The Kings Of Appletown Dvdrip Ita Torrent
Julia Heaslet
For the more moderate among them, 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 or France. It was thus that the latter could lawfully stretch their powers in ecclesiastical matters beyond the normal limits. This idea made its appearance as early as the reign of Philip the Fair, in some of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Boniface VIII. In the view of some partisans of the theory, the popes had always thought fit to show especial 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, again, assigned a more precise date to the granting of these concessions, referring their origin to the period of the earliest Carlovingians and explaining them somewhat differently. They said that the popes had found it impossible to recall to their allegiance and to due respect for ecclesiastical discipline the Frankish lords who had possessed themselves of episcopal sees; that these lords, insensible to censures and anathemas, rude and untaught, recognized no authority but that of force; and that the popes had, therefore, granted to Carloman, Pepin, and Charles the Great a spiritual authority which they were to exercise only under papal control. It was this authority that the Kings of France, successors of these princes, had inherited. This theory comes into collision with difficulties so serious as to have caused its rejection as well by the majority of Gallicans as by their Ultramontane adversaries. The former by no means admitted that the Liberties were privileges since a privilege can be revoked by him who has granted it; and, as they regarded the matter, these Liberties could not be touched by any pope. Moreover, they added, the Kings of France have at times received from the popes certain clearly defined privileges; these privileges have never been confounded with the Gallican Liberties. As a matter of fact, historians could have told them, the privileges accorded by popes to the King of France in the course of centuries are known from the texts, of which an authentic collection could be compiled, and there is nothing in them resembling the Liberties in question. Again, why should not these Gallican Liberties have been transmitted to the German Emperors as well since they, too, were the heirs of Pepin and Charlemagne? Besides, the Ultramontanes pointed out there are some privileges which the pope himself could not grant. Is it conceivable that a pope should allow any group of bishops the privilege of calling his infallibility in question, putting his doctrinal decisions upon trial, to be accepted or rejected? or grant any kings the privilege of placing his primacy under tutelage by suppressing or curtailing his liberty of communication with the faithful in a certain territory?
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 at the Councils of Epaone (517), of Vaison (529), of Valence (529), of Orléans (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 anyone should fail in consideration for them. Bishops condemned in councils like Salonius of Embrun Sagitarius of Gap, Contumeliosus of Riez have no difficulty in appealing to the pope, who, after examination, either confirms or rectifies the sentence pronounced 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 assent of Pope Zachary. Without wishing to exaggerate the significance of this act, the bearing of which the Gallicans have done every thing to minimize, one may be permitted 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 primacy find no serious opponents in France before Hincmar, 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 pertaining 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 feelings, inspired by the particular circumstances, much rather than a deliberate opinion maturely conceived and conscious of its own meaning. The proof of this is in the fact that Hincmar himself, when his claims to the metropolitan dignity are not in question, condemns very sharply, though at the risk of self-contradiction, the opinion of those who think that the king is subject only to God, and he makes it his boast to "follow 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 (867) 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.
From France Gallicanism spread, about the middle of the eighteenth century, into the Low Countries, thanks to the works of the jurisconsult Van-Espen. Under the pseudonym of Febronius, Hontheim introduced it into Germany where it took the forms of Febronianism and Josephism. The Council of Pistoia (1786) even tried to acclimatize it in Italy. But its diffusion was sharply arrested by the Revolution, which took away its chief support by overturning the thrones of kings. Against the Revolution that drove them out and wrecked their sees, nothing was left to the bishops of France but to link themselves closely with the Holy See. After the Concordat of 1801 itself the most dazzling manifestation of the pope's supreme power French Governments made some pretence of reviving, in the Organic Articles, the "Ancient Gallican Liberties" and the obligation of teaching the articles of 1682, but ecclesiastical Gallicanism was never again resuscitated except in the form of a vague mistrust of Rome. On the fall of Napoleon and the Bourbons, the work of Lamennais, of "L'Avenir" and other publications devoted to Roman ideas, the influence of Dom Guéranger, and the effects of religious teaching ever increasingly deprived it of its partisans. When the Vatican Council opened, in 1869, it had in France only timid defenders. When that council declared that the pope has in the Church the plenitude of jurisdiction in matters of faith, morals discipline, and administration that his decisions ex cathedra. are of themselves, and without the assent of the Church, infallible and irreformable, it dealt Gallicanism a mortal blow. Three of the four articles were directly condemned. As to the remaining one, the first, the council made no specific declaration; but an important indication of the Catholic doctrine was given in the condemnation fulminated by Pius IX against the 24th proposition of the Syllabus, in which it was asserted that the Church cannot have recourse to force and is without any temporal authority, direct or indirect. Leo XIII shed more direct light upon the question in his Encyclical "Immortale Dei" (12 November, 1885), where we read: "God has apportioned the government of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the former set over things divine, the latter over things human. Each is restricted within limits which are perfectly determined and defined in conformity with its own nature and special aim. There is therefore, as it were a circumscribed sphere in which each exercises its functions jure proprio". And in the Encyclical "Sapientiae Christianae" (10 January, 1890), the same pontiff adds: "The Church and the State have each its own power, and neither of the two powers is subject to the other."
The principal force of Gallicanism always was that which it drew from the external circumstances in which it arose and grew up: the difficulties of the Church, torn by schism; the encroachments of the civil authorities; political turmoil; the interested support of the kings of France. None the less does it seek to establish its own right to exist, and to legitimize its attitude towards the theories of the schools. There is no denying that it has had in its service a long succession of theologians and jurists who did much to assure its success. At the beginning, its first advocates were Pierre d'Ailly and Gerson, whose somewhat daring theories, reflecting the then prevalent disorder of ideas, were to triumph in the Council of Constance. In the sixteenth century Almain and Major make but a poor figure in contrast with Torquemada and Cajetan, the leading theorists of pontifical primacy. But in the seventeenth century the Gallican doctrine takes its revenge with Richer and Launoy, who throw as much passion as science into their efforts to shake the work of Bellarmine, the most solid edifice ever raised in defence of the Church's constitution and the papal supremacy. Pithou, Dupuy, and Marca edited texts or disinterred from archives the judicial monuments best calculated to support parliamentary Gallicanism. After 1682 the attack and defence of Gallicanism were concentrated almost entirely upon the four Articles. While Charlas in his anonymous treatise on the Liberties of the Catholic Church, d'Aguirre, in his "Auctoritas infallibilis et summa sancti Petri", Rocaberti, in his treatise "De Romani pontificis auctoritate", Sfondrato, in his "Gallia vindicata", dealt severe blows at the doctrine of the Declaration, Alexander Natalis and Ellies Dupin searched ecclesiastical history for titles on which to support it. Bossuet carried on the defence at once on the ground of theology and of history. In his "Defensio declarationis", which was not to see the light of day until 1730, he discharged his task with equal scientific power and moderation. Again Gallicanism was ably combatted in the works of Muzzarelli, Bianchi, and Ballerini, and upheld in those of Durand de Maillane, La Luzerne, Maret and Döllinger. But the strife is prolonged beyond its interest; except for the bearing of some few arguments on either side, nothing that is altogether new, after all, is adduced for or against, and it may be said that with Bossuet's work Gallicanism had reached its full development, sustained its sharpest assaults, and exhibited its most efficient means of defence.
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