Religious Nationality—religion in a shape peculiar to one section of the human family, or one territorial circumscription of the globe—is, prima facie, an idea foreign to the genius of Christianity. Nations, viewed in the light of the new federal relations established by the Gospel, are not independent, but interdependent. Judaism was a national religion, localized, isolated, geographically limited; but the Kingdom of Christ is worldwide. The Church Catholic takes no note of any distinctions of physical race, except to obliterate and extinguish them. That vast “net which is cast into the sea” of the moral creation, and “gathered of every kind,”—that common home of redeemed humanity, “where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free”—is essentially the same to all whom it embraces, however widely they may differ as to primitive descent or social organization. They who “by one Spirit are all baptized into one body, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit,” are strictly “fellow citizens” in the Christian sense of the word, whether their lot be cast in the temperate or the torrid zone—whether they be classified, after the order of nature, as Celtic or Teutonic, Aryan or Aramean. The curse of Babel is revoked by the Pentecostal benediction; and “the whole earth,” in so far as it is Christian, is again “of one language and of one speech.”

At the same time it is clear that Christianity, while unchangeable in essence, is to a certain extent plastic in application. It admits of some variety in outward development and administrative detail. It is not uninfluenced by the innate qualities of the soil in which it grows; it adapts itself to the material with which it has to deal. The Church Catholic, wherever it has fixed its sojourn among men, has been coloured more or less by the moral atmosphere and other exceptional influences with which it has been brought into contact. Such distinctions have arisen in all lands, and in all ages, from the very facts of ethnology—from the diversities of natural origin.

In this sense, then, a certain element of nationality is not only admissible in religion, but inevitable; and the existence of “Gallicanism,” properly so called, is no surprising phenomenon. Gallicanism is (or, to speak more accurately, was) the Christianity of the French people. It may be expected, then, à priori, to exhibit traits corresponding with the idiosyncrasy of that noble race; features reflecting and illustrating its characteristic self-reliance, its love of liberty, its impatience of foreign domination, its reverence for traditional authority and time-honoured usage.

Thus the question of Nationalism in religion resolves itself into one of degree and detail. The principle is legitimate within certain limits; but what are those limits?

Manifestly they must be so defined as to leave intact the field of essential theological doctrine. Within that sacred area there is no scope for Nationalism. Peculiarities which touch the foundations of the Faith—the Catholic tradition of all ages—the “quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,”—such peculiarities are well-nigh synonymous with heresies. To say that the tenets known as “Gallican” are not of this complexion may seem almost superfluous; yet such is the predominant tone of thought and feeling in the Roman Communion of our day, that the statement is not altogether uncalled for. It is notorious that the profession of Gallican opinions is now, and has long been, treated in certain quarters as if it were all but equivalent to a denial of the Faith. What, however, is the real character of those opinions? They belong to the domain of ecclesiastical polity; relating chiefly to the nature and extent of the authority vested in the Apostolic See, and in the individual person of its Bishop. They maybe said, also, to comprehend many collateral issues, radiating from this central point—issues affecting jurisprudence, legislation, discipline; the status and rights of the Episcopal Order in general; the legitimate terms of alliance between a National Church and a Christian State.

Now these are questions, doubtless, of considerable magnitude; but they are not of fundamental or indispensable moment. They are not questions de fide. The systematic exaggeration of their importance by the extreme partisans of Rome is one of the most unfortunate features of modern controversy. It is difficult to see how the cause of religion can be served by insisting on the dogma of Papal absolutism as if it were the cornerstone of the whole Christian fabric—the “articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae.” Such a theory clashes with incontestable facts. If this be an article of necessary faith, how is it that it has never been imposed upon the conscience of Christendom by the authority of any one undisputed Ecumenical Council? How is it that no such definition is to be found among the decrees of Trent? How is it that those who reject it have never in any age been branded with the anathemas incurred by formal heresy?

The champions of Gallicanism are scarce in the nineteenth century; but in days bygone, when it was first attempted to introduce the system now so well known as that of the Roman Curia, they exhibited no lack of energy and ardour. Collisions were inevitable; and the thunders of the fray, on certain memorable occasions, reverberated through the very heart of Christendom. It is satisfactory to reflect, however, on looking down the vista of ages, that the truths so strenuously contended for by the far-famed school of Gallican divines were maintained without any open breach of Catholic communion or dereliction of the Rule of Faith. Nor, although the current may seem to have set in an opposite direction in the Latin Church of our own and one or two preceding generations, is there any cause for apprehension as to the enduring vitality of their theology. Principles which have survived the desolations of the great Calvinist schism, the corroding ulcer of Jansenism, and the hurricane of an infidel Revolution, can scarcely have much to fear from the ravages of time.

II.

The Gallican Church, from the very dawn of its history, cordially recognized the primacy, and in a certain sense the supremacy, of Rome among the Episcopal Sees of Christendom. It was to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome, that the Martyrs of Lyons addressed a celebrated letter, appealing to him for aid in confuting the heresy of Montanus. The bearer of that letter was Irenaeus, then a Presbyter, afterwards Bishop of Lyons, and one of the brightest luminaries of the early Church in Gaul. From a much-contested passage in the treatise of this father “Against heresies” we may at least infer (after making every allowance for the imperfect state in which the work has come down to us) that he regarded the Roman See—“that greatest and most ancient Church founded by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul”—with deep reverence and honour, both on account of its pre-eminent dignity, and on account of the fidelity with which it had preserved and handed down the Divine Deposit through twelve successive episcopates. Similar conclusions may be drawn from the proceedings of the First Council of Arles (ad. 314). The fathers there assembled transmitted their canons with profound respect to Pope Sylvester, in order that (as they express it in their synodical epistle) “by him, who presided over the greater dioceses, they might be notified to the Christian world.” At the same time it is evident, both from their words and acts, that they considered the Council to possess inherently all necessary power of legislation, apart from any exercise of authority on the part of the Roman Pontiff.

