Gallicanism

This term is used to designate a certain group of religious
opinions for some time peculiar to the Church of France, or
Gallican Church, and the theological schools of that country.
These opinions, in opposition to the ideas which were called in
France "Ultramontane", tended chiefly to a restraint of the pope's
authority in the Church in favour of that of the bishops and the
temporal ruler. It is important, however, to remark at the outset
that the warmest and most accredited partisans of Gallican ideas
by no means contested the pope's primacy in the Church, and never
claimed for their ideas the force of articles of faith. They aimed
only at making it clear that their way of regarding the authority
of the pope seemed to them more in conformity with Holy Scripture
and tradition. At the same time, their theory did not, as they
regarded it, transgress the limits of free opinions, which it is
allowable for any theological school to choose for itself provided
that the Catholic Creed be duly accepted.

General Notions

Nothing can better serve the purpose of presenting an exposition
at once exact and complete of the Gallican ideas than a summary of
the famous Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682. Here, for
the first time, those ideas are organized into a system, and
receive their official and definitive formula. Stripped of the
arguments which accompany it, the doctrine of the Declaration
reduces to the following four articles:

1.St. Peter and the popes, his successors, and the Church itself
have received dominion [puissance] from God only over things
spiritual and such as concern salvation and not over things
temporal and civil. Hence kings and sovereigns are not by God's
command subject to any ecclesiastical dominion in things temporal;
they cannot be deposed, whether directly or indirectly, by the
authority of the rulers of the Church, their subjects cannot be
dispensed from that submission and obedience which they owe, or
absolved from the oath of allegiance. 2.The plenitude of authority
in things spiritual, which belongs to the Holy See and the
successors of St. Peter, in no wise affects the permanence and
immovable strength of the decrees of the Council of Constance
contained in the fourth and fifth sessions of that council,
approved by the Holy See, confirmed by the practice of the whole
Church and the Roman pontiff, and observed in all ages by the
Gallican Church. That Church does not countenance the opinion of
those who cast a slur on those decrees, or who lessen their force
by saying that their authority is not well established, that they
are not approved or that they apply only to the period of the
schism. 3.The exercise of this Apostolic authority [puissance]
must also be regulated in accordance with the canons made by the
Spirit of God and consecrated by the respect of the whole world.
The rules, customs and constitutions received within the kingdom
and the Gallican Church must have their force and their effect,
and the usages of our fathers remain inviolable since the dignity
of the Apostolic See itself demands that the laws and customs
established by consent of that august see and of the Churches be
constantly maintained. 4.Although the pope have the chief part in
questions of faith, and his decrees apply to all the Churches, and
to each Church in particular, yet his judgment is not
irreformable, at least pending the consent of the Church.

According to the Gallican theory, then, the papal primacy was
limited, first, by the temporal power of princes, which, by the
Divine will, was inviolable; secondly by the authority of the
general council and that of the bishops, who alone could, by their
assent, give to his decrees that infallible authority which, of
themselves, they lacked; lastly, by the canons and customs of
particular Churches, which the pope was bound to take into account
when he exercised his authority.

But Gallicanism was more than pure speculation. It reacted from
the domain of theory into that of facts. The bishops and
magistrates of France used it, the former as warrant for increased
power in the government of dioceses, the latter to extend their
jurisdiction so as to cover ecclesiastical affairs. Moreover,
there was an episcopal and political Gallicanism, and a
parliamentary or judicial Gallicanism. The former lessened the
doctrinal authority of the pope in favour of that of the bishops,
to the degree marked by the Declaration of 1682; the latter,
affecting the relations of the temporal and spiritual powers,
tended to augment the rights of the State more and more, to the
prejudice of those of the Church, on the grounds of what they
called "the Liberties of the Gallican Church" (Libertes de
l'Eglise Gallicane).

