Gallicanism is a rejection of ultramontanism; it has something in common with Anglicanism, but is nuanced, in that it plays down the authority of the Pope in church without denying that there are some authoritative elements to the office associated with being primus inter pares ('first among equals').
Besides the four articles cited above, which were incorporated, these Liberties included the following:[3] 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.
[3] 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.
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 (517),Valence (528), Vaison (529), Orléans (538), Tours (567) – 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 (like Salonius of Embrun, Sagittarius 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.
[3] The accession of the Carolingian 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 made the point of securing the assent of Pope Zachary.
Without exaggerating the significance of this act, the bearing of which the Gallicans have done every thing to minimize, one may still see it as evidence that, even before Gregory VII, public opinion in France was not hostile to the intervention of the pope in political affairs.
At the Councils of Saint-Basle de Verzy (991) and of Chelles (c. 993), in the discourses of Arnoul, Bishop of Orléans, 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.
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.
Under Gregory VII the pope's legates traversed France from north to south, they convoked and presided over numerous councils, and, in spite of sporadic and incoherent acts of resistance, they deposed bishops and excommunicated princes just as in Germany and Spain.
That king did not confine himself to maintaining that, as sovereign, he was the sole and independent master of his temporalities; he proclaimed that, in virtue of the concession made by the pope, with the assent of a general council to Charlemagne and his successors, he had the right to dispose of vacant ecclesiastical benefices.
Timidly sketched by two professors of the University of Paris, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein, this theory was completed and noisily interpreted to the public by Pierre d'Ailly and Gerson.
It was in the assembly which voted on this measure (1398) that for the first time there was any question of bringing back the Church of France to its ancient liberties and customs – of giving its prelates once more the right of conferring and disposing of benefices.
The precedents cited by Haller go back to the parliament held at Carlisle in 1307, at which date the tendencies of reaction against papal reservations had already manifested themselves in the assemblies convoked by Philip the Fair in 1302 and 1303.
So far we had encountered in the history of the Gallican Church recriminations of malcontent bishops, or a violent gesture of some prince discomforted in his avaricious designs; but these were only fits of resentment or ill humor, accidents with no attendant consequences; this time the provisions made against exercise of the pontifical authority had a lasting effect.
In that instrument the clergy of France inserted the articles of Constance repeated at Basle, and upon that warrant assumed authority to regulate the collation of benefices and the temporal administration of the Churches on the sole basis of the common law, under the king's patronage, and independently of the pope's action.
Then again, it was in the name of the Liberties of the Gallican Church that a part of the clergy and the Parlementaires opposed the publication of the Council of Trent; and the crown decided to detach from it and publish what seemed good, in the form of ordinances emanating from the royal authority.
[3] The assassination of Henry IV, which was exploited to move public opinion against Ultramontanism and the activity of Edmond Richer, syndic of the Sorbonne, brought about, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a revival of Gallicanism.
[3] In the same way Alexander VIII, by a Constitution dated 4 August 1690, quashed as detrimental to the Holy See the proceedings both in the matter of the regale and in that of the declaration on the ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction, which had been prejudicial to the clerical estate and order.
The bishops designate to whom Bulls had been refused received them at length, in 1693, only after addressing to Pope Innocent XII a letter in which they disavowed everything that had been decreed in that assembly in regard to the ecclesiastical power and the pontifical authority.
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 Prosper Guéranger, and the effects of religious teaching ever increasingly deprived it of its partisans.
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 Pope Pius IX against the 24th proposition of the Syllabus of Errors, in which it was asserted that the Church cannot have recourse to force and is without any temporal authority, direct or indirect.