The all-important principle of appeal to the Apostolic See in the “causae majores”—the pivot, as it proved eventually, of the whole system of Papal domination—began to prevail in Gaul in the early part of the fifth century. Mention is made of it in a decretal epistle of Pope Innocent I to Victricius, Bishop of Rouen, a.d. 404. In reply to certain enquiries of that prelate on matters of discipline, the Pope directs, among other things, that ecclesiastical causes shall be judged, according to the canons of Nicaea, by the Provincial Council, and that none shall be permitted to decline its jurisdiction in order to seek justice elsewhere;—“without prejudice,” he adds, “to the rights of the Roman Church, for which in all proceedings due respect must be observed. If greater causes should arise, they must be reserved, after the sentence of the bishops has been pronounced, to the Holy See, in pursuance of the injunctions of the Council. Not many years afterwards we meet with a remarkable instance of appeal to Rome on the part of a Gallican bishop, the results of which went far to settle the usage of the Western Church in this particular.

A dispute of long standing existed between the bishops of Arles and Vienne with regard to precedency and metropolitical jurisdiction. The question was brought before a Council at Turin in the year 401, when it was decided, for the sake of peace, that the dignity of metropolitan should belong to that prelate who could prove his see to be the civil capital of the province; and that, meanwhile, each should execute the office in the dioceses nearest to his own. The strife was thus suspended for the time; but in 417 Patroclus, Bishop of Arles, addressed himself to Pope Zosimus, to obtain restitution of the rights which he maintained to be originally inherent in his see ; and that Pontiff, probably without sufficient examination, granted his request. He wrote to the bishops of Gaul, directing that the Bishop of Arles should exercise metropolitan jurisdiction over three provinces, Vienneusis and I^ma and 2^da Narbonensis; that he should preside at the consecration of their bishops; that all clergy travelling abroad should obtain from him “litterae formatae,” or commendatory letters; and that he should decide ecclesiastical causes, with the exception of those which were important enough to be reserved to the cognizance of the Pope himself. These distinctions he declared to rest upon the Apostolic foundation of the See; Trophimus having been despatched from Rome to be the first Bishop of Arles, and the Christian faith having been diffused from that original source throughout Gaul.

But this judgment by no means put an end to the dispute. The very complicated case of Hilary, Bishop of Arles, during the Pontificate of Leo the Great, reopened the whole question; and all parties interested recurred repeatedly to Rome. Hilary was accused to the Pope of assuming primatial authority over the whole Gallic Church, and in particular, of having unlawfully deposed Celidonius, apparently a bishop of the province of Vienne. Celidonius appealed to the Pope; and Hilary himself proceeded forthwith to Rome, where he demeaned himself towards his superior in a somewhat-arrogant and unbecoming style. Leo assembled his Council, reversed Hilary’s judgment, and reinstated Celidonius, who seems to have been innocent of the offence imputed to him. Hence we may infer that the regulations of the Council of Sardica on appeals were at this period either unrecognized or very imperfectly observed. Had they been in full operation, Hilary would not have been justified on his part in complaining of Celidonius for carrying his suit to Rome, nor, on the other hand, could the Pope have adjudicated the cause without previously referring it to a Commission on the spot for a second examination. Leo, however, was not content with rescinding Hilary’s decision; he visited him with severe censure, deprived him of the Primacy granted to his predecessor, declared him to be severed from the communion of the Holy See, and intimated that it was a matter of favour that he was not deposed from his office. It was on this occasion, too, that the Pontiff procured from Valentinian III an edict affirming his supremacy in the government of the Church, forbidding the bishops, whether in Gaul or other provinces, to vary from ancient custom without his permission, and enjoining his officers, civil and military, to enforce submission to the Pope in case of need.

The question between Arles and Vienne was decided by Pope Leo in the year 449. He observes, in reply to a memorial from the bishops of the province of Vienne, that the two Sees had enjoyed precedence alternately; special privileges having been conferred sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other. For this reason he judged it right to make a division of the contested jurisdiction. He assigns to the Bishop of Vienne the four neighbouring dioceses of Valence, Tarantaise, Geneva, and Grenoble; the remaining sees of the same province being placed under the authority of the Bishop of Arles. Subsequent Pontiffs, however, conferred various important prerogatives on the Metropolitans of Arles. They were appointed Vicars and Legates of the Holy See; invested with the pallium as the symbol of that office; and empowered to convoke and preside at Councils throughout Gaul. St. Caesarius was the first who received the distinction of the pallium. Pope Symmachus confirmed to him at the same time (a.d. 513) all the privileges belonging to his See and exercised by his predecessors, and even extended his jurisdiction into Spain.

From the time of Leo the Great the Popes may be said to have possessed a generally acknowledged patriarchal authority throughout the Gallic Church. Nor does it appear that the administration of the Roman Patriarch, in the form established in those early ages, was on the whole inconsistent with the legitimate principles of Church Government. On the contrary, it tended materially to the maintenance of unity and discipline in times of great political disorder and social danger. The Pope was universally admitted to be the first bishop of Christendom; but his government was that of a constitutional, not of an absolute, monarch. His Patriarchal dignity was held in common with that of four other Patriarchs, and was not as yet developed into a Primacy of universal jurisdiction. He did not claim to be the sole source of ecclesiastical legislation; he did not pretend to be independent of Councils and canons. The Popes of those days were in the habit of reiterating on all occasions, and with every variety of expression, the fact that they were the guardians of the statute law of the Church; that they had no power to alter or abrogate those statutes; that it was the peculiar characteristic and glory of the Roman See to maintain inviolate the tradition of antiquity and the canonical decrees of Councils. A great Gallican doctor, Jean de Launoi, has taken the pains to collect a series of sixty-three declarations to this effect from the writings of different Popes; in which they acknowledge themselves to be bound, by special obligations, to conform personally to the legislation of the Church, and to enforce its authority throughout the Christian world. The same principle is further illustrated, with singular force, by the ‘Liber diurnus Romanorum Pontificum’, which contains the formulas by which the Popes of all ages have engaged, at their inauguration, to observe to the very letter the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils; to affirm and teach whatever the Church in her legislative assemblies has affirmed and taught; to condemn and reject whatever has been synodically condemned and rejected by the same authority. That any Pope should deliberately violate or set aside the enactments of general Councils was a contingency scarcely contemplated by the ancient Church. For such enactments were presumed to be made under the immediate sanction and direction of the Roman Patriarch; so that, in opposing them, he would be resisting and annulling his own acts.

It was only in proportion as these grave truths began to be forgotten in the rapid aggrandizement which was almost thrust upon the Papacy after the fall of the Carolingian Empire, that National Churches found it necessary to recur to the provisions of immemorial discipline, and to insist on the observance of their ancient “liberties.”

Ecclesiastical “liberty” is a phrase which has become in great measure identified with the history of the Church in France; but it must be observed that, in the claims originally advanced in that behalf, there was nothing peculiar to any single member of the Christian Commonwealth. All that was demanded was this; that the constitutional charter—the common law of the Church should be obeyed in practice. Freedom of episcopal election; the unshackled exercise of metropolitical jurisdiction; the regular celebration of Councils, especially of Provincial Councils; the administration of discipline through the ecclesiastical courts, unimpeded either by the arbitrary control of the State or by the indefinite multiplication of appeals to Rome;—such were the franchises vindicated by Gallican theologians not, however, as belonging exclusively to France, but as component parts of that Divinely-bequeathed heritage which is the property of the Church universal. The self-same objects were anxiously pursued in other quarters of the Christian world; but nowhere was the resistance to innovation so steadily sustained, so discriminating, or on the whole so successful, as in France. Hence the special significance of the term “liberty” as applied to the Gallican branch of the Church Catholic. Other nations of Europe fell into excesses in opposite directions; excesses either of blind abject submission to the Papal autocracy, as in Italy and Spain; or of rebellion ending in the disruption of visible unity, as in Germany and England. The tone maintained in France was for the most part dignified, temperate, respectful; combining a resolute assertion of the principles both of civil and ecclesiastical freedom, with profound devotion to the Patriarchal See of the West, and with obedience to its occupants in all things lawfully enjoined.

Thus the distinctive truths illustrated by the Gallican Church of former days were principally these:—that a National Church, while following the broad track of Latin tradition as to the primacy of the “Cathedra Petri,” may witness at the same time to the co-ordinate power of government which resides by Divine right in the whole Episcopal college; that the Canon Law, not the will of a personally infallible Pontiff, is the standard of the Church’s jurisprudence ; that it is possible to hold the doctrinal creed committed to the Church from the beginning, without acquiescing in Roman usurpations in other departments of the ecclesiastical economy;—in short, that, in order to be Catholic, it is not absolutely necessary to be Ultramontane.

It cannot be denied, however, that Gallicanism may be contemplated from a very different and far less advantageous point of view. The position occupied by France in regard to the Papacy was not devoid of serious countervailing drawbacks. The Gallican Church freed itself, to a certain extent, from the tyrannical yoke of Rome; but this partial emancipation was purchased only at the price of momentous concessions to the State. “Gallican liberty”—if it signified that constitutional autonomy which is the birth right of the Church Catholic,—was indeed worth any sacrifice; but what if liberty should be craftily transformed into servitude by the domineering action of the civil power? The Pope, though he might sometimes make an oppressive and mistaken use of his prerogatives, was nevertheless the chief Pastor of the Church—one whose spiritual character and Divine commission could not be disputed. But in proportion as attempts were made to repress the exorbitant pretensions of ambitious Pontiffs, the door was opened for intrusion on the part of another Element, which, although sovereign in things temporal, possessed no spiritual authority or jurisdiction whatever.

Hence arose an arduous struggle, which was prolonged for centuries, if indeed it can be said even now to be finally decided. Its general result is written on the face of history too plainly to be mistaken. Whatever was wrested from the Pope was appropriated by the Crown. So that, in process of time, while stoutly protesting against any recognition of Pontifical supremacy in things temporal, the French Church found itself reduced to the anomalous necessity of accepting the Royal supremacy in many things intrinsically spiritual.

Under such circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that the phrase “Gallican liberty” has become ambiguous, and is used in two different acceptations. In its primary and genuine sense it implies the right of the Gallican Church (as of all national churches) to administer its own government within certain limits—those limits being determined by the canons of Councils and the practice of the purest ages of antiquity. But the same term was applied, in later times, to the assumptions of the State in matters extraneous to its proper province, under pretence of maintaining national independence as against the usurpations of the Papacy. Ultramontane controversialists are glad to avail themselves of this convenient equivoque. They studiously ignore the ancient, unadulterated Gallicanism, and seek to persuade us that the system known by that name was fabricated by a royal despot and his sycophant bishops towards the close of the seventeenth century. They confound the abuses which arose from the absolutism of the Crown with that primitive organization which in all ages has confronted the absolutism of Rome.

Against this artifice the reader will do well to be on his guard. We hear it loudly proclaimed in these days that Gallicanism is the base-born offspring of a degenerate age—a “schism in disguise”—an outbreak of the spirit of insubordination—incoherent, illogical. The reply to such assertions is best made by distinguishing between the apocryphal version of it which was imposed upon the world by despotic monarchs, arrogant ministers, and obsequious parliaments, and that pure theological tradition which was coeval with the Church of France. Gallicanism (in its true sense) does not date from the “age of Louis XIV.” It did not originate with the Declaration” of 1682. It was not created by the Concordat of Francis I. It was not first formulated in the “Pragmatic Sanction” of Bourges. Nor was it even a happy invention of the illustrious Jean Gerson and those other kindred spirits who piloted the Church with such consummate skill through the shoals and quicksands of the “Great Schism.” It sounds like a truism to say so, but the truism is necessary—the Gallican Church was always Gallican. It was not, indeed, always in an attitude of active protest against the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff; for that supremacy, rightly understood and administered, is an integral part of the Gallican polity. But it asserted from the beginning those great laws and principles, the infraction of which in later times led to the divergence between the old and the new ecclesiastical discipline. If Gallicans began at a certain period to dissent from Rome, it was because Rome at that period had become other than she was. Ultramontanism, not Gallicanism, was the innovation. The Papacy, in the shape which it now wears, is only defensible on the plea that the original laws of the Christian kingdom are subject to development—or rather transformation—according to the presumed needs of successive ages. Gallicanism is a perpetual appeal to those same laws before the evolutionary process commenced. In other words, it is an appeal to the judgment and practice of the primitive Church. But there are those who would fain identify it with a system by which, in comparatively recent times, the Church was robbed of her dearest prerogatives; by which the free election of her bishops was abrogated, the voice of her Legislative Councils silenced, her judicial and disciplinary authority annulled. This was neither genuine Gallicanism nor genuine Christianity. According to Gallican theology, it is no less, but rather far more, repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel that the Church should be subjected, within the sphere of her divinely-ordained functions, to the arbitrary dictation of kings and parliaments, than that she should be ruled by the irresponsible will of her chief Bishop. The Church’s “liberty” has always consisted, and must for ever consist, in being governed by her own canonical legislation; in the equitable administration of that sacred code by the Episcopate; and in its being frankly recognized and effectually protected by the civil power.

