Febronianism

Febronianism was a powerful movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, in the latter part of the 18th century, directed towards the nationalizing of Catholicism, the restriction of the power of the papacy in favor of that of the episcopate, and the reunion of the dissident churches with Catholic Christendom. It was thus, in its main tendencies, the equivalent of what in France is known as Gallicanism. Friedrich Lauchert describes Febronianism, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, as a politico-ecclesiastical system with an ostensible purpose to facilitate the reconciliation of the Protestant bodies with the Catholic Church by diminishing the power of the Holy See.

The name is derived from the pseudonym Justinus Febronius adopted by Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, coadjutor bishop of Trier, in publishing his book De statu ecclesiae et legitima potestae Romani pontificis. Taking as a basis the Gallican principles which he imbibed from the canonist Zeger Bernhard van Espen while pursuing his studies at the University of Louvain, Hontheim advanced along the same lines to a radicalism far outstripping traditional Gallicanism. He developed a theory of ecclesiastical organization founded on a denial of the monarchical constitution of the Church. In 1738 Hontheim went to Koblenz, as an official to the Archbishop-Elector of Trier. Archbishops of Trier were simultaneously princes and prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, he had plentiful opportunity, in his capacity, to study the effect of the interference of the Roman Curia in the internal affairs of the Holy Roman Empire, notably in the negotiations that preceded the elections of Holy Roman Emperors Charles VII and Francis I in which Hontheim took part as assistant to the electoral ambassador. It appears that it was the extreme claims of the Papal Nuncio on these occasions and his interference in the affairs of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire that first suggested Hontheim's critical examination of the basis of the papal pretensions; he published the results under his pseudonym. This book, which roused a vast amount of excitement and controversy at the time, exercised an immense influence on opinion within the Roman Catholic Church, and the principles it proclaimed were put into practice by the rulers of that Church in various countries during the latter part of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.

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