Gallicanism / Gallican Liberties
In 1398, King Charles VI refused to give obedience to the Avignon antipope claiming autonomy for the French Church on the basis of certain traditions and rights that he had supposedly rediscovered. This special status was described as libertes de l'Eglise gallicane - thus the term Gallicanism. Gallicanism was known as Febronianism in Germany. In 1438, Charles VII issued a royal ordinance called the "Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges" which the French courts used to block papal interventions.
Jansenism could never have found its stronghold in French society without the league with Gallicanism, which summed up its tendency in this one idea, "to make the Pope the first of bishops, but to allow him nothing higher than that primacy of honor." The word Gallicanism is based on the Latin word Gallus, (English Gaul), the ancient name for the territory of France. In the days of faith and piety the Church often allowed the clergy to choose their bishops, and conceded a wide influence to the secular power, because both were working in one spirit. But soon passion and private interest prevailed; the glory of God had to yield to the glory of man. This spirit was manifested in the Pragmatic Sanction; monarch and parliament excluded Rome from the government of the Church. Leo X. annulled the Pragmatic Sanction, yet its sting remained.
Germany and Spain might let themselves be bitted and bridled if they chose, but for centuries France had prided herself that, thanks to her Gallican liberties, she stood on a different footing towards Rome. Subjection to the pope implied an Italianization of French religion; and most Frenchmen looked on the Italians as an inferior race. The great aim of Henry IV. and Richelieu was to exalt France at the expense of Vienna and Madrid. But Madrid and Vienna were the official champions of the papacy. It became necessary to devise a compromise that should set their minds at rest, by showing them that they could be at once good citizens and good Catholics. This compromise is known as Gallicanism. Theological Gallicanism refused to recognize papal decisions on questions of doctrine, until they had been ratified by the bishops of France. Political Gallicanism maintained that lawful sovereigns held their power directly of God, and not mediately through the pope.
Some of the theologians who most strenuously defended the Gallican Liberties and the independence of the civil power, complained of the practice in regard to these appeals as interfering with the independence of the church ; and hence some of the lawyers who defended these interferences of the parliament, professedly on the ground of their accordance with the Gallican Liberties, occasionally laid down positions, and employed a line of argument, that were plainly and palpably Erastiun.
France was not the only Roman Catholic country in which provisions existed and decisions were pronounced, which the clergy condemned, as violating the independence of the church, and infringing upon the ecclesiastical province, and which the lawyers could defend only on grounds which were plainly Erastian. The University of Louvain at one time strenuously defended the principles of the Gallican Liberties; and in the controversy to which this gave rise, some of the Bclgic lawyers imitated the French by falling into the Erastian extreme. But notwithstanding all this, it remains true, as we have said, that almost all the great men who have defended the Gallican Liberties, whether theologians or jurists, have in the main avoided the Erastian extreme,-have maintained the independence of the church as well as of the State, -and have held views as to the proper rule of limitation concerning things civil and ecclesiastical.
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