REGALISMO. — This term has been used to designate that particular jurisdictional system (v. SEPARATISMO) founded upon the hegemony of the State over the Church, accompanied, moreover, by an activity of the civil authority directed toward the defense and protection of the Church itself and of its institutions (confessionalism).
According to the countries in which it took hold, this system of relations between State and Church assumed different names: Gallicanism (v.) in France, Josephinism (v. GIUSEPPE I) or Febronianism in Austria, Leopoldinism in Tuscany, Tanuccism in Naples, etc. It has been incisively observed that “the practical and doctrinal activities aimed at asserting state particularism achieved their greatest effectiveness in the eighteenth century, when the police state succeeded in imposing the exercise of its sovereignty even over the Church, indeed in making the Church, insofar as was possible, an instrument of its political aims (instrumentum regni); and in that period it may be said that jurisdictionalism, that is, the hegemonic assertion of secular jurisdiction over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, informed the policy of almost all the States of Europe that remained doctrinally attached to Catholicism and therefore, in their foundations, confessional” (Del Giudice).
The principle of the subordination of ecclesiastical institutions to the authority of the Erastus (v.), from whom the doctrine of Erastianism derives. In France the regal system was based on the ancient Gallican liberties and on the privileges of the national Church: one of the system’s most conspicuous forms was the so-called appel comme d'abus, that is, the possibility of appealing to organs of the State (Parliament, the King’s Council) against acts of the ecclesiastical authority that violated state regulations and the principles of the Gallican liberties. appeal for abuse (v.), the droit d'annexe or de vérification was upheld, according to which provisions of the Holy See could not be regarded as valid within the state legal order without royal assent. A typical application of the droit d'annexe in France was the prohibition against publishing the celebrated papal bull In coena Domini.
Spanish r. manifested itself, first of all, through the exercise of rights of royal patronage and through the considerable taxation imposed upon the assets (mortmain)
of ecclesiastical bodies. On the other hand, extensive powers were recognized as belonging to the Inquisition, which was regarded as an indirect organ of the State.
Josephinism in Austria took concrete form in the inca circa sacra, whereby the civil authority claimed considerable interference even in religious matters, going so far as to order inspections of religious houses and to issue regulations concerning worship. The Catholic religion, however, was the only confession admitted in the State, and its ministers enjoyed privileges and immunities.
The tendencies of r. had also become established in the Italian States through the so-called ecclesiastical police. In Piedmont, where Emanuele Filiberto introduced the institution of the appeal for abuse, Vittorio Amedeo II restored the regulations concerning the placet and the exequatur (v.); nevertheless, following the Concordat of 1741, a situation particularly favorable to the Catholic Church took shape, a situation that continued until the enactment of the Siccardi laws (law of 9 April 1850, no. 1013; law of 5 June 1850, no. 1037; law of 29 May 1855, no. 878). In Sardinia the lay authority sought to preserve the privileges already granted by the Holy See to the predecessors of the Savoy dynasty and claimed the State’s jurisdictional rights.
The influence of Josephine theories was felt particularly in Tuscany during the period of Leopoldo (1765–90), who not only intended to assert the rights of the State over the Church but, in coordination with the episcopalist initiative de' Ricci (v.), bishop of Pistoia, sought to reform the internal organization of ecclesiastical institutions and to regulate matters that were purely related to worship (the veneration of images, the activities of confraternities). The exemption of the clergy from taxation was also abolished, as was the recognition of ecclesiastical immunities (in particular the privilegium fori). After Leopoldo’s departure, a reaction in favor of the Church took place, and the Leopoldine reforms were partially abolished.
In Naples the Concordat of 1741 had marked a halt to jurisdictionalist tendencies, but these reasserted themselves following the reforms carried out by Tanucci and Caracciolo, who suppressed the privilege of the forum and reserved to the Sovereign the collation of major benefices, claiming for the civil power the right to interfere in ecclesiastical matters.