Once more, then, the reader is warned against the stratagem, now so commonly practised, of representing Gallicanism as a mere modern expedient for converting the Church into a hireling and a bondslave to the State. It is true that, under the pseudonym of Gallicanism, the ancient independence of the Church in its relations to the State was practically subverted; but Gallicanism is not answerable for this monstrous perversion of its principles. “Look on this picture and on that.” Compare the portrait drawn by Pierre Pithou at the close of the sixteenth century with the cherished ideal of such men as Hincmar of Reims, Ivo of Chartres, Agobard of Lyons, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The one is a caricature of the other. The great mediaeval doctors rest their cause on principles which date from the very foundation of the “City of God,” and which are therefore opposed alike to Papal and to secular Caesarism. The modern programme is virtually an abnegation of the most important of those principles, forced upon the Church by the unscrupulous aggressions of the State.

The gradual metamorphosis of the Gallicanism of the primitive type into the hybrid system which latterly usurped its name—and which was not far removed from sheer Erastianism—is to be traced amid the vicissitudes of many centuries. Some account of it will be attempted in the course of the present work. The author does not pretend, however, to furnish a complete explanation of a series of transactions which, in many instances, were carefully masked under a veil of plausible deception, and which have been involved in further obscurity by conflicting historical testimony. There are problems connected with the fortunes of the Church in France which probably will never be solved with absolute certainty so long as the world lasts.

III

The Church of France was distinguished for many ages by its zeal for the independence and purity of ecclesiastical elections. Under the first and second Frankish dynasties the Church was the main source and principle of civilization—the dominant power of society. All important acts of legislation emanated from its Councils. Its prelates were Ministers of State; its priests were civil magistrates; justice was ordinarily dispensed through its tribunals. Church and State were in fact so intimately blended, as to be scarcely distinguishable the one from the other. During this period, the right of the Church to freedom of action in the choice of its chief pastors was fully admitted in theory; and elections to the episcopate were made, according to primitive usage, by the suffrages of the clergy and faithful laity of the diocese; subject always to the regulations of the canons, and to the approval of the sovereign. It is true that this practice was often interfered with, especially under the later Merovingian princes; but such cases were exceptions and abuses. Freedom of election was the universally acknowledged rule, and was more or less exactly followed until after the fall of the Carolingian Empire.

Thus, for example, the First Council of Auvergne, a.d. 535, expressly condemns any attempt to attain the episcopal dignity through the favour and patronage of princes, rather than by personal merit and the universal suffrage of the faithful. The Fifth Council of Orleans, in 549, decrees that bishops shall be chosen, with the consent of the king, by the votes of the clergy and people, as enjoined by the ancient canons; and thereupon consecrated by the Metropolitan and his comprovincials. “Let it not be lawful for anyone to obtain the episcopate by means of bribery or simoniacal contract. Let no man be appointed bishop over an unwilling flock; nor let any pressure be exercised by persons in authority, to procure the consent either of citizens or of clergy,—a thing shameful to speak of. If any such case should occur, let the bishop who has thus been ordained through violence, rather than by legitimate decree, be for ever deposed from the pontifical dignity.” The Fifth Synod of Paris, a.d. 557, enacts in its eighth canon, that the election of bishops shall be conducted freely by the clergy and people; that no one shall be intruded into a see by the command of the sovereign, or without the consent of the Metropolitan and comprovincial ; that if any one shall venture to assume the episcopal dignity in virtue of a royal nomination, he shall not be recognized as bishop by the prelates of the province. Again, it was declared by the great National Synod held at Paris in 615, under Clothaire II, that episcopal elections made without consent of the Metropolitan, the comprovincials, the clergy and laity of the diocese, as also those obtained through violence, intrigue, or simony, are absolutely null and void. The king, by an edict, confirmed this canon; adding, however, a clause to the effect that the crown was to authorise the act of consecration.

The same rule prevailed under the Carolingian dynasty. It was frequently infringed, indeed, by Charlemagne, who, in virtue of the quasi-ecclesiastical character which he assumed under the express sanction of the Holy See, exercised supreme control over the whole external administration of the Church. But the right of canonical election is explicitly affirmed by this monarch in a capitulary of the year 803. “Being not ignorant of the sacred canons, in order that in the name of God Holy Church may the more freely enjoy her just privileges, we have signified our consent to the ecclesiastical order, that bishops shall be elected by the choice of the clergy and people, according to the canons, from the diocese where the vacancy occurs, without respect of persons or gift of presents, on the sole ground of meritorious life and pre-eminent wisdom”. This capitulary was republished verbatim by Louis le Debonnaire soon after his accession. In process of time it became customary to solicit from the crown permission to proceed to an election; and an officer, called the Visitor, usually one of the bishops of the province, was appointed to preside over the proceedings, and make a report on the event to the Metropolitan; the latter, in his turn, giving information to the king. If the Visitor reported that the election had been misconducted—that there had been bribery, simony, violence, or the like—the nomination became void, and the patronage, for that time, devolved upon the crown.

The way was thus opened for a further extension of the royal prerogative with respect to the disposal of the highest ecclesiastical dignities. It appears that, under the later Carolingians, the practice of applying to the crown for license to elect led to that of royal recommendations of the individual to be elected. Persons in office about the court, the relatives of the nobility, of military chiefs, and other powerful retainers, naturally obtained the preference; and it required more courage than the electors possessed to reject candidates so protected, however slenderly they might be furnished with personal qualifications. Abuses thus arose, which were exposed and resisted with undaunted resolution by the famous Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims. On one occasion that prelate remonstrated in the plainest language with Louis III, in whose name an unworthy pastor had been intruded into the episcopate; bidding him not to imagine that when permission was requested from the sovereign to proceed to an election, it followed that the bishops, clergy, and people were bound to fix upon the person whom he had thought fit to nominate. “This,” said the archbishop, “would be no election according to the terms of the Divine law, but a lawless usurpation of human power. And if the circumstances be such as I have heard, without doubt the same malignant spirit who, in the guise of a serpent, deceived our first parents and caused the loss of paradise, has by means of similar flatterers whispered these delusions in your ear.”

