Gallican Church

The Gallican Church was the Roman Catholic Church in France from the time of the Declaration of the Clergy of France (1682) to that of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) during the French Revolution.

Gallicanism was the theory that the power of monarchs is independent of the power of popes, and that the church of each country should be under the joint control of the pope and the monarch. The opposite doctrine is known as Ultramontanism.

The idea made its appearance as early as the reign of Philip IV, in some of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Pope Boniface VIII. Others hold that the popes had ceded a certain degree of ecclesiastical authority to the Carolingians in an effort to control Frankish nobles, and this same authority was passed down to their successors. In support of this view, they cite Louis IX's so-called Pragmatic Sanction of 1269, although historian Paul Scheffer-Boichorst and others regard this a forgery dating from sometime between 1438 and 1452.

The droit de régale implied that the king was not only the legitimate guardian of the temporalities of vacant sees, but also that he had the right to the patronage belonging to them. Accordingly, he would confer cathedral dignities and benefices. This derived from a view that ecclesiastical sees were feudal fiefs. The Concordat of Bologna of 1516 confirmed the King of France's right to nominate appointments to benefices—archbishops, bishops, abbots and priors— enabling the Crown, by controlling its personnel, to decide who was to lead the Gallican Church. Canonical installation of those church officers was reserved to the Pope; in this way the agreement confirmed the papal veto of any leader the King of France chose who might be deemed truly unqualified.

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