Gallicanism

Gallicanism is the belief that popular secular authority—often represented by the monarch's or the state's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the pope. Gallicanism may be contrasted with ultramontanism. Gallicanism shares some similarities with the ecclesiology of Anglicanism, but while it plays down the authority of the Pope in church, it generally does not deny that there are some authoritative elements to the papal office as primus inter pares. Other terms for the same or similar doctrines include Erastianism, Regalism, Febronianism, and Josephinism.
Gallicanism originated in France, and is unrelated to the first-millennium Catholic Gallican Rite. In the 18th century, it spread to the Low Countries, especially the Netherlands. The University of Notre Dame professor John McGreevy defines it as "the notion that national customs might trump Roman regulations."

Background

Gallicanism is a group of religious opinions that was for some time peculiar to the Catholic Church in France. These opinions were in opposition to the ideas which were called ultramontane, which means "across the mountains". Ultramontanism affirmed the authority of the pope over the temporal kingdoms of the rest of Europe, particularly emphasizing a supreme episcopate for the pope holding universal immediate jurisdiction. This eventually led to the definition by the Roman Catholic Church of the dogma of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.
Gallicanism tended to restrain the pope's authority in favour of that of bishops and the people's representatives in the State, or the monarch. But the most respected proponents of Gallican ideas did not contest the pope's primacy in the Church, merely his supremacy and doctrinal infallibility. They believed their way of regarding the authority of the pope—more in line with that of the Conciliar movement and akin to the Orthodox and Anglicans—was more in conformity with Holy Scripture and tradition. At the same time, they believed their theory did not transgress the limits of free opinions.

General notions

The Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682 is made up of four articles:

St. Peter and the popes, his successors, and the Church itself have dominion from God only over things spiritual and not over things temporal and civil. Therefore, kings and sovereigns are not beholden to the church in deciding temporal things. They cannot be deposed by the church and their subjects cannot be absolved by the church from their oaths of allegiance.
The authority in things spiritual belongs to the Holy See and the successors of St. Peter, and does not affect the decrees of the Council of Constance contained in the fourth and fifth sessions of that council, which is observed by the Gallican Church. The Gallicans do not approve of casting slurs on those decrees.
The exercise of this Apostolic authority must be regulated in accordance with canons established by the Holy Spirit through the centuries of Church history.
Although the pope has the chief part in questions of faith, and his decrees apply to all the Churches, and to each Church in particular, yet his judgment is not irreformable, at least pending the consent of the Church.

According to the initial Gallican theory, then, papal primacy was limited first by the temporal power of monarchs, which, by divine will, was inviolable. Secondly, it was limited by the authority of the general councils and the bishops, and lastly by the canons and customs of particular churches, which the pope was bound to take into account when he exercised his authority.
Gallicanism was more than pure theory – the bishops and magistrates of France used it, the former to increase power in the government of dioceses, the latter to extend their jurisdiction so as to cover ecclesiastical affairs. There also was an episcopal and political Gallicanism, and a parliamentary or judicial Gallicanism. The former lessened the doctrinal authority of the pope in favour of that of the bishops, to the degree marked by the Declaration of 1682, and the latter augmented the rights of the state.
There were eighty-three "Liberties of the Gallican Church", according to a collection drawn up by the jurisconsults Guy Coquille and Pierre Pithou. Besides the four articles cited above, which were incorporated, these Liberties included the following:

The Kings of France had the right to assemble councils in their dominions, and to make laws and regulations touching ecclesiastical matters.
The pope's legates could not be sent into France, or exercise their power within that kingdom, except at the king's request or with his consent.
Bishops, even when commanded by the pope, could not go out of the kingdom without the king's consent.
Royal officers could not be excommunicated for any act performed in the discharge of their official duties.
The pope could not authorize the alienation of any landed estate of the Churches, or the diminishing of any foundations.
His bulls and letters might not be executed without the pareatis of the king or his officers.
He could not issue dispensations to the prejudice of the laudable customs and statutes of the cathedral Churches.
It was lawful to appeal from him to a future council, or to have recourse to the "appeal as from an abuse" against acts of the ecclesiastical power.

Parliamentary Gallicanism, therefore, was of much wider scope than episcopal; indeed, it was often disavowed by the bishops of France, and about twenty of them condemned Pierre Pithou's book when a new edition of it was published, in 1638, by the brothers Dupuy.

History

John Kilcullen wrote, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, that "in France conciliarism was one of the sources of Gallicanism."
Proponents of Gallicanism presented a number of theories as to its origin.

The more moderate held that Gallican ideas and liberties were simply privileges – concessions made by the popes, who had been quite willing to divest themselves of a part of their authority in favour of the bishops or kings of France. Thus the extension of the king's authority ecclesiastical matters was not new. This idea appeared as early as the reign of King Philip IV, in some of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Pope Boniface VIII. In the view of some partisans of the theory, the popes had always thought fit to show special consideration for the ancient customs of the Gallican Church, which in every age had distinguished itself by its exactitude in the preservation of the Faith and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline.
Others dated the Gallican approach to the time of the early Carolingians, and explaining them somewhat differently, when the popes found it necessary to delegate certain prerogatives to the king in order that some control be exerted on the Frankish nobles who had taken possession of episcopal sees. The popes had, therefore, granted to Carloman, Pepin, and Charlemagne a spiritual authority which they were to exercise only under papal control; which authority had been inherited by their successors, the Kings of France.

The majority of Gallicans rejected the first theory that described the Gallican liberties as time-honored privileges, since a privilege can always be revoked by the authority which granted it. This was unacceptable, as they maintained that the pope had no power to revoke them. The Ultramontanes pointed out that in that case, such liberties would also be claimed by the German emperors, also heirs of Charlemagne, and that was not the case. Moreover, some privileges the pope cannot grant, such as allowing any kings the privilege of suppressing or curtailing his liberty of communicating with the faithful in a particular territory.
Most of its partisans regarded Gallicanism as a revival of the most ancient traditions of Christianity, found in the conciliar decrees of the earliest centuries or in canon laws of the general and local councils, and the decretals, ancient and modern, which were received in France. "Of all Christian countries", says Fleury, "France has been the most careful to conserve the liberty of her Church and oppose the novelties introduced by Ultramontane canonists". They argued that the popes had extended to their own primacy based upon the false Decretals rather than Divine law. What the Gallicans maintained in 1682 was said to be not a collection of novelties, but a body of beliefs as old as the Church, the discipline of the first centuries. The Church of France had upheld and practised them at all times; the Church Universal had believed and practised them in the past, until about the tenth century; St. Louis had supported, but not created, them by the Pragmatic Sanction; the Council of Constance had taught them with the pope's approbation. Gallican ideas, then, must have had no other origin than that of Christian dogma and ecclesiastical discipline.

The early Middle Ages

To the similarity of the historical vicissitudes through which they passed, their common political allegiance, and the early appearance of a national sentiment, the Churches of France owed it that they very soon formed an individual, compact, and homogeneous body. From the end of the fourth century the popes themselves recognized this solidarity. It was to the "Gallican" bishops that Pope Damasus I addressed the most ancient decretal which has been preserved to our times. Two centuries later St. Gregory the Great pointed out the Gallican Church to his envoy Augustine, the Apostle of England, as one of those whose customs he might accept as of equal stability with those of the Roman Church or of any other whatsoever. But already a Council of Turin, at which bishops of the Gauls took part, had given the first manifestation of Gallican sentiment. Unfortunately for Babut's thesis, all the significance which he attaches to this council depends upon the date, 417, ascribed to it by him, on the mere strength of a personal conjecture, in opposition to the most competent historians. Besides, it is not at all plain how a council of the Province of Milan is to be taken as representing the ideas of the Gallican Church.
In truth, that Church, during the Merovingian period, testifies the same deference to the Holy See as do all the others. Ordinary questions of discipline are in the ordinary course settled in councils, often held with the assent of the kings, but on great occasions - the Council of Epaone,Valence, Vaison, Orléans, Tours - the bishops declare that they are acting under the impulse of the Holy See, or defer to its admonitions; they take pride in the approbation of the pope; they cause his name to be read aloud in the churches, just as is done in Italy and in Africa they cite his decretals as a source of canon law; they show indignation at the mere idea that anyone should fail in consideration for them. Bishops condemned in councils have no difficulty in appealing to the pope, who, after examination, either confirms or rectifies the sentence pronounced against them.