What was gallicanism

DuChesnay, C. Berthelot, and J. Edited by the Catholic University of America, 73— Pierre Dupuy. Lyon, France: P. Ponthus, This edition stands near the end of that tradition and is available in digitized form beginning at online. Philippi Propi Biturici. The standard edition of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges with its commentaries, which formed much of the juristic basis of Gallicanism. Available online. Paris: Flammarion, This history of church and state in France or Gaul since the end of the Roman Empire includes what is certainly the broadest survey of Gallicanism yet.

Paris: Guillaume Desprez, The official acts of the Assembly of the French Clergy, a frequent though conflicted defender of the liberties of the Gallican Church. Oakley, Francis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Not all Conciliarists were Gallicans, but almost all Gallicans were Conciliarists. This survey of the Conciliarist movement provides essential background to all phases of Gallicanism.

Edited by Claude Sutto. A modern edition of a seminal anti-Jesuit, pro-Gallican text. This is to be the work of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. In that instrument the clergy of France inserted the articles of Constance repeated at Basle, and upon that warrant assumed authority to regulate the collation of benefices and the temporal administration of the Churches on the sole basis of the common law , under the king's patronage, and independently of the pope's action.

But, if its provisions disappeared from the laws of France , the principles it embodied for a time none the less continued to inspire the schools of theology and parliamentary jurisprudence. Those principles even appeared at the Council of Trent , where the ambassadors, theologians , and bishops of France repeatedly championed them, notably when the questions for decision were as to whether episcopal jurisdiction comes immediately from God or through the pope , whether or not the council ought to ask confirmation of its decrees from the sovereign pontiff , etc.

Then again, it was in the name of the Liberties of the Gallican Church that a part of the clergy and the Parlementaires opposed the publication of that same council; and the crown decided to detach from it and publish what seemed good, in the form of ordinances emanating from the royal authority.

Nevertheless, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the reaction against the Protestant denial of all authority to the pope and, above all, the triumph of the League had enfeebled Gallican convictions in the minds of the clergy , if not of the parliament. But the assassination of Henry IV , which was exploited to move public opinion against Ultramontanism and the activity of Edmond Richer, syndic of the Sorbonne , brought about, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a strong revival of Gallicanism, which was thenceforward to continue gaining in strength from day to day.

In the Sorbonne solemnly declared that it admitted no authority of the pope over the king's temporal dominion, nor his superiority to a general council , nor infallibility apart from the Church's consent.

In matters were much worse. Louis XIV having decided to extend to all the Churches of his kingdom the regale, or right of receiving the revenue of vacant sees, and of conferring the sees themselves at his pleasure, Pope Innocent XI strongly opposed the king's designs. Irritated by this resistance, the king assembled the clergy of France and, on 19 March, , the thirty-six prelates and thirty-four deputies of the second order who constituted that assembly adopted the four articles recited above and transmitted them to all the other bishops and archbishops of France.

Three days later the king commanded the registration of the articles in all the schools and faculties of theology ; no one could even be admitted to degrees in theology without having maintained this doctrine in one of his theses and it was forbidden to write anything against them.

The Sorbonne, however, yielded to the ordinance of registration only after a spirited resistance. Pope Innocent XI testified his displeasure by the Rescript of 11 April, , in which he voided and annulled all that the assembly had done in regard to the regale, as well as all the consequences of that action; he also refused Bulls to all members of the assembly who were proposed for vacant bishoprics. In like manner his successor Alexander VIII by a Constitution dated 4 August, , quashed as detrimental to the Holy See the proceedings both in the matter of the regale and in that of the declaration on the ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction , which had been prejudicial to the clerical estate and order.

The bishops designate to whom Bulls had been refused received them at length, in , only after addressing to Pope Innocent XII a letter in which they disavowed everything that had been decreed in that assembly in regard to the ecclesiastical power and the pontifical authority.

The king himself wrote to the pope 14 September, to announce that a royal order had been issued against the execution of the edict of 23 March, In spite of these disavowals, the Declaration of remained thenceforward the living symbol of Gallicanism, professed by the great majority of the French clergy , obligatorily defended in the faculties of theology , schools , and seminaries , guarded from the lukewarmness of French theologians and the attacks of foreigners by the inquisitorial vigilance of the French parliaments, which never failed to condemn to suppression every work that seemed hostile to the principles of the Declaration.

From France Gallicanism spread, about the middle of the eighteenth century, into the Low Countries, thanks to the works of the jurisconsult Van-Espen. Under the pseudonym of Febronius, Hontheim introduced it into Germany where it took the forms of Febronianism and Josephism. The Council of Pistoia even tried to acclimatize it in Italy. But its diffusion was sharply arrested by the Revolution , which took away its chief support by overturning the thrones of kings.

Against the Revolution that drove them out and wrecked their sees, nothing was left to the bishops of France but to link themselves closely with the Holy See. When the Vatican Council opened, in , it had in France only timid defenders. When that council declared that the pope has in the Church the plenitude of jurisdiction in matters of faith , morals discipline, and administration that his decisions ex cathedra.

