GALLICANISM
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GALLICANISM
conditions of servitude with which the popes had bur-
dened the Church, and their legality resulted from the
fact that the extension given by the popes to their own
primacy was founded not upon Divine institution, but
upon the false Decretals. If we are to credit these
authors, w'hat the Gallicans maintained in 1082 was
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 ITniversal had believed and
practised them of old, 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. Galilean
ideas, then, must have had no other origin than that of
Christian dogma and ecclesiastical discipline. It is
for history to tell us what these assertions of the Galli-
can theorists were worth.
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 homo- geneous body. From the end of the fourth century the popes themselves recognized this solidarity. It was to the "Galilean" bishops that Pope Damasus — as M. Babut seems to have demonstrated recently — addressed the most ancient decretal which has been preserved to our times. Two centuries later, St. Gregory the Great pointed out the Galilean 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 — if we are to believe the young historian just mentioned — a Council of Turin, at which bishops of the Gauls assisted, had given the first manifestation of Ciallican sentiment. Unfortunately for M. Babut's thesis, all the signifi- cance 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 Galilean 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 occa- sions — at the Councils of Epaone (517), of Vaison (529), of Valence (529), of Orleans (538), of Tours (567) — the bishops do not fail to 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 ecclesiastical law; they show indignation at the mere idea that any- one should fail in consideration for them. Bi.shops condemned in councils — like Salonius of Embrun, Sagitarius of Gap, Contumeliosus of Riez — have no difficulty in appealing to the pope, who, after exami- nation, either confirms or rectifies the sentence pro- nounced against them.
The accession of the Carlovingian dynasty is marked by a splendid act of homage paid in France to the power of the papacy: before assuming the title of king, Pepin makes a point of securing the a.ssent of Pope Zachary. Without wishing to exaggerate the sig- nificance of this act, the bearing of which the Gallicans have done every thing to minimize, one may be per- mitted to see in it the evidence that, even before Gregory VII, public opinion in France was not hostile to the intervention of the pope in political affairs. From that time on, the advances of the Roman pri- macy find no serious opponents in France before VI.— 2:?
Ilincmar, the famous Archbishop of Reims, in whom
some have been willing to see the very founder of
Gallicanism. It is true that with him there already
appears the idea that the pope must limit his activity
to ecclesiastical matters, and not intrude in those per-
taining to the State, which concern kings only; that
his supremacy is bound to respect the prescriptions of
the ancient canons and the privileges of the Churches;
that his decretals must not be placed upon the same
footing as the canons of the councils. But it appears
that we should see here the expression of passing feel-
ings, inspired by the particular circumstances, much
rather than a deliberate opinion maturely conceived
and conscious of its own meaning. The proof of thus
Is in the fact that Hincmar himself, when his claims
to the metropolitan dignity are not in question, con-
demns very sharply, though at the risk of self-contra-
diction, the opinion of those who think that the king is
subject only to God, and he makes it his boast to " fol-
low the Roman Church, whose teachings", he says,
quoting the famous words of Innocent I, " are imposed
upon all men". His attitude, at any rate, stands out
as an isolated accident; the Council of Troyes (SG7)
proclaims that no bishop can be deposed without
reference to the Holy See, and the Council of Douzy
(871), although held under the influence of Hincmar,
condemns the Bishop of Laon only under reserve of
the rights of the pope.
With the first Capets the secular relations between the pope and the Galilean Church appeared to be momentarily strained. At the Councils of Saint- Basle de Verzy (991) and of Chelles (c. 99.3), in the discourses of Arnoul, Bishop of Orleans, in the letters of Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II, sentiments of violent hostility to the Holy See are manifested, and an evident determination to elude the authority in matters of discipline which had until then been recognized as belonging to it. But the papacy at that period, given over to the tyranny of Crescentius and other local barons, was undergoing a melancholy obscuration. When it regained its independence, its old authority in France came back to it; the work of the Councils of Saint^Basle and of Chelles was undone ; princes like Hugh Capet, bishops like Gerbert, held no attitude but that of submission. It has been said that during the early Capetian period the pope was more powerful in France than he had ever been. Under Ciregory VII the pope's legates traversed France from north to south, they convoked and presided over num- erous councils, and, in spite of sporadic and incoherent acts of resistance, they deposed bishops and excom- municated princes just as in Germany and Spain.
In the following two centuries Gallicanism is even yet unborn; the pontifical power attains its apogee in France as elsewhere; St. Bernard, then the standard- bearer of the University of Paris, and St. Thomas out^ line the theory of that power, and their opinion is that of the school in accepting the attitude of Gregory VII and his successors in regard to delinquent princes, St. Louis, of whom it has been sought to make a patron of the Galilean system, Ls still ignorant of it — for the fact is now established that the Pragmatic Sanction, long attributed to him, was a wholesale fabrication put together (about 1445) in the purlieus of the Royal Chancellery of Charles VII to lend coun- tenance to the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
At the opening of the fourteenth century, however, the conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII brings out the first glimmerings of the Galilean ideas. That king does not confine himself to main- taining that, as sovereign, he is sole and independent master of his temporalities; he haughtily proclaims that, in virtue of the concession made by the pope, with the assent of a general council, to Charlemagne and his successors, he has the right to dispose of vacant ecclesiastical benefices. With the consent of the nobility, the Third Estate, and a great part of