These Liberties, which are enumerated in a collection, or corpus,
drawn up by the jurisconsults Guy Coquille and Pierre Pithou,
were, according to the latter, eighty-three in number. Besides the
four articles cited above, which were incorporated, the following
may be noted as among the more important: The Kings of France had
the right to assemble councils in their dominions, and to make
laws and regulations touching ecclesiastical matters. The pope's
legates could not be sent into France, or exercise their power
within that kingdom, except at the king's request or with his
consent. Bishops, even when commanded by the pope, could not go
out of the kingdom without the king's consent. The royal officers
could not be excommunicated for any act performed in the discharge
of their official duties. The pope could not authorize the
alienation of any landed estate of the Churches, or the
diminishing of any foundations. His Bulls and Letters might not be
executed without the Pareatis of the king or his officers. He
could not issue dispensations to the prejudice of the laudable
customs and statutes of the cathedral Churches. It was lawful to
appeal from him to a future council, or to have recourse to the
"appeal as from an abuse" (appel comme d'abus) against acts of the
ecclesiastical power.

Parliamentary Gallicanism, therefore, was of much wider scope than
episcopal; indeed, it was often disavowed by the bishops of
France, and about twenty of them condemned Pierre Pithou's book
when a new edition of it was published, in 1638, by the brothers
Dupuy.

Origin and History

The Declaration of 1682 and the work of Pithou codified the
principles of Gallicanism, but did not create them. We have to
inquire, then, how there came to be formed in the bosom of the
Church of France a body of doctrines and practices which tended to
isolate it, and to impress upon it a physiognomy somewhat
exceptional in the Catholic body. Gallicans have held that the
reason of this phenomenon is to be found in the very origin and
history of Gallicanism.

For the more moderate among them, Gallican ideas and liberties
were simply privileges -- concessions made by the popes, who had
been quite willing to divest themselves of a part of their
authority in favour of the bishops or kings or France. It was thus
that the latter could lawfully stretch their powers in
ecclesiastical matters beyond the normal limits. This idea made
its appearance as early as the reign of Philip the Fair, in some
of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Boniface
VIII. In the view of some partisans of the theory, the popes had
always thought fit to show especial consideration for the ancient
customs of the Gallican Church, which in every age had
distinguished itself by its exactitude in the preservation of the
Faith and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. Others,
again, assigned a more precise date to the granting of these
concessions, referring their origin to the period of the earliest
Carlovingians and explaining them somewhat differently. They said
that the popes had found it impossible to recall to their
allegiance and to due respect for ecclesiastical discipline the
Frankish lords who had possessed themselves of episcopal sees;
that these lords, insensible to censures and anathemas, rude and
untaught, recognized no authority but that of force; and that the
popes had, therefore, granted to Carloman, Pepin, and Charles the
Great a spiritual authority which they were to exercise only under
papal control. It was this authority that the Kings of France,
successors of these princes, had inherited. This theory comes into
collision with difficulties so serious as to have caused its
rejection as well by the majority of Gallicans as by their
Ultramontane adversaries. The former by no means admitted that the
Liberties were privileges since a privilege can be revoked by him
who has granted it; and, as they regarded the matter, these
Liberties could not be touched by any pope. Moreover, they added,
the Kings of France have at times received from the popes certain
clearly defined privileges; these privileges have never been
confounded with the Gallican Liberties. As a matter of fact,
historians could have told them, the privileges accorded by popes
to the King of France in the course of centuries are known from
the texts, of which an authentic collection could be compiled, and
there is nothing in them resembling the Liberties in question.
Again, why should not these Gallican Liberties have been
transmitted to the German Emperors as well since they, too, were
the heirs of Pepin and Charlemagne? Besides, the Ultramontanes
pointed out there are some privileges which the pope himself could
not grant. Is it conceivable that a pope should allow any group of
bishops the privilege of calling his infallibility in question,
putting his doctrinal decisions upon trial, to be accepted or
rejected? -- or grant any kings the privilege of placing his
primacy under tutelage by suppressing or curtailing his liberty of
communication with the faithful in a certain territory?

