (“of or pertaining to cisalpinism”) was popularized by the Cisalpine Club which was founded in England in 1792. The noun is derived from the adjective.
Catholicism, Christianity, Roman CatholicismUK, Historical In 18th–19th century Britain, a Roman Catholic opponent of ultramontanism and advocate of Catholic emancipation through compromise and obedience to secular authorities.
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 1800.1897, Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, 2nd edition, volume 1, page 203, note 1:
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.1992, D[enis] G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England, →ISBN, page 83:
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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.2013, Francis Young, English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553–1829, →ISBN:
Etymology The adjective is derived from cisalpine (“on this side of the Alps (chiefly the south side where Rome is located)”). Adjective sense 2 (“of or pertaining to cisalpinism”) was popularized by the Cisalpine Club which was founded in England in 1792. The noun is derived from the adjective.
1
Catholicism, Christianity, Roman CatholicismHistorical Synonym of Gallican (“of or pertaining to Gallicanism (“the doctrine that the church of France is autonomous, especially in relation to the pope”)”).
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.1821, Charles Butler, “The English Jesuits—Father [Robert] Persons”, in Additions to the Historical Memoirs Respecting the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, from the Reformation to the Present Time, volume III, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, footnote *, page 157:
[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......1845 June, “Art. IV.—1. Revelations of Spain, in 1845. By an English Resident, 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1845. Colburn. […] [book reviews]”, in The Dublin Review, volume XVIII, number XXXVI, London; Dublin: Thomas Richardson and Son [et al.], →OCLC, page 403:
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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.1923 October–December, Leonard Penlock, “Cardinal Pole and His Friends at Padua”, in The Dublin Review, volume 173, number 347, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, →OCLC, page 210:
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.1945 August 26, Norman B. Godfrey, “Letters [Cisalpine Catholicism]”, in Clifford P[helps] Morehouse, editor, The Living Church: A Weekly Record of the News, the Work, and the Thought of the Episcopal Church, volume CXI, number 9, Milwaukee, Wis.: Morehouse-Gorham Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3, column 2:
[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.2014, Nicholas W. Youmans, “Non sic erit inter frateres. Internal Structures of Obedience in Early Minorite Relational Constructs”, in Mirko Breitenstein, Julia Burkhardt, Stefan Burkhardt, Jens Röhrkasten, editors, Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life (Vita Regularis: Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter [Ordered Life: Orders and Interpretations of Religious Life in the Middle Ages]; treatise 60), Berlin: LIT Verlag, →ISBN, part I (Creation of Norms), page 35:
2
Catholicism, Christianity, Roman CatholicismUK, Historical Of or pertaining to cisalpinism (“a movement in 18th–19th century Britain among Roman Catholics which took the view that allegiance to the Crown was compatible with allegiance to the pope, and that Roman Catholics should be emancipated from various legal restrictions”).
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, […]1824, Francis Plowden, “Of Tithes and Other Church Property”, in Human Subordination: Being an Elementary Disquisition Concerning the Civil and Spiritual Power and Authority, to which the Creator Requires the Submission of Every Human Being. […], Paris: Printed by J. Smith, […], and published by W[illiam] Simpkin and R[ichard] Marshall, […], →OCLC, page 72:
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; […]1936 May, Joscelyne Lechmere, “A Great Catholic Historian. John, Cardinal Lingard, 1771–1851”, in The Ecclesiastical Review: Monthly Publication for the Clergy, volume IV (10th series; volume XCIV overall), number 5, Philadelphia, Pa.: Board of Trustees of the American Ecclesiastical Review for the Catholic University of America, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 474:
Cæsar had by this time nearly 30,000 men. The Cisalpine territories in mere enthusiasm had raised twenty-two cohorts for him.1879, James Anthony Froude, chapter XXI, in Cæsar: A Sketch, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 356:
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.1927, José-Maria de Heredia, “Villula”, in Merle St. Croix Wright, transl., Translations from José-Maria de Heredia, New York, N.Y.: Harold Vinal, →OCLC, page 49:
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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.2018, Carolynn E[lizabeth] Roncaglia, “The Roman Conquest”, in Northern Italy in the Roman World: From the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, Part I (The Creation of Northern Italy), page 23: