Gallican Church
Gallicanism is a religious doctrine and policy underlying the organization of a Catholic Church in France largely independent of the pope. Gallicanism says French specificity, and rejects too much intervention by the Pope in the affairs of the Church of France. It recognizes the pope a spiritual and jurisdictional rule, but denies his omnipotence, the benefit of councils in general the Church , the bishops in their dioceses and in their sovereign states.
In practice, this mainly reflects a narrow grip on the French sovereign decisions and appointments of bishops. Although respectful of the papacy, the doctrine poses some limitations to his power, she teaches in particular that the power of the bishops gathered in council is bigger than the Pope.
Should therefore distinguish the Gallican Church, which is a theological position and ecclesiological , and Gallicanism parliamentarian, who is a political doctrine and administration.
Summary |
Gallican doctrine will begin to make after the conflict between Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII. The drafters of the king who are fighting against what they consider abuses of spiritual justice, will begin to justify the independence of temporal power over the spiritual power first on the judicial level. Pope publishes the bull Unam Sanctam , 8 November 1302 , in which he stated "It is necessary for salvation to believe that every human creature is subject to the Roman Pontiff: we declare, state it and define it." The king responded by sending strongly Guillaume de Nogaret attempt to remove the pope at Anagni in 1303. It is a failure.
Philip VI will meet in 1329 the assembly of Vincennes for having an opinion on the conflict between justice temporal and spiritual justice. Cuignieres Pierre will defend the superiority of the king's justice in the time domain of the Crown.
During the Great Schism of the West , the council meets in Paris between 1396 and 1398 , the University of Paris has decreed that councils are superior to the pope and the independence of temporal king. In May 1398 , the third council of Paris voted for the withdrawal of obedience to Benedict XIII.
The parliament of Paris passed on September 11 1406 the abolition of annates , menus and common services, attorney fees and other apostolic from 27 July 1398.
The Gallican Church decided to recognize the authority of the Pope only to the spiritual January 14 1407. The Council of Paris of 1408 to issue decrees on the organization of the Gallican church.
Year the Council of Constance , Jean Gerson , chancellor of the University of Paris , defended the superiority of council over the pope. By his decree frequency , the council declared a permanent institution of the Church over the control of the papacy. The Council of Basel confirmed the decree of Constance frequent but Pope Eugenius IV transferred to the Bologna causing the council to open a trial against the pope. The pope ultimately decides to move the council at Ferrara in 1437. The fathers of the Council of Basel moving Lausanne. The conflict between the Council Fathers and Pope ended in 1449 when Pope Nicolas V ratify all the decrees of Basel and Lausanne
In the fifteenth century the Kingdom of France made a first attempt Gallicanism: in 1438 , King Charles VII of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges , limiting papal prerogatives and asserts the superiority of the decisions of councils of Basel and Constance those of Pope.
In the seventeenth century , the most illustrious representative of this current is Bossuet , bishop of Meaux , who writes the four Gallican articles of 1682 signed by the assembled bishops of France. Bossuet carves out the decisions of the Council of Constance ( 1,414 - one thousand four hundred and eighteen ) which pointed out that the ecumenical council (meeting of all bishops and abbots) was the supreme authority in and teaching in the Church.
At the end of the seventeenth century, Gallicanism widely implanted in the French clergy, firstly through theories of Bossuet , widely endorsed, and secondly through the positions of Gallican Jansenists who criticize the pope's response to within the French clergy. The French clergy of the eighteenth century is largely won Gallican ideas, which allows, at the beginning of the French Revolution , the adoption of the Civil Constitution of clergy. This constitution religious inspiration Gallican is almost clergy staff employed by the State subject to an oath of allegiance to the republican constitution. After a long hesitation, Pope Pius VI condemned the Civil Constitution, which results in a division of the French clergy between jurors and refractories.
The Constitutional Church , up until 1801, sees itself as a Gallican Church, that is to say, Catholic, Roman (the bishops recognize the spiritual supremacy of the pope, to whom they send a letter of communion), but which has its own freedoms. It is not meant in any way a schismatic Church.
