GALLICANISM. – A complex of doctrines concerning the Church and of political attitudes, prevalent in France under the ancien régime (with remnants in the nineteenth century), which tended to limit the jurisdiction of the Holy See in the French Church, claiming to rest upon rights acquired in ancient times and favoring the sovereign’s interference in the Church itself.
The origin of Gallicanism has been sought very far back, as though it were a characteristic of the Frankish Church from the time of Charlemagne: but, while significant examples can indeed be recognized from that period onward, its immediate antecedents are found in the fourteenth century (doctrines concerning Church and State arising from the controversy between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII, and their subsequent developments), whereas the true origin of Gallicanism is to be sought during the Great Western Schism. The first explicit affirmations of “Gallican liberties” appeared at the Council of French bishops convened in Paris by Charles VI in 1398 and subsequently at that of 1406. The term, which until then had denoted the immunities acquired by the clergy vis-à-vis temporal lords and the Church’s right to free itself from secular interference, now served to formulate the idea that the Church of France, with the king’s support, should recover its “ancient liberties” against papal exactions, and that papal authority was limited by the ancient conciliar canons and subordinate to them. These ideas were enshrined in the Pragmatica sanctio of Bourges (7 July 1438). It expressed the thinking of the French clergy convened by Charles VII after the rupture between the Council of Basel and Eugenius IV, and largely formulated the conciliar theories and reform proposals of the Basilians, adapting them to France. It therefore affirmed the superiority of the Council over the Pope, which the French had accepted as a certain truth after Constance, and developed the principle that constitutes the essence of Gallican liberties: in the Kingdom of France the Pope possessed a tempered power, bounded by the “holy canons” (as opposed to the papal decretals). The Pragmatica sanctio was abrogated by Francis I in 1516 and replaced by the Concordat with Leo X; in practice, however, it continued to be effective, because Parliament refused to abrogate it and the University of Paris insisted that it be maintained. At the Council of Trent, the king’s orators and the bishops (especially the Cardinal of Lorraine), appealing to the Pragmatica, openly opposed the definition of the pope’s primacy. And when the question arose of publishing the decrees of the Council, as desired by the king of France, the opposition came neither from the clergy (which at the Assembly of 1615 solemnly declared its application of the Tridentine decrees), nor from the court, which made efforts to have them published, but from the group of “politicians” and magistrates of the Parliament of Paris.
It was they who claimed the liberties of the Gallican Church, considering it subject only to the ancient canons and therefore exempt from the authority of the recent Council. From their milieu and their controversies there emerged the work that would immediately become the code of Gallicanism: Les libertés de l’Église gallicane [1594] by Pierre Pithou, an advocate of Parliament. Pithou’s “liberties” were nothing more than a confused list of the cases in which the Gallican Church was “free,” that is, exempt from all obedience to the Holy See, proceeding from the two principles characteristic of Gallicanism: 1) the popes could command or order nothing, either generally or particularly, with regard to temporal matters in the Kingdom of France; 2) the pope was to be recognized as “sovereign in spiritual matters,” but in France his power was limited by the canons and rules of the councils accepted in the Kingdom.
Pithou’s work was above all political in nature: the defense of the liberties of the Gallican Church served to exalt the authority of the king even in the ecclesiastical sphere, and went so far as to establish a kind of indirect power of the State over the Church, sharply limiting the spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See. This system, usually called political Gallicanism, was determined less by the Gallican tradition than by the controversies of those years concerning the absolute authority of the sovereign and the pope’s indirect power.
Pithou’s political Gallicanism was developed in the first half of the seventeenth century by other authors: Edmond Richer, syndic of the University of Paris, in De ecclesiastica et politico potestate (1611) and other writings; the Dupuy brothers in Des droits et libertés de l’Église gallicane (1639); and Pietro De Marca in De concordia sacerdoti et imperii seu de libertatibus gallicanis (the first four books in 1641). The episcopate and clergy of France did not adhere to this political Gallicanism (thus Richer was condemned in provincial synods through the efforts of Cardinal Du Perron); but under the reign of Louis XIV (1658–1715), Gallican theories prevailed, being accepted and formulated (though not without opposition) also by representatives of the French Church. Since Bossuet had spoken of the Gallicanism of the magistrates and of the Gallicanism of the bishops, their Gallicanism is usually called theological, in opposition to that of the politicians; but the difference is more apparent than real. In fact, it was nothing more than the acceptance of political Gallicanism, mitigated in its dangerous jurisdictional principles and presented as a defense of the Gallican Church and its traditional doctrines. Vigorous theological controversies at the Sorbonne (which in 1663 led to the imposition of six propositions limiting papal authority) preceded the celebrated Declaratio cleri Gallicani of 1682, which represents the definitive formulation of Gallicanism. The declaration was prompted by the King, who had convened an assembly of bishops and representatives of the clergy to support him in his conflict with the Holy See concerning the question of the regalia (v. INNOCENZO XI); its drafter was Bossuet (although it is not known whether he composed it in its definitive form), who skillfully sought to attenuate the Gallicans’ demands and keep them within the bounds of common doctrine. He nevertheless failed to preserve the declaration’s orthodoxy (v. text in Denz-U, 1322–23); the first article, indeed, while professing the pope’s full authority in the spiritual sphere, rejects, contrary to common theological doctrine, even indirect intervention in temporal affairs; the following three articles impair the pope’s spiritual jurisdiction itself: the second asserts the superiority of the Council (implicitly, through its appeal to the decrees of Constance, whose validity it proclaims); the third defends the Gallican liberties, presented within the broader framework of ecclesiastical customs and considered inviolable because they had once been approved by the Holy See; the fourth, finally, is the most serious, because it denies papal infallibility, conceived as dependent upon the “consent of the Church.” Louis XIV immediately approved the declaration and imposed it upon all the schools and seminaries of the Kingdom; this obligation was withdrawn in 1693, but the registration by Parliament remained, and the court in practice maintained its principles until the Revolution. The Holy See opposed the Assembly of 1682, and the condemnation of the four articles was published in 1690 by Alexander VIII without explicitly mentioning them (in order to avoid a schism), but declaring null everything that had been decided at the Assembly of 1682 (Denz-U, 1326).
Gallicanism exerted great influence during the eighteenth century; its developments were the various systems of jurisdictionalism and of State interference in the Church that appeared in Europe during that century. In particular, Gallican doctrine served as a foundation for the canonist Van Espen of Louvain, for Giannone in Italy, and for Febronius in Germany. In restoring the Church in France through the Concordat of 1801, Napoleon wished to insert the Declaration of 1682 among the well-known Organic Articles abusively added to the Concordat. During the Restoration there was a certain revival of Gallicanism, supported by the court. The last
its last signs of life appeared at the First Vatican Council, in the controversy that arose concerning the definition of papal infallibility: the constitution Pastor Aeternus, which precisely condemns the individual errors of Gallicanism, also marks its true end.