The development of Feudalism brought with it important innovations affecting the hierarchy of the Church. Bishops, abbots, and all the higher dignitaries, became, in respect of their large landed possessions, feudatories to the crown and other secular suzerains; and as such, liable to the charges imposed on territorial property by feudal law. Certain prelates, holding estates in the “domaine royal,” were invested with temporal peerages. The Archbishop of Reims, the bishops of Laon and Langres, were created dukes; the bishops of Beauvais, Noyon, Châlons sur Marne, obtained the title of count. The Bishop of Senlis, also, was at one period a peer of France. Next in order came the prelates who held fiefs of the dukes of Normandy, Britanny, Burgundy, or of the counts of Champagne, Flanders, and Toulouse ; these, in feudal language, were “arrière-vassaux” of the crown. Lower in the scale were the abbots—regular, secular, and commendatory — most of whom enjoyed feudal baronies.

The six great ecclesiastical peers took precedence of all other prelates, and of all lay peers except the princes of the blood royal. They possessed seats and votes in the Parliament of Paris, since that court was held to represent the ancient court of Peers, originally the supreme tribunal of the monarchy. The abbots of Cluny and of St. Denis “en France” were also members ex officio of the Parliament of Paris*

All these clerical potentates were entitled to exercise the rights of sovereignty within the limits of their own territories; to coin money, impose taxes, make laws, declare war and peace, and administer justice by their local courts and officers. Considering the vast extent of their civil and political powers, it was essential to discover some expedient by which they might be kept in due subordination and allegiance to the crown. For this purpose advantage was taken of the feudal ceremony of investiture. The oath of homage was exacted from the holders of spiritual fiefs, as from all other vassals; and when the new prelate had thus pledged his fealty to his suzerain, the latter granted to him the investiture of his fief, by delivering to him the crozier and the ring. These, however, were the appropriate ensigns, not of temporal dignity, but of the pastoral office. It was a plausible proceeding in appearance, but in reality it carried with it a most dangerous invasion of the liberties, and even of the constitution, of the Church. For it implied, in the first place, that the nomination to the highest ecclesiastical dignities formed part of the inherent prerogative of the crown; and the right of free election by the clergy and people was thus ignored. But further, it suggested the idea that investiture conferred, not only the episcopal status in the feudal hierarchy, but also the episcopal office; i. e. that lay hands conveyed a purely spiritual jurisdiction. It was from the prevalence of such grave misconceptions that the celebrated contest arose in the eleventh century, known as the “War of Investitures.’'

During this great struggle (the course of which was far less violent, however, in France than elsewhere) the Gallican Church vindicated its rights with courage, and on the whole with success. Gallican divines seem to have admitted that the sovereign was entitled to confer on bishops the investiture of their temporal fiefs held of the crown, provided that the ecclesiastical election and consecration had taken place previously; and provided, also, that the oath exacted was that of “hommage simple,” not of “hommage lige.” These conditions, it was held, sufficiently excluded the notion that lay investiture had any share in the transmission of the spiritual powers of the episcopate. Such was the view taken by the great canonist Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, as appears from his correspondence with the Papal Legate Hugues, Archbishop of Lyons; and again, by Hugues de Fleury, in his treatise “De regia potestate et sacerdotali dignitate.”

The practice, thus guarded and limited, became eventually prevalent in France. The Bishop was first canonically elected; the election was then published, and confirmed by the Metropolitan; then followed the consecration; and lastly, the new prelate took the oath of allegiance to the sovereign, upon which he was put into possession of the temporalities of his see. This order was indeed violated in later times as to one most important particular. When the Crown had succeeded in monopolizing the patronage of the higher Church dignities, the oath of homage was commonly made to precede, instead of following, the act of consecration;—an abuse against which the French clergy did not fail to protest on various occasions.

In the course of this agitating controversy, the cause of ecclesiastical independence was resolutely defended by several great Councils held in France:—at Clermont, in 1095, in the presence of Pope Urban II; at Troyes, in 1107, under Pope Paschal II in person; at Vienne, in Dauphine, in 1112, where the bishops repudiated the pusillanimous concessions of Paschal to the Emperor Henry V; and at Reims, in 1119, where Pope Calixtus II, at the head of thirteen archbishops and more than two hundred bishops, prohibited all investitures at the hands of laymen. This last imposing exhibition contributed probably to bring about the compromise called the “Concordat of Worms,” which shortly afterwards terminated the strife.

Towards the close of the twelfth century, the system of ecclesiastical elections underwent a still further modification. From the time when the election of the sovereign Pontiff was restricted to the College of Cardinals, the Cathedral Chapters laid claim to the exercise of a corresponding privilege in the choice of their diocesans, to the exclusion not only of the laity, but of the parochial clergy. This assumption was ratified in express terms by the 24th Canon of the great Lateran Council, in 1215; and the right was generally recognized thenceforward as belonging to the capitular bodies. The elections were made by three different forms of procedure—by “inspiration,” by “compromise”, or by scrutiny”;—terms borrowed from those in use in the Roman conclave. The choice of the Chapter was then confirmed by the Metropolitan, with an appeal, in case of dispute, to the Pope. This practice continued during the greater part of three centuries; but it was subject to frequent interruptions, and was attended with serious evils. On the one hand, gross unblushing simony was induced by the perpetual intervention of the Crown in favour of its own candidates; while on the other, appeals to Rome became so common, on the ground of alleged informality or defect in the elections, that the patronage in numberless instances passed into the hands of the Pope. By means of “devolutions”, “reserves”, “apostolical mandates”, “expective graces”, and other specious expedients, the Court of Rome gradually acquired a predominant influence in the disposal of all the higher preferments in France.