The gradual disappearance of the idea in the nineteenth century Gallican
Anxious to restore civil peace, Napoleon Bonaparte negotiated the Concordat with Pope Pius VII. On this occasion, in 1801, the pontiff at the request of the Head of State, laid across the French bishops: bishops elected under the Civil Constitution of clergy as bishops of the Old Regime survivors: c This is the end of the principles of the Gallican Church, and the recognition, implicit, of the primacy of papal jurisdiction. Some bishops and priests, refractory Gallican spirit, refused to submit and founded the Little Church.
Gallicanism tends to be reduced to an administrative doctrine to justify the intrusion of power in religious affairs. Thus, the Organic Articles unilaterally imposed by Napoleon Bonaparte are essentially Gallican teaching Declaration of 1682 in seminaries, prohibition to publish a text without the pontifical government, appointment of bishops by the government, strict regulations of exercise of religion ... Their main architect, Portalis , explains that "according to the true principles Catholics, the sovereign power resides in spiritual matters in the church and not the Pope, as, according to the principles of our political order, sovereignty temporal matters lies in the nation and not a judge in particular. " After the Restoration , the final burst of parliamentary Gallicanism (that is to say political) occurs with the publication in 1845 of the Manual on the Law of French ecclesiastical Dupin.
Thus subject to the state and its interests, Gallicanism loses more and more ground among the clergy. French Catholicism became Romanised gradually, with the victory ultramontanes , philosophy, moral theology, liturgy and the forms of piety. In this evolution, Flicit Robert de Lamennais and his book Essay on the indifference to religion, written 1817 to 1823 , played a pioneering role. He describes well the Gallican "disgusting mixture of stupidity and arrogance, stupidity of stupid and foolish confidence, petty passions, ambitions and small absolute impotence of the mind." In fact, all supporters are fierce opponents of Gallicanism: Bishop Gousset , Dom Guranger , Rohrbacher ... The Universe of Louis Veuillot becomes the body of the clergy ultramontane and uncompromising.
Nevertheless, some religious institutions remain faithful to a moderate Gallicanism: the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne , the seminary of St. Sulpice ... Through the Concordat - the government will appoint the bishops - the moderate Gallican remain present in the Episcopate: Bishop Matthew Archbishop of Besanon, Bishop Dupanloup bishop of Orleans, Bishop Affre and Bishop Darboy archbishops of Paris ... Their opposition to the centralization of Roman joined the defenders of liberal Catholicism, as Montalembert , or a neo-Gallican open to democracy, which the theorist is Mgr Maret , a professor at the Sorbonne.
But in 1870 held in Rome, the dogma of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council. This decision, though strongly opposed by the French bishops, the death knell of Gallicanism. More generally, the end of the Gallican Church deconfessionalization explained by the progressive state, and the disappearance of the Ancien Regime, based on the mystic alliance of throne and altar.
The law of separation of church and state in 1905 eliminates the ties between church and state in France.
The Church today Gallican
However, there remain today several churches Gallican s'interfrant do not like each other:
- the Gallican Church, apostolic tradition of Gazinet
- St. Rita Parish in Paris XV
- Gallican Catholic Church in Belgium
Doctrine
If the Gallican church expresses today near the Roman Catholic church, it is distinguished in particular by following tolerances :
- Acceptance of married priests and bishops
- Diaconate Women
- Rejection of compulsory confession
- Banishment of excommunications
- Freedom for fasting and abstinence
- Participation of the faithful in church government
- Election of bishops by the clergy and the faithful
- Consideration of the animal world in the thinking of the Church.
Bibliography
- Aim-Georges Martimort, Le Gallicanism, PUF 1973, coll. Whatever
- Dale K. Van Kley, Religious Origins of the French Revolution, History Point-Seuil, Paris 2002, 572 p. (U.S. edition 1996, Yale University)
See also
Related articles
- Ausculta fili
- Gallican church, apostolic tradition of Gazinet
- Febronianism
- Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
- Ultramontanism
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