GALLICANISM
 
 

  Charlemagne

 Coronation of
  Charlemagne's Sons,

The following is adapted from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

GALLICANISM. The collective name for the body of doctrine which asserted the more or less complete freedom of the Catholic Church, esp. in France, from the ecclesiastical authority of the Papacy. During the Great Schism, such theologians as J. Gerson and P. d’Ailly had ably represented a primitive form of Gallican doctrine which had been taught in the Sorbonne almost from the time of its foundation (1257).

At this period the chief question at issue was the claim of the French Church to a privileged position in relation to the Papacy, these libertés de l’Église gallicane (whence the name Gallicanism) being based upon supposed prerogatives of the French Crown (prerogatives which a sober view of history scarcely warranted). In 1516 the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) was superseded by the Concord of Bologna in which the French king’s right of nomination to bishoprics and other high ecclesiasical offices was conceded.

The constitutional decisions of the Council of Trent (1545–63) were not received in France, and such writers as P. Pithou, Edmond Richer (1559–1631), and P. de Marca popularized a theory of Church government which minimized in various ways the authority claimed by the Papacy over the national Churches (‘royal Gallicanism’) and over the individual bishops (‘episcopal Gallicanism’). In 1663 the Sorbonne published a declaration, the substance of which was reaffirmed by the Assembly of the French clergy in 1682 in the formula known as

THE FOUR GALLICAN ARTICLES

They described the alleged rights and privileges claimed by the French clergy at an assembly of 36 bishops and 34 deputies held at Paris on 19 March 1682. The demands arose from the dispute between Louis XIV and Innocent XI over the appointment of bishops and the revenues of vacant sees. The document was drawn up by J. B. Bossuet

[1] The first denied that the Pope had dominion (puissance) over things temporal, and affirmed that kings are not subject to the authority of the Church in temporal and civil matters or to deposition by the ecclesiastical power, and that their subjects could not be dispensed by the Pope from their allegiance.

[2] The second upheld the decrees of the Council of Constance (1414–18), and thus reaffirmed the authority of General Councils over the Pope.

[3] The third insisted that the ancient liberties of the Gallican Church were inviolable.

[4] The fourth asserted that pending the consent of the Church (i.e. until a General Council was convened), the judgement of the Pope is not irreformable.

The Articles were quashed by the constitution ‘Inter multiplices’ of Alexander VIII of 4 Aug. 1690, and by Louis XIV in a letter to the Pope on 14 Sept. 1693, but for over a decade they were taught in the French theological schools and made a test for admission to academic degrees and public office.

This declaration, though solemnly withdrawn by king and clergy in 1693, remained the typical Gallican manifesto. Gallican principles were preached throughout the 18th cent. by the opponents of the bull ‘Unigenitus’, and once more officially codified and proclaimed for the use of other national Churches at the synod of Pistoia in 1786. The Organic Articles added to Napoleon’s concordat of 1801 included Gallican provisions, and Napoleon himself favoured the Gallican party among his clergy. After the Restoration, however, the work of the Jesuits, and of such writers as J. de Maistre and F. R. de Lamennais, bore fruit in a renascence of Ultramontanism in France, so that F. Dupanloup, H. Maret (1805–84), and A. J. A. Gratry found little support for their moderate Gallican positions at the time of the First Vatican Council (1869–70). The definition of Papal Infallibility at the Council had the effect of making Gallican principles, at least in the field of dogma, incompatible with the profession of Roman Catholicism. Although the main aims of Gallicanism in the 19th cent. concerned matters of administration (the freedom of bishops from undue interference by the Curia) and liturgy (the preservation of local rites, such as that of Lyons) rather than belief, after the Council Gallicanism had only a historical importance.

L. Mention (ed.), Documents relatifs aux rapports du clergé avec le royauté de 1682 à 1705 (Collection de Textes pour servir à l’Étude et à I’Enseignement de l’Histoire, 1893). N. Valois, La France et le grand schisme en occident (4 vols., 1896–1902), passim. V. Martin, Les Origines du gallicanisme (2 vols., 1939); id., Le Gallicanisme et la réforme catholique: Essai historique sur l’introduction en France des décrets du concile de Trente (1563–1615) (1919); id., Le Gallicanisme politique et le clergé de France (Université de Strasbourg, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de Droit Canonique, 3; 1929). A.-G. Martimort, Le Gallicanisme de Bossuet (Unam Sanctam, 24; 1953). A. Gough, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign 1848–1853 (Oxford, 1986). M. O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Washington, DC [1988]). J. M. Gres-Gayer, Le Gallicanisme de Sorbonne (2002). J. Lecler, ‘Qu’est-ce que les libertés de l’Église Gallicane?’, Rech. S.R. 23 (1933), pp. 385–410, 542–68; 24 (1934), pp. 47–85; G. Mollat, ‘Les Origines du gallicanisme parlementaire aux XIVe et XVe siècles’, RHE 43 (1948), pp. 90–147; R. Thysman, ‘Le Gallicanisme de Mgr Maret et l’influence de Bossuet’, ibid. 52 (1957), pp. 401–65. H. Dubruel and H. X. Arquillière in A. d’Alès, SJ (ed.), Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, 2 (1911), cols. 193–273, with full bibl. refs.; M. Dubruel in DTC 6 (1920), cols. 1096–137, s.v.; R. Laprat in DDC 6 (1957), cols. 426–525, s.v. ‘Libertés de l’Église gallicane (Gallicanisme)’. J. Turmel in HERE 6 (1913), pp. 156–63, s.v.; C. Berthelot du Chesnay and J. M. Gres-Gayer in NCE (2nd edn.), 6 (2003), pp. 73–8, s.v.

 

Rech. Recherches de Science Religieuse (Paris, 1910 ff.).

RHE Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique (Louvain, 1900 ff.).

DDC Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, ed. R. Naz (7 vols., 1935–65).

HERE J. *Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (12 vols. + index, 1908–26).

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