Most of its partisans regarded Gallicanism rather as a revival of
the most ancient traditions of Christianity, a persistence of the
common law, which law, according to some (Pithou, Quesnel), was
made up of the conciliar decrees of the earliest centuries or,
according to others (Marca, Bossuet), of canons of the general and
local councils, and the decretals, ancient and modern, which were
received in France or conformable to their usage. "Of all
Christian countries", says Fleury, "France has been the most
careful to conserve the liberty of her Church and oppose the
novelties introduced by Ultramontane canonists". The Liberties
were so called, because the innovations constituted conditions of
servitude with which the popes had burdened the Church, and their
legality resulted from the fact that the extension given by the
popes to their own primacy was founded not upon Divine
institution, but upon the false Decretals. If we are to credit
these authors, what the Gallicans maintained in 1682 was not a
collection of novelties, but a body of beliefs as old as the
Church, the discipline of the first centuries. The Church of
France had upheld and practised them at all times; the Church
Universal had believed and practised them of old, until about the
tenth century; St. Louis had supported, but not created, them by
the Pragmatic Sanction; the Council of Constance had taught them
with the pope's approbation. Gallican ideas, then, must have had
no other origin than that of Christian dogma and ecclesiastical
discipline. It is for history to tell us what these assertions of
the Gallican theorists were worth.

To the similarity of the historical vicissitudes through which
they passed, their common political allegiance, and the early
appearance of a national sentiment, the Churches of France owed it
that they very soon formed an individual, compact, and homogeneous
body. From the end of the fourth century the popes themselves
recognized this solidarity. It was to the "Gallican" bishops that
Pope Damasus -- as M. Babut seems to have demonstrated recently --
addressed the most ancient decretal which has been preserved to
our times. Two centuries later St. Gregory the Great pointed out
the Gallican Church to his envoy Augustine, the Apostle of
England, as one of those whose customs he might accept as of equal
stability with those of the Roman Church or of any other
whatsoever. But already -- if we are to believe the young
historian just mentioned -- a Council of Turin, at which bishops
of the Gauls assisted, had given the first manifestation of
Gallican sentiment. Unfortunately for M. Babut's thesis, all the
significance which he attaches to this council depends upon the
date, 417, ascribed to it by him, on the mere strength of a
personal conjecture, in opposition to the most competent
historians. Besides, It is not at all plain how a council of the
Province of Milan is to be taken as representing the ideas of the
Gallican Church.

In truth, that Church, during the Merovingian period, testifies
the same deference to the Holy See as do all the others. Ordinary
questions of discipline are in the ordinary course settled in
councils, often held with the assent of the kings, but on great
occasions -- at the Councils of Epaone (517), of Vaison (529), of
Valence (529), of Orleans (538), of Tours (567) -the bishops do
not fail to declare that they are acting under the impulse of the
Holy See, or defer to its admonitions; they take pride in the
approbation of the pope; they cause his name to be read aloud in
the churches, just as is done in Italy and in Africa they cite his
decretals as a source of ecclesiastical law; they show indignation
at the mere idea that anyone should fail in consideration for
them. Bishops condemned in councils -- like Salonius of Embrun
Sagitarius of Gap, Contumeliosus of Riez -- have no difficulty in
appealing to the pope, who, after examination, either confirms or
rectifies the sentence pronounced against them.

The accession of the Carlovingian dynasty is marked by a splendid
act of homage paid in France to the power of the papacy: before
assuming the title of king, Pepin makes a point of securing the
assent of Pope Zachary. Without wishing to exaggerate the
significance of this act, the bearing of which the Gallicans have
done every thing to minimize, one may be permitted to see in it
the evidence that, even before Gregory VII, public opinion in
France was not hostile to the intervention of the pope in
political affairs. From that time on, the advances of the Roman
primacy find no serious opponents in France before Hincmar, the
famous Archbishop of Reims, in whom some have been willing to see
the very founder of Gallicanism. It is true that with him there
already appears the idea that the pope must limit his activity to
ecclesiastical matters, and not intrude in those pertaining to the
State, which concern kings only; that his supremacy is bound to
respect the prescriptions of the ancient canons and the privileges
of the Churches; that his decretals must not be placed upon the
same footing as the canons of the councils. But it appears that we
should see here the expression of passing feelings, inspired by
the particular circumstances, much rather than a deliberate
opinion maturely conceived and conscious of its own meaning. The
proof of this is in the fact that Hincmar himself, when his claims
to the metropolitan dignity are not in question, condemns very
sharply, though at the risk of self-contradiction, the opinion of
those who think that the king is subject only to God, and he makes
it his boast to "follow the Roman Church whose teachings", he says
quoting the famous words of Innocent I, "are imposed upon all
men". His attitude, at any rate, stands out as an isolated
accident; the Council of Troyes (867) proclaims that no bishop can
be deposed without reference to the Holy See, and the Council of
Douzy (871), although held under the influence of Hincmar condemns
the Bishop of Laon only under reserve of the rights of the pope.