Three of the four articles were directly condemned. As to the remaining one, the first, the council made no specific declaration; but an important indication of the Catholic doctrine was given in the condemnation fulminated by Pius IX against the 24th proposition of the Syllabus, in which it was asserted that the Church cannot have recourse to force and is without any temporal authority, direct or indirect.

Leo XIII shed more direct light upon the question in his Encyclical "Immortale Dei" 12 November, , where we read: " God has apportioned the government of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the former set over things divine, the latter over things human. Each is restricted within limits which are perfectly determined and defined in conformity with its own nature and special aim. There is therefore, as it were a circumscribed sphere in which each exercises its functions jure proprio ".

And in the Encyclical "Sapientiae Christianae" 10 January, , the same pontiff adds: "The Church and the State have each its own power, and neither of the two powers is subject to the other. Critical examination The principal force of Gallicanism always was that which it drew from the external circumstances in which it arose and grew up: the difficulties of the Church , torn by schism ; the encroachments of the civil authorities ; political turmoil; the interested support of the kings of France.

None the less does it seek to establish its own right to exist, and to legitimize its attitude towards the theories of the schools. There is no denying that it has had in its service a long succession of theologians and jurists who did much to assure its success. At the beginning, its first advocates were Pierre d'Ailly and Gerson , whose somewhat daring theories, reflecting the then prevalent disorder of ideas , were to triumph in the Council of Constance.

In the sixteenth century Almain and Major make but a poor figure in contrast with Torquemada and Cajetan, the leading theorists of pontifical primacy. But in the seventeenth century the Gallican doctrine takes its revenge with Richer and Launoy, who throw as much passion as science into their efforts to shake the work of Bellarmine , the most solid edifice ever raised in defence of the Church's constitution and the papal supremacy.

Pithou, Dupuy, and Marca edited texts or disinterred from archives the judicial monuments best calculated to support parliamentary Gallicanism. After the attack and defence of Gallicanism were concentrated almost entirely upon the four Articles. While Charlas in his anonymous treatise on the Liberties of the Catholic Church , d'Aguirre, in his "Auctoritas infallibilis et summa sancti Petri", Rocaberti, in his treatise "De Romani pontificis auctoritate", Sfondrato, in his "Gallia vindicata", dealt severe blows at the doctrine of the Declaration, Alexander Natalis and Ellies Dupin searched ecclesiastical history for titles on which to support it.

Bossuet carried on the defence at once on the ground of theology and of history. In his "Defensio declarationis", which was not to see the light of day until , he discharged his task with equal scientific power and moderation.

But the strife is prolonged beyond its interest; except for the bearing of some few arguments on either side, nothing that is altogether new, after all, is adduced for or against, and it may be said that with Bossuet's work Gallicanism had reached its full development, sustained its sharpest assaults, and exhibited its most efficient means of defence.

Those means are well known. For the absolute independence of the civil power , affirmed in the first Article, Gallicans drew their argument from the proposition that the theory of indirect power, accepted by Bellarmine , is easily reducible to that of direct power, which he did not accept.

That theory was a novelty introduced into the Church by Gregory VII ; until his time the Christian peoples and the popes had suffered injustice from princes without asserting for themselves the right to revolt or to excommunicate. As for the superiority of councils over popes , as based upon the decrees of the Council of Constance , the Gallicans essayed to defend it chiefly by appealing to the testimony of history which, according to them, shows that general councils have never been dependent on the popes , but had been considered the highest authority for the settlement of doctrinal disputes or the establishment of disciplinary regulations.

The third Article was supported by the same arguments or upon the declarations of the popes. It is true that that Article made respect for the canons a matter rather of high propriety than of obligation for the Holy See. Besides, the canons alleged were among those that had been established with the consent of the pope and of the Churches, the plenitude of the pontifical jurisdiction was therefore safeguarded and Bossuet pointed out that this article had called forth hardly any protests from the adversaries of Gallicanism.

It was not so with the fourth Article, which implied a negation of papal infallibility. Cyprian , St. Augustine , St. Basil , St. Only the line of popes , the Apostolic See , was infallible ; but each pope , taken individually, was liable to error. This is not the place to discuss the force of this line of argument, or set forth the replies which it elicited; such an enquiry will more appropriately form part of the article devoted to the primacy of the Roman See.

Without involving ourselves in technical developments, however, we may call attention to the weakness, of the Scriptural scaffolding upon which Gallicanism supported its fabric. Supposing there were any doubt of Christ's having promised infallibility to Peter, it is perfectly certain that He did not promise it to the council, or to the See of Rome , neither of which is named in the Gospel.

It does not belong to one part of the Church to decide what council is oecumenical, and what is not. By what right was this honour refused in France to the Councils of Florence and the Lateran , and accorded to that of Constance? Why, above all, should we attribute to the decision of this council, which was only a temporary expedient to escape from a deadlock, the force of a general principle, a dogmatic decree?

Gallicanism eventually merged with Catholic liberalism, which was similarly denounced until the end of the 19th century. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password.

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