REGALISM. - This term designates that particular jurisdictional system (v. SEPARATISM) whose foundation was the hegemony of the state over the Church, accompanied, moreover, by an activity of the civil authority directed to the defense and protection of the Church itself and of its institutions (confessionalism).
Depending on the countries where it established itself, this system of relations between the State and the Church took on different names: Gallicanism (v.) in France, Josephinism (v. GIUSEPPE II) or Febronianism in Austria, Leopoldinism in Tuscany, Tanuccism in Naples, etc. It has been incisively observed that «the practical and doctrinal activities, aimed at the affirmation of state particularism, reached their greatest effectiveness in the 18th century, when the police state succeeded in imposing the exercise of its sovereignty even over the Church, indeed in making of the latter, as far as it was possible, an instrument for its political aims (instrumentum regni), and in that era one may say that jurisdictionalism, that is, the hegemonic affirmation of secular jurisdiction over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, informed the policy of almost all the States of Europe that had remained doctrinally attached to Catholicism and therefore, in their foundation, confessionalist» (Del Giudice).
The principle of the subjection of ecclesiastical institutions to the authority of the State was first upheld by Erastus (v.), whence the doctrine of Erastianism. In France the regalist system was founded on the ancient Gallican liberties and on the privileges of the national Church: one of the most conspicuous forms of the system was the so-called appel comme d'abus, that is, the faculty of being able to appeal to the organs of the State (Parliament, the King's Council) against the acts of ecclesiastical authority that violated state norms and the principles of the Gallican liberties. Alongside the appeal for abuse (v.) the droit d'annexe or de vérification was upheld, on the basis of which the provisions of the Holy See could not be considered valid, within the framework of the state legal order, without royal assent. A typical application of the droit d'annexe in France was the prohibition of the publication of the celebrated pontifical bull In coena Domini.
Spanish r. manifested itself, first of all, through the exercise of rights of royal patronage and through the notable tax burden that weighed on the patrimonies (mortmain)
of ecclesiastical bodies. On the other hand, vast powers were recognized to the Inquisition, which was regarded as an indirect organ of the State.
Josephinism in Austria took concrete form in the iura circa sacra, by which the civil authority claimed considerable interference even in religious matters, going so far as to order inspections of religious houses and to issue norms on matters of worship. The Catholic religion, however, was the only confession admitted in the State, and its ministers enjoyed privileges and immunities.
In the Italian States too the tendencies of r. had established themselves through the so-called ecclesiastical police. In Piedmont, where Emmanuel Philibert introduced the institution of the appeal for abuse, Victor Amadeus II reestablished the norms concerning the placet and the exequatur (v.); nevertheless, following the Concordat of 1741, a situation of particular favor for the Catholic Church took shape, a situation that persisted until the promulgation of the Siccardi laws (law of 9 Apr. 1850, no. 1013; law of 5 June 1850, no. 1037; law of 29 May 1855, no. 878). In Sardinia the lay authority sought to maintain the privileges already granted by the Holy See to the predecessors of the Savoys and claimed the jurisdictional rights of the State.
Moreover, the influence of Josephinist theories was felt especially in Tuscany during the period of Leopold (1765-90), who not only proposed to affirm the rights of the State over the Church but, coordinating with the episcopalist initiative of the celebrated Scipione de' Ricci (v.), bishop of Pistoia, claimed to reform the internal organization of ecclesiastical institutions and to regulate purely cultic matters (adoration of images, functions of confraternities). The exemption of the clergy from taxes was also abolished, as was the recognition of the immunities of ecclesiastics (in particular the privilegium fori). After Leopold's departure there was a reaction in favor of the Church, and the Leopoldine reforms were in part 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, which 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.