With the first Capets the secular relations between the pope and
the Gallican Church appeared to be momentarily strained. At the
Councils of Saint-Basle de Verzy (991) and of Chelles (c. 993), in
the discourses of Arnoul, Bishop of Orleans, in the letters of
Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II, sentiments of violent
hostility to the Holy See are manifested, and an evident
determination to elude the authority in matters of discipline
which had until then been recognized as belonging to it. But the
papacy at that period, given over to the tyranny of Crescentius
and other local barons, was undergoing a melancholy obscuration.
When it regained its independence, its old authority in France
came back to it, the work of the Councils of Saint-Basle and of
Chelles was undone; princes like Hugh Capet, bishops like Gerbert,
held no attitude but that of submission. It has been said that
during the early Capetian period the pope was more powerful in
France than he had ever been. Under Gregory VII the pope's legates
traversed France from north to south, they convoked and presided
over numerous councils, and, in spite of sporadic and incoherent
acts of resistance, they deposed bishops and excommunicated
princes just as in Germany and Spain

In the following two centuries Gallicanism is even yet unborn; the
pontifical power attains its apogee in France as elsewhere, St.
Bernard, then the standard bearer of the University of Paris, and
St. Thomas outline the theory of that power, and their opinion is
that of the school in accepting the attitude of Gregory VII and
his successors in regard to delinquent princes, St. Louis, of whom
it has been sought to make a patron of the Gallican system, is
still ignorant of it -- for the fact is now established that the
Pragmatic Sanction, long attributed to him was a wholesale
fabrication put together (about 1445) in the purlieus of the Royal
Chancellery of Charles VII to lend countenance to the Pragmatic
Sanction of Bourges.

At the opening of the fourteenth century, however, the conflict
between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII brings out the first
glimmerings of the Gallican ideas. That king does not confine
himself to maintaining that, as sovereign he is sole and
independent master of his temporalities; he haughtily proclaims
that, in virtue of the concession made by the pope, with the
assent of a general council to Charlemagne and his successors, he
has the right to dispose of vacant ecclesiastical benefices. With
the consent of the nobility, the Third Estate, and a great part of
the clergy, he appeals in the matter from Boniface VIII to a
future general council -- the implication being that the council
is superior to the pope. The same ideas and others still more
hostile to the Holy See reappear in the struggle of Fratricelles
and Louis of Bavaria against John XXII; they are expressed by the
pens of William Occam, of John of Jandun, and of Marsilius of
Padua, professors in the University of Paris. Among other things,
they deny the Divine origin of the papal primacy, and subject the
exercise of it to the good pleasure of the temporal ruler.
Following the pope, the University of Paris condemned these views;
but for all that they did not entirely disappear from the memory,
or from the disputations, of the schools, for the principal work
of Marsilius, "Defensor Pacis", wax translated into French in
1375, probably by a professor of the University of Paris The Great
Schism reawakened them suddenly. The idea of a council naturally
suggested itself as a means of terminating that melancholy rending
asunder of Christendom. Upon that idea was soon grafted the
"conciliary theory", which sets the council above the pope, making
it the sole representative of the Church, the sole organ of
infallibility. Timidly sketched by two professors of the
University of Paris, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of
Langenstein, this theory was completed and noisily interpreted to
the public by Pierre d'Ailly and Gerson. At the same time the
clergy of France, disgusted with Benedict XIII, took upon itself
to withdraw from his obedience. It was in the assembly which voted
on this measure (1398) that for the first time there was any
question of bringing back the Church of France to its ancient
liberties and customs -- of giving its prelates once more the
right of conferring and disposing of benefices. The same idea
comes into the foreground in the claims put, forward in 1406 by
another assembly of the French clergy; to win the votes of the
assembly, certain orators cited the example of what was happening
in England. M. Haller has concluded from this that these so-called
Ancient Liberties were of English origin, that the Gallican Church
really borrowed them from its neighbour, only imagining them to be
a revival of its own past. This opinion does not seem well
founded. The precedents cited by M. Haller go back to the
parliament held at Carlisle in 1307, at which date the tendencies
of reaction against papa reservations had already manifested
themselves in the assemblies convoked by Philip the Fair in 1302
and 1303. The most that we can admit is, that the same ideas
received parallel development from both sides of the channel.