The first attempt of any importance to apply a remedy to these anomalies was made by St. Louis; who, in the year 1268, promulgated his famous Ordonnance called the Pragmatic Sanction. That monarch, though a devoted son of the Church, full of affectionate veneration for the Holy See, did not hesitate to insert in this remarkable statute provisions aimed directly against notorious evils which had arisen from Papal usurpation; and claimed both for Church and State in France a certain character of independent nationality. The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis has been styled “the foundation stone of the Gallican liberties.” It is comprised in six articles. The first declares that the prelates, patrons, and ordinary collators to benefices in the kingdom shall fully enjoy their rights, and that the jurisdiction lawfully belonging to each shall be maintained. The second guarantees to cathedral churches the right of free episcopal election. The third directs that the “pestilential crime of simony” be altogether banished from the kingdom. The fourth ordains that ecclesiastical promotions and appointments of whatever kind be made conformably to the common law, the canons of Councils, and the ancient institutions of the Fathers. The fifth prohibits the heavy pecuniary burdens imposed by the Roman Court upon the Church of France, “whereby our kingdom has been lamentably impoverished”; and provides “that none shall be hereafter levied, unless for a reasonable, pious, urgent, and indispensable necessity, and with the free consent of the king and the said Church of France.” By the sixth and last article, the king “renews, approves, and confirms all the franchises, prerogatives, rights, and privileges granted by himself and his predecessors to the churches, monasteries, religious orders, and ecclesiastics of the realm.”

But the legislation of St. Louis—honourable as it was to his own motives and character—produced little or no permanent effect. Unworthy intrigue, simoniacal corruption, bitter dissension, even tumultuous violence, became matters of common scandal in the capitular elections. The interference of Rome was perpetually invoked in contested cases ; and it was this that led by degrees to the practice of reserving to the Pope the presentation to certain benefices, and to various other methods of alienating preferment from the lawful patrons. Pontiffs of the stamp of Boniface VIII and John XXII usurped as a right what their predecessors had resorted to only under circumstances of exceptional urgency, for the purpose of redressing abuses which were bringing the Church into disgrace and contempt.

IV.

A second principle affirmed with marked emphasis from time to time by the Gallican Church was that of the independence of its local Councils, and the free exercise of canonical Jurisdiction by its Metropolitans. In no part of the Christian world have Councils been more frequent than in the Church of France; a circumstance highly favourable, at first sight, to its disciplinary condition, inasmuch as it is by Councils that the Church speaks, acts, and judges, in its corporate capacity. But it will be found on examination that their character and mode of action varied materially from age to age; and that their history, as a whole, presents a faithful epitome of the fluctuating fortunes of the Church, in its relations to the Roman supremacy on one side, and to the domination of the civil authority on the other. In early times, while complete harmony and union prevailed between Church and State, Gallican synods were energetic, vigilant, and influential. But to this palmy period succeeded one of lamentable laxity, which continued till the ignominious downfall of the first Frankish dynasty. Under the “rois faineants” synods were gradually disused, and the functions of Metropolitans became almost extinct. A brief resuscitation followed under the Carolingians; but at a later date, when their empire began to sink into decay, the legislative system of the Church was fatally attacked by the innovating policy of Rome, which reduced Councils into dependence on the arbitrary will of the Pope, and sapped their authority through the abuse of the privilege of appeals. At length the spirit of medievalism was compelled to yield to the steadily-sustained aggression of the French monarchs of the “third race”; and in the sixteenth century Gallican synods underwent a change of organization so essential, that; although the clergy were still permitted to assemble by representation, their meetings lost their original designation, which indeed would have been a misnomer under such circumstances. The Pope had enslaved the Councils of the Church; the Crown suppressed them.

Diocesan Synods—consisting of the clergy of a single diocese under the presidency of the bishop—were held originally twice in the year, in spring and autumn; in later times only once a year. Provincial Synods, consisting of the Metropolitan and Comprovincial bishops, together with some few clergy of the second order selected by them, were in like manner celebrated in the early ages twice every year, as ordered by the canon of Nicaea; apparently without interference on the part of the secular Government, either in convoking or confirming them. The Provincial Council, according to the invariable Gallican tradition, was the ordinary tribunal for the decision of all ecclesiastical causes; it was the court of appeal from Diocesan synods, and appeal from it was allowed, in certain cases and under well-defined restrictions, to the Roman See. Yet in process of time, through the same conflicting influences which proved successful in annulling the freedom of elections, this great and wise institution of antiquity fell into disuse in France. The clergy urgently and constantly petitioned for its restoration, and sometimes with partial success; but it was never permanently re-established.

A third form of ecclesiastical assembly obtained from a very early period, namely that of the National Synod. These were originally meetings of the bishops of the seventeen provinces which formed the political “Diocese of Gaul.” Hence they are alluded to in the Theodosian Code as “Diocesan Synods.” “A Diocesan Synod,” says the commentator Godefroi, “is composed of prelates belonging to several provinces, gathered together under the presidency of a patriarch, primate, or exarch. These Councils,” he continues, “are called Universal. Such were those of Africa, of Gaul, of Spain, of Britain, and the like.” From the middle of the fourth century the Gallican episcopate was accustomed thus to meet in synod for the dispatch of ecclesiastical affairs, under the direct sanction and summons of the Imperial Government. Such were the Synod of Arles in 353; of Beziers two years afterwards; of Paris in 362; of Valence in 374; of Bordeaux in 385; of Treves in 386. An Imperial rescript was addressed to the Patriarch, Primate, or Metropolitan, who thereupon cited the prelates within his jurisdiction to attend at a given time and place. But these larger gatherings by no means superseded or obstructed the celebration of Diocesan and Provincial Councils. On the contrary, they enforced them as essential to sound discipline, and enjoined them on the bishops under severe penalties.

