Gallicanism
Papal primacy, supremacy and infallibility |
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Gallicanism is the belief that popular
Gallicanism originated in France (the term derives from Gallia, the Latin name of Gaul), and is unrelated to the first-millennium Catholic Gallican Rite. In the 18th century, it spread to the Low Countries, especially the Netherlands. The University of Notre Dame professor John McGreevy defines it as "the notion that national customs might trump Roman (Catholic Church) regulations."[2]
Background
Gallicanism is a group of religious opinions that was for some time peculiar to the Catholic Church in France. These opinions were in opposition to the ideas which were called ultramontane,[3] which means "across the mountains" (the Alps). Ultramontanism affirmed the authority of the pope over the temporal kingdoms of the rest of Europe, particularly emphasizing a supreme episcopate for the pope holding universal immediate jurisdiction.[4] This eventually led to the definition by the Roman Catholic Church of the dogma of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.
Gallicanism tended to restrain the pope's authority in favour of that of
General notions
The Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682 is made up of four articles:[3]
- St. Peter and the popes, his successors, and the Church itself have dominion from God only over things spiritual and not over things temporal and civil. Therefore, kings and sovereigns are not beholden to the church in deciding temporal things. They cannot be deposed by the church and their subjects cannot be absolved by the church from their oaths of allegiance.[3]
- The authority in things spiritual belongs to the Holy See and the successors of St. Peter, and does not affect the decrees of the Council of Constance contained in the fourth and fifth sessions of that council, which is observed by the Gallican Church. The Gallicans do not approve of casting slurs on those decrees.[3]
- The exercise of this Apostolic authority (puissance) must be regulated in accordance with canons (rules) established by the Holy Spirit through the centuries of Church history.[3]
- Although the pope has 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.[3]
According to the initial Gallican theory, then, papal primacy was limited first by the temporal power of monarchs, which, by divine will, was inviolable. Secondly, it was limited by the authority of the general councils and the bishops, and lastly by the canons and customs of particular churches, which the pope was bound to take into account when he exercised his authority.[3]
Gallicanism was more than pure theory – the bishops and magistrates of France used it, the former to increase power in the government of dioceses, the latter to extend their jurisdiction so as to cover ecclesiastical affairs. There also 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, and the latter augmented the rights of the state.[3]
There were eighty-three "Liberties of the Gallican Church", according to a collection drawn up by the
- The Kings of France had the right to assemble councils in their dominions, and to make laws and regulations touching ecclesiastical matters.[3]
- 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.[3]
- Bishops, even when commanded by the pope, could not go out of the kingdom without the king's consent.[3]
- Royal officers could not be excommunicated for any act performed in the discharge of their official duties.[3]
- The pope could not authorize the alienation of any landed estate of the Churches, or the diminishing of any foundations.[3]
- His
- He could not issue
- It was lawful to appeal from him to a future council, or to have recourse to the "appeal as from an abuse" against acts of the ecclesiastical power.[3]
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.[3]
History
John Kilcullen wrote, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, that "in France conciliarism was one of the sources of Gallicanism."[6]
Proponents of Gallicanism presented a number of theories as to its origin.
