CAESARISM (CAESAROPAPISM). - It is a tendency by which, in the mutual relations between Church and State, there is assigned or recognized to the latter an interference or a preponderance that does not agree with the genuine teachings of legitimate ecclesiastical tradition on the matter. This tendency takes on different practical aspects according to the ages in which it manifests itself, to the point of reaching at certain moments a true exercise of jurisdiction by the State over the Church, in certain matters, and in particular over those which, more or less properly, are called mixed. The relations between the two supreme powers have always been delicate, either because of the material aids which, granted by the State to the Church, provoked the claim to a counterpart of concessions, or because of the arising of new questions which, with the changing of times and the demands of public life, impose special clarifications of relations.
Such problems are as ancient as Christianity; but as long as the Roman Empire considered it a religio illicita because dangerous, its relations could only be of open hostility or of wary tolerance; the conversion of Constantine changed them into open favor. Such favor immediately led the sovereign to regard it as an honor, indeed a duty, to provide the Church with stable means of subsistence, aid and defense against external and internal enemies; but from it there also came a counterpart of interference in the affairs of the Church, to regulate them, when it was deemed necessary, according to his own judgment, and this to the point of entering into dogmatic controversies, whenever these appeared attended by tumults. Not that the imperial authority set itself up as a direct judge in such controversies; it did, however, sometimes exert itself to solicit from the bishops the preferred decisions. This disposition or tendency certainly derived from the Roman tradition of the pontifex maximus, a dignity that was an attribute of the imperial power; but also from the fact that too many bishops, frequenting the imperial court and residing there for long periods, were disposed to solicit its favors and, in order to obtain them, to exaggerate its powers; while others hastened there under the pretext of obtaining redress, as a last court of appeal, against alleged injustices on the part of the legitimate ecclesiastical authority. By becoming the seat of the Empire in the East, Constantinople assumed the title of new Rome; and this new Rome, entirely Christian, relegated the old one to second place, especially when the latter found itself in a fully barbarian environment. The traditional concept of the primatial authority of St. Peter continuing in his successors was replaced by that of the bishop of this second Rome as the sole continuer of the Empire; in other words: a religious concept was replaced by a political-national concept, and it is precisely this that has subsequently informed, down to the present day in the East, the relations between the State and the individual dissident churches, insofar as these had formed part of the ancient imperial Church.
Meanwhile in the West the feudal regime of the medieval States created entirely different relations; it made the individual Churches into elements of the State as such; the Roman Church, however, remained outside this, although it too came to constitute for itself a State of which it was sovereign; but together with the Western Empire it formed a system of relations which, although not always peaceful, assured it a spiritual independence that was never belied.
It was only in the full Renaissance, with the rise of new ecclesiastical theories and finally with the denial of the concept of the visible Church militant on earth, precisely at the moment when the aspirations of the new nationalities were asserting themselves, that the Protestant Churches were constituted, intimately bound to the authority of the State and without independent vitality. The Anglican Church, which wished to preserve a hierarchy and an appearance of a Church, does not differ essentially in this regard from the other Protestant Churches, insofar as its existence and its teachings are bound by law to the arbitrary will of the political authority.
C. in its specific aspect, on the other hand, re-emerged in the Catholic States of the West, though never in the radical form of Byzantine c., in the 17th century, with the aim above all of limiting the authority of the Roman Pontiff within the bounds of the individual States, in order to replace it with the sovereign authority, to the point of reaching in Febronianism (v.) and Josephinism (v.) the most acute form of the system. It showed particular aversion to the doctrine of the indirect power of the Church in temporal matters; it wished to make the relations of the bishops with the Holy See as generic and as rare as possible, to limit the right of exemption of the regulars, to impose placet and exequatur on ecclesiastical letters and provisions, to subject to its own will the foundation and existence of religious institutes, the acquisition and alienation of their goods, the acceptance of appeals tamquam ab abusu from the sentences of the Pope and of the bishops, even to give new circumscriptions to dioceses and parishes; and it also claimed to legislate on matrimonial impediments.
The pretext for all this was the necessity of supplying the deficiencies of ecclesiastical power, of providing for sovereign dignity and of guarding against the excesses of the Church and against privileges held to be injurious to the national good. As is evident, one cannot speak of c. in those States that recognize no legitimate spiritual authority: in them religion is totally at the discretion of politics, which disposes of it for its own advantage.