During the decline of the Empire, the power of convoking these national Councils was claimed by the Metropolitan Bishops of Arles, to which city the seat of civil government had been transferred on the destruction of Treves by the Vandals. The ambitious Hilary insisted upon this, among other prerogatives, as belonging to his See, and induced the Second Council of Arles to pass a canon to that effect. Pope Hilarius, in 462, expressly conferred the right of summoning Councils on Leontius, Bishop of Arles; Pope Symmachus made a similar decree in favour of St. Caesarius; and again, Pope Vigilius iu favour of St. Aurelian. But the Barbarian conquerors, in proportion as they made good their footing in Gaul, assumed the same authority in ecclesiastical concerns that had been exercised by their predecessors; and ere long it was made necessary to the bolding of a National Council that their consent should be first obtained. Thus the great Council of Agde (Agathense) in 506, at which St. Caesarius presided, was celebrated “by permission of Alaric king of the Visigoths.” Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, held the Council of Epaone under the authority of Sigismund king of the Burgundians. The first Council of Orleans (a.d. 511) assembled by order of Clovis, and presented its canons to that prince, with a request that he would confirm and publish them in his quality of sovereign. The second Council of Orleans states in like manner, in the preface to its Canons, that it was convened “by command of the most glorious sovereigns”—i.e. of Theodoric, Childebert, and Clothaire, the sons of Clovis. Sigebert, King of Austrasia, in a letter to Desiderius, Bishop of Châlons, reproves the bishops for having met in synod without the previous sanction of the Crown; and intimates that such proceedings must not be repeated. “Though desirous to respect the Canons and Constitutions ecclesiastical, he had determined, with the concurrence of his nobles, that no Synod should be held in his dominions without his knowledge. If his permission were requested, and sufficient cause assigned, it would not be refused.”

The records of Councils during the fifth and sixth centuries, and the early part of the seventh, give ample testimony to the zeal of the Gallican Episcopate both for exactness of discipline and purity of doctrine. The liberties of the Church were, however, grievously invaded by the later Merovingian princes; they violated the freedom of elections, set at nought the decrees of Councils, practised simony, and encouraged abuses which, unless corrected, would have been fatal to the ecclesiastical constitution.

So long as the laws of the Church were outwardly respected, and ecclesiastical authority was substantially upheld by the civil ruler, it would seem that the Popes of this period forbore to meddle with the practice of National Churches as to synods and other details of discipline. But when the sceptre had fallen into the degenerate hands of the last descendants of Clovis, they failed not to interpose with the vigour and fearlessness which befitted their office.

Thus Gregory the Great, hearing that synods were systematically neglected in Austrasia, wrote in strong language to Queen Brunechilde, exhorting her to lose no time in calling a General Assembly of the prelates of the realm. Bailing of success, the Pontiff despatched letters to the Metropolitans of Arles, Lyons, Vienne, and the Bishop of Autun bidding them employ all their influence at court to procure the required Council. Subsequently he appointed Virgilius, Bishop of Arles, his Vicar-General throughout the empire of the Franks, (with an express reservation, however, of the rights of Metropolitans) and authorized him to convoke bishops in Council for the adjudication of ecclesiastical causes; enjoining an appeal, in cases of special difficulty, to the Apostolic See.

It will scarcely be denied, on a candid consideration of the circumstances, that such action was originally taken by the Popes out of zeal for the efficient administration of the Church. Contemporary evidence shows that the intervention of Rome was occasioned by the incapacity and unfaithfulness both of the civil authorities and of the local episcopate. It is true that this movement resulted eventually in a wider development of the power of the Papacy, both spiritual and temporal; but that result cannot be ascribed with justice to a mere sordid love of self-aggrandisement, or a systematic pursuit of power for its own sake.

In spite of all efforts and remonstrances, few Councils were held in Gaul during the latter part of the Merovingian period. Only twenty are recorded during the whole of the seventh century; and through this culpable laxity on the part of its responsible rulers, the Gallo-Frankish Church sank into a deplorable state of corruption and decay.

The accession of the Carolingian dynasty brought with it a remarkable revival of discipline. The “second race” of Frank sovereigns formed an intimate alliance with the Roman Pontiffs; and the latter, perceiving that their acquisition of power might prove of infinite service to the Church, supported them with the whole weight of their authority, and invested them, in fact, with functions which were purely ecclesiastical. Carloman, the son and successor of Charles Martel, commenced the work of reformation by convening a National Council, known as that “of Germany,” in the year 742. The great S. Boniface, archbishop of Mayence, presided on this occasion, under a special commission as Legate from Pope Zacharias. The canons then enacted were republished in the following year at another Council held at Leptines, also under the presidency of S. Boniface. The same course was pursued by Pepin-le-Bref; in whose reign the Council of Verna enjoined that two Assemblies should be held every year; the first in the month of March, in the presence of the king, and at the place which he should appoint; the second in October, at Soissons or elsewhere, as the bishops might determine when they met in the spring. The first of these was a mixed assembly, consisting not of bishops only, but also of the counts and other lay nobles; the latter was an ecclesiastical synod, composed of metropolitans, bishops, abbot, and priests. It was convoked by the metropolitans, and all persons summoned by them were canonically bound to attend.

The government of Charlemagne presented a singular specimen of the complete fusion or amalgamation of Church and State. The national assemblies of his reign were virtually, though not in strict form, Councils of the Church; while, on the other hand, the bishops, in their quality of “Missi dominici,” were employed as actively in the concerns of political government as in the spiritual administration of their dioceses. It must be observed, however, that during the life of Charlemagne these assemblies had little or no direct authority in legislation, whether political or ecclesiastical. They were scarcely more than consultative bodies; the Emperor retained in his own hands the initiative of measures to be discussed, and also the power of final decision. The See of Rome expressly sanctioned, instead of opposing, this course of action; and it must be acknowledged that the interests of the Church could hardly have been confided to worthier hands than those of Charlemagne. His zeal for the exact observance of synodal legislation was unbounded. His ‘Capitularies’ are full of passages quoted from the ancient councils, such as those of Nicaea, Chalcedon, Antioch, Ancyra, Sardica, Gangra, Carthage, and Neocaesarea—which he applies and enforces as laws of the Empire. The clergy of all ranks trusted him implicitly, and had abundant cause for doing so. They regarded the Imperial decrees with scarcely less reverence and submission than they paid to the canonical legislation of the Church. They styled them the handmaids of the canons and were accustomed to transcribe and adopt them verbatim in the proceedings of Provincial and Diocesan Synods. Hence we find frequent extracts from them in the collection of Canon Law by Ivo of Chartres, and in the ‘ Decretum ’ of Gratian.

In the last year but one of his reign Charlemagne convoked five great Councils simultaneously in the metropolitical cities of Arles, Mayence, Reims, Tours, and Châlons. They legislated in a spirit of unqualified subjection to the Crown; they submitted their canons in distinct terms to the judgment of the Emperor, requesting him to alter and correct whatever he might disapprove, and to confirm and give effect to whatever he might think wise and profitable.