- The more moderate held that 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 of France. Thus the extension of the king's authority ecclesiastical matters was not new. This idea appeared as early as the reign of King Philip IV, in some of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Pope Boniface VIII. In the view of some partisans of the theory, the popes had always thought fit to show special 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.[7]
- Others dated the Gallican approach to the time of the early Carolingians, and explaining them somewhat differently, when the popes found it necessary to delegate certain prerogatives to the king in order that some control be exerted on the Frankish nobles who had taken possession of episcopal sees. The popes had, therefore, granted to Carloman, Pepin, and Charlemagne a spiritual authority which they were to exercise only under papal control; which authority had been inherited by their successors, the Kings of France.[3]
The majority of Gallicans rejected the first theory that described the Gallican liberties as time-honored privileges, since a privilege can always be revoked by the authority which granted it. This was unacceptable, as they maintained that the pope had no power to revoke them. The Ultramontanes pointed out that in that case, such liberties would also be claimed by the German emperors, also heirs of Charlemagne, and that was not the case. Moreover, some privileges the pope cannot grant, such as allowing any kings the privilege of suppressing or curtailing his liberty of communicating with the faithful in a particular territory.[3]
Most of its partisans regarded Gallicanism as a revival of the most ancient traditions of
The early Middle Ages
This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (March 2019) |
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
In truth, that Church, during the
From Pepin to the Reformation
The accession of the Carolingian 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 made the point of securing the assent of
With the first
In the following two centuries we can still see no clear evidence of Gallicanism. The pontifical power attains its apogee in France as elsewhere,
At the opening of the fourteenth century, however, the conflict between Philip IV and Boniface VIII brought out the first glimmerings of the Gallican ideas. That king did not confine himself to maintaining that, as sovereign, he was the sole and independent master of his temporalities; he proclaimed that, in virtue of the concession made by the pope, with the assent of a general council to Charlemagne and his successors, he had the right to dispose of vacant ecclesiastical benefices. With the consent of the nobility, the
The idea of a council naturally suggested itself as a means of healing that unfortunate division of Christendom. Upon that idea was soon grafted the
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
After the Reformation
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 revival of Gallicanism. In 1663 the Sorbonne 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.[3]
In 1682,
In the same way
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.[3]
From France Gallicanism spread, about the middle of the eighteenth century, into the Low Countries, thanks to the works of the jurisconsult
When the First 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 in administration, that his decisions ex cathedra are of themselves, and without the assent of the Church, infallible and irreformable,[8] it dealt Gallicanism a fatal 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 Pope Pius IX against the 24th proposition of the Syllabus of Errors, in which it was asserted that the Church cannot have recourse to force and is without any temporal authority, direct or indirect. Pope 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."[3]
See also
- Caesaropapism
- Catholicism in France
- Donation of Constantine
- Erastianism
- Febronianism
- Église gallicane, 'Gallican Church'
- Interdict (Catholic canon law)
- Josephinism
- Papal supremacy
- Patronato real
- Political Catholicism
- Regalism
- Syllabus of Errors
- Symphonia (theology)
- Temporal power (papal)
- Two kingdoms doctrine
- Ultramontanism
- Anticurialism
References
- ISBN 978-0-8132-1637-9, retrieved 1 November 2020
- ^ Catholicism and American Freedom, John McGreevy Norton and Co., New York 2003, p. 26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Degert, A. (1913). "Gallicanism". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- ^ Belshaw, J. (13 April 2015). 11.5 Ultramontanism and Secularism. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/preconfederation/chapter/11-5-ultramontanism-and-secularism/
- ^ Wolfe, M. (2005). JOTHAM PARSONS. The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. 2004. Pp. ix, 322. $59.95. The American Historical Review, 110(4), 1254–1255. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.110.4.1254-a
- ^
Kilcullen, John (2012) [First published 14 July 2006]. "Medieval Political Philosophy". In LCCN 2004615159. Archivedfrom the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-349-23245-1, retrieved 1 November 2020
- ^ O'Connell, M. R. (1984). Ultramontanism and Dupanloup: The Compromise of 1865. Church History, 53(2), 200–217. http://doi.org.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/10.2307/3165356
Sources
- Website of the Gallican Church (l'Eglise Gallicane )
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Löffler, Klemens (1913). "Pragmatic Sanction". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- P. Babut, "La plus ancienne décrétale", Paris, 1904 (in French, referenced implicitly by the Catholic Encyclopedia article).
- Cardinal Giovanni Battista De Luca: Nepotism in the Seventeenth-century Catholic Church and De Luca's Efforts to Prohibit the Practice
- Rothrock, George A. "The French Crown and the Estates General of 1614". French Historical Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, 1960, pp. 295–318. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/285971.
- Thompson, D. (1986). General Ricci and the Suppression of the Jesuit Order in France 1760–4. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 37(3), 426–441. doi:10.1017/S0022046900021485