CESARISM (CAESAROPAPISM). — It is a tendency by which, in the mutual relations between Church and State, the latter is granted or recognized an interference or preponderance that does not accord with the genuine teachings of legitimate ecclesiastical tradition on the matter. This tendency assumes different practical aspects according to the ages in which it manifests itself, up to the point of achieving at certain moments a true exercise of jurisdiction by the State over the Church in certain matters, and in particular in those that, more or less properly, are called mixed. The relations between the two supreme powers have always been delicate, either because of the material aid provided by the State to the Church, which provoked the claim of a corresponding return of concessions, or because of the arising of new questions that, with the changing of times and the exigencies of public life, impose special clarifications of relations.
Such problems are as old as Christianity itself; but as long as the Roman Empire considered it a *religio illicita* because dangerous, its relations with the Church could only be one of open hostility or suspicious tolerance; the conversion of Constantine changed this into open favor. This favor soon led the sovereign to consider it an honor, indeed a duty, to provide the Church with stable means of subsistence, aid, and defense against external and internal enemies; but it also resulted in a counterpart of interference in the affairs of the Church, to regulate them, when deemed necessary, according to his own judgment, and even to intervene in doctrinal controversies whenever these seemed likely to foment disturbances. Not that the imperial authority set itself up as a direct judge in such controversies; it did, however, sometimes endeavor to solicit from the bishops decisions that suited its preferences. This disposition or tendency certainly derived from the Roman tradition of the *pontifex maximus*, a dignity that was an attribute of imperial power; but also from the fact that too many bishops, frequenting the imperial court and staying there for long periods, were inclined to solicit its favors and, to obtain them, to exaggerate its powers; while others resorted to it under the pretext of obtaining redress, as a final court of appeal, against alleged injustices by legitimate ecclesiastical authority. With the transfer of the imperial seat to the East, Constantinople assumed the title of New Rome; and this New Rome, entirely Christian, relegated the ancient Rome to a secondary position, especially when the latter found itself in the midst of a barbaric environment. To the traditional concept of the primatial authority of St. Peter continuing in his successors, there was substituted 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 one, and it is precisely this that has informed, down to the present day in the East, the relations between the State and the individual dissident Churches, inasmuch as these had been part of the ancient imperial Church.
Meanwhile, in the West, the feudal system of the medieval States created entirely different relations; it made the individual Churches elements of the State as such; the Roman Church, however, remained outside of this, although it too came to constitute for itself a State of which it was sovereign; but it formed with the Western Empire a system of relations that, although not always peaceful, ensured it an independence that was never denied.
It was only in the full Renaissance, with the arising of new ecclesiastical theories and finally with the denial of the concept of the visible militant Church 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 still wished to preserve a hierarchy and an appearance of Church, does not essentially differ in this regard from the other Protestant Churches, inasmuch as its existence and teachings are bound by right to the arbitrariness of political authority.
Cesarism in its specific aspect resurfaced instead in the Catholic States of the West, although never in the radical form of Byzantine cesarism, in the 17th century, with the aim above all of limiting the authority of the Roman Pontiff within the individual States, to substitute for it the sovereign authority, up to reaching in Febronianism (v.) and Josephinism (v.) the most acute form of the system. It demonstrated particular aversion to the doctrine of the indirect power of the Church in temporal matters; it sought to make the relations of bishops with the Holy See as generic and rare as possible, to limit the right of exemption of religious orders, 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, to accept appeals *tamquam ab abusu* from the sentences of the Pope and bishops, even to redraw the boundaries of 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 safeguarding sovereign dignity, and of protecting against the excesses of the Church and against privileges deemed injurious to the national good. As is evident, one cannot speak of cesarism in those States that recognize no legitimate spiritual authority: in them, religion is entirely at the discretion of politics, which disposes of it to its own advantage.