Together with the restoration of the "Ancient Liberties" the
assembly of the clergy in 1406 intended to maintain the
superiority of the council to the pope, and the fallibility of the
latter. However widely they may have been accepted at the time,
these were only individual opinions or opinions of a school, when
the Council of Constance came to give them the sanction of its
high authority. In its fourth and fifth sessions it declared that
the council represented the Church that every person, no matter of
what dignity, even the pope, was bound to obey it in what
concerned the extirpation of the schism and the reform of the
Church; that even the pope, if he resisted obstinately, might be
constrained by process of law to obey It in the above-mentioned
points. This was the birth or, if we prefer to call it so, the
legitimation of Gallicanism. So far we bad encountered in the
history of the Gallican Church recriminations of malcontent
bishops, or a violent gesture of some prince discomforted in his
avaricious designs; but these were only fits of resentment or ill
humor, accidents with no attendant consequences; this time the
provisions made against exercise of the pontifical authority took
to themselves a body and found a fulcrum. Gallicanism has
implanted itself in the minds of men as a national doctrine e and
it only remains to apply it in practice. 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. From Eugene IV to Leo X the
popes did not cease to protest against the Pragmatic Sanction,
until it was replaced by the Concordat of 1516. 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 1663 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 1682 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, 1682, 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,
1682, 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, 1690,
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 1693, 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, 1693) to
announce that a royal order had been issued against the execution
of the edict of 23 March, 1682. In spite of these disavowals, the
Declaration of 1682 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 (1786) 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. After the
Concordat of 1801 -- itself the most dazzling manifestation of the
pope's supreme power -- French Governments made some pretence of
reviving, in the Organic Articles, the "Ancient Gallican
Liberties" and the obligation of teaching the articles of 1682,
but ecclesiastical Gallicanism was never again resuscitated except
in the form of a vague mistrust of Rome. On the fall of Napoleon
and the Bourbons, the work of Lamennais, of "L'Avenir" and other
publications devoted to Roman ideas, the influence of Dom
Gueranger, and the effects of religious teaching ever increasingly
deprived it of its partisans. When the Vatican Council opened, in
1869, 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. are of themselves,
and without the assent of he Church, infallible and irreformable,
it dealt Gallicanism a mortal blow. 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, 1885), 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, 1890), 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."

Stricken to death, as a free opinion, by the Council of the
Vatican, Gallicanism could survive only as a heresy; the Old
Catholics have endeavoured to keep it alive under this form.
Judging by the paucity of the adherents whom they have recruited -
- daily becoming fewer -- in Germany and Switzerland, it seems
very evident that the historical evolution of these ideas has
reached its completion.

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 1682 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 1730,
he discharged his task with equal scientific power and moderation.
Again Gallicanism was ably combatted in the works of Muzzarelli,
Bianchi, and Ballerini, and upheld in those of Durand de Maillane,
La Luzerne, Maret and Doellinger. 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. Resting chiefly on history, the whole Gallican
argument reduced to the position that the Doctors of the Church --
St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St. Thomas, and the rest --
had not known pontifical infallibility; that pronouncements
emanating from the Holy See had been submitted to examination by
councils; that popes -- Liberius, Honorius, Zosimus, and others --
had promulgated erroneous dogmatic decisions. 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. Not only was it opposed by the luminous
clearness of Christ's words -- "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
will I build My Church"; "I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy
faith fail not . . . confirm thy brethren" -- but it finds nothing
in Scripture which could warrant the doctrine of the supremacy of
council or the distinction between the line of popes and the
individuals -- the Sedes and the Sedens. 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.