But the system of government pursued by Charlemagne was exceptional and transient. When the Empire, under the rule of his incapable successors, was manifestly falling into decrepitude and dissolution, the Popes began a second time to interfere with decisive energy in the internal administration of the Gallican Church. They now asserted an absolute right to receive appeals in all ecclesiastical causes, and that even previously to the sentence of the local tribunals. They claimed the power of convoking Councils at their pleasure—of presiding over them either in person or by “legates a latere”—of confirming or disallowing their decisions, and even of annulling them altogether. These pretensions were not wholly new; for, as we have already seen, the principle of appealing to Rome in the “causae majore” was recognized at least as early as the fifth century. Leo the Great had censured and disallowed the legislation even of an (Ecumenical Council; and the proceedings of Provincial synods had been revised and reversed in various instances of an equally remote date. But this system was now more extensively developed and more stringently applied; and the circumstances of the Church, both external and internal, were such as to promote its reception. Secular government—no longer directed by the master-mind of Charlemagne—was sinking into a state of collapse, and society was threatened with anarchy and chaos. The Crown was powerless to protect the Church; while the great lay vassals, struggling among themselves for ascendency, had every inducement to embarrass its action. The clergy, meanwhile, especially the bishops, possessed a considerable share of power, arising not only from their superiority in intellect and education, but from the vast extent of their domains, and the high rank which they held in the feudal aristocracy. The Popes, doubtless, perceived that this power, skilfully consolidated and efficiently administered, might prove the providential means of restoring unity and order, both social and religious. They saw that Rome, at such a moment, was the true rallying-point—the true source of moral regeneration. To rivet more closely the links which bound all orders of ecclesiastics to the See of Peter was to concentrate, and therefore immeasurably to increase, the energies and resources of the Church. This policy—often so severely reprobated as an inexcusable usurpation—does not appear to have sprung from any deliberate design either to intrude upon the just prerogatives of the Crown or to curtail the liberty of the Church, according to the sense in which it was then understood. The problem of the moment was how to save both Church and State by enabling them to make head against the surging flood of semi-barbarous revolution. It was a necessity, at such a crisis, that the ecclesiastical element, as embodied in the Papacy, should assume grander and more dominant proportions, in order to avert a general cataclysm. Nor, perhaps, ought we to be surprised that the Popes, in the face of such difficulties, should have overstepped the bounds of precedent and ignored the legislation of former ages. For any such modification of existing usage a plausible excuse was always at hand in the abnormal circumstances of the times. “Salus populi suprema lex.”

The appellate jurisdiction of Rome—involving as it did questions of crucial importance as to the rights of metropolitans and the authority of provincial Councils—was the mainspring of the agitation which prevailed during the ninth and tenth centuries. The Gallican episcopate, under the leadership of Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, steadily defended the supremacy of the ancient Canon Law, which they maintained to be unalterably binding. The Pope, on the contrary, seems to have held that the legislation of primitive times might be made to square with considerations of expediency, and adapted to the successive needs of the Church. Hence arose a conflict between the old and the new discipline; the former based on the decrees of the great Ecumenical Councils—the latter derived chiefly from the rescripts of individual Pontiffs, or rather from a series of documents purporting to be such, but which are now known to be spurious—the “Pseudo-Isidorian” Decretals. Hincmar, the champion of the constitutional system, was not only an accurate canonist, but a man of remarkable administrative power, and the foremost statesman of the age. He was confronted, however, by one who was at least his equal in genius and energy, and who had formed a broader conception of the requirements of the Church at a moment of special embarrassment. This was Pope Nicholas I. The struggle which ensued was keen and lengthened; but the Papal policy triumphed in the end.

Several typical cases occurred at this period, illustrating the change of relation between the Papal See and the metropolitan and diocesan episcopate. The first is that of Rhotad, Bishop of Soissons. Here the conduct of Pope Nicholas was manifestly contrary to the existing statutes and long-established practice of the Church. Rhotad had been cited by his Metropolitan, Hincmar, to answer certain charges before a provincial Council at Senlis. He refused to appear, and appealed to the Pope; which, according to the canons, he had no right to do until after the synod of the province had pronounced its sentence. Being summoned to attend a second Council at Soissons, he again declined; whereupon he was arrested by the King’s order, deposed from office, and confined in a monastery. The Archbishop and his suffragan were both politically and personally obnoxious to each other; and there can be no doubt that the treatment experienced by Rhotad, even if justifiable by the letter of the law, was harsh and extreme. His appeal was eagerly received at Rome, and the Pope wrote to Hincmar requiring him to reinstate the accused prelate within thirty days, on pain of suspension; or, as an alternative, to send him forthwith to Rome, together with commissioners on his own behalf, that the case might be re-argued in the presence of the Pontiff. But these were unconstitutional demands. Hincmar, in his reply, which is worded with the utmost respect, reminds the Pope of the forms of procedure with regard to appeals to Rome, as prescribed by the Council of Sardica, upon whose decrees the practice mainly rested. He states that, in the causes majores affecting bishops, if the accused appeals to the Holy See, it is the duty of the provincial Synod, after pronouncing judgment, to report to the Pope; and that, if his Holiness should so determine, the cause must be heard a second time. The Pope, however, does not arbitrate in person—far less does he restore such accused prelate by virtue of his sole prerogative; but he issues a commission to the comprovincial bishops, or to other special legates, desiring them to institute a fresh trial on the spot; their decision being final.t Such, undoubtedly, were the regulations then in force; and hence we see that the Gallican Bishops still adhered to those wise provisions of antiquity, by which the Church had drawn a distinction between autocratical supremacy and a limited Patriarchal jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, since the Pope persisted in requiring the personal appearance of Rhotad at Rome, he was at length permitted to proceed thither. Nicholas, after waiting several months, but in vain, for the commissaries whom he had ordered Hincmar to send to represent him, proceeded to restore the deposed bishop in due form, and despatched a legate to France, by whom the sentence was carried into effect. Rhotad continued to govern the see of Soissons till his death.

All the circumstances connected with this case of Rhotad deserve careful examination. It appears that the Council which deposed him had submitted to the Pope that the Bishop’s appeal was inadmissible according to the laws