The pretension implied in Gallicanism -- that only the schools and
the churches of France possessed the truth as to the pope's
authority, that they had been better able than any others to
defend themselves against the encroachments of Rome -- was
insulting to the sovereign pontiff and invidious to the other
churches. 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 (1439)
and the Lateran (1513), 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? And moreover,
at the time when these decisions were taken, the council presented
neither the character, nor the conditions, nor the authority of a
general synod; it is not clear that among the majority of the
members there was present any intention of formulating a dogmatic
definition, nor is it proved that the approbation given by Martin
V to some of the decrees extended to these. Another characteristic
which is apt to diminish one's respect for Gallican ideas is their
appearance of having been too much influenced, originally and
evolutionally, by interested motives. Suggested by theologians who
were under bonds to the emperors, accepted as an expedient to
restore the unity of the Church, they had never been more loudly
proclaimed than in the course of the conflicts which arose between
popes and kings, and then always for the advantage of the latter.
In truth they savoured too much of a courtly bias. "The Gallican
Liberties", Joseph de Maistre has said, "are but a fatal compact
signed by the Church of France, in virtue of which she submitted
to the outrages of the Parliament on condition of being allowed to
pass them on to the sovereign pontiff". The history of the
assembly of 1682 is not such as to give the lie to this severe
judgment. It was a Gallican -- no other than Baillet -- who wrote:
"The bishops who served Philip the Fair were upright in heart and
seemed to be actuated by a genuine, if somewhat too vehement, zeal
for the rights of the Crown; whereas among those whose advice
Louis XIV followed there were some who, under pretext of the
public welfare, only sought to avenge themselves, by oblique and
devious methods, on those whom they regarded as the censors of
their conduct and their sentiments."

Even apart from every other consideration, the practical
consequences to which Gallicanism led, and the way in which the
State turned it to account should suffice to wean Catholics from
it forever. It was Gallicanism which allowed the Jansenists
condemned by popes to elude their sentences on the plea that these
had not received the assent of the whole episcopate. It was in the
name of Gallicanism that the kings of France impeded the
publication of the pope's instructions, and forbade the bishops to
hold provincial councils or to write against Jansenism -- or at
any rate, to publish charges without endorsement of the
chancellor. Bossuet himself, prevented from publishing a charge
against Richard Simon, was forced to complain that they wished "to
put all the bishops under the yoke in the essential matter of
their ministry, which is the Faith". Alleging the Liberties of the
Gallican Church, the French Parliaments admitted appels comme
d'abus against bishops who were guilty of condemning Jansenism, or
of admitting into their Breviaries the Office of St. Gregory,
sanctioned by Rome; and on the same general principle they caused
pastoral letters to be burned by the common executioner, or
condemned to imprisonment or exile priests whose only crime was
that of refusing the sacraments and Christian burial to Jansenists
in revolt against the most solemn pronouncements of the Holy See.
Thanks to these "Liberties", the jurisdiction and the discipline
of the Church were almost entirely in the hands of the civil
power, and Fenelon gave a fair idea of them when he wrote in one
of his letters: "In practice the king is more our head than the
pope, in France -- Liberties against the pope, servitude in
relation to the king -The king's authority over the Church
devolves upon the lay judges -- The laity dominate the bishops".
And Fenelon had not seen the Constituent Assembly of 1790 assume,
from Gallican principles, authority to demolish completely the
Constitution of the Church of France. For there is not one article
of that melancholy Constitution that did not find its inspiration
in the writings of Gallican jurists and theologians. We may be
excused the task of here entering into any lengthy proof of this;
indeed the responsibility which Gallicanism has to bear in the
sight of history and of Catholic doctrine is already only too
heavy.

A. DEGERT
Transcribed by Gerard Haffner


From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this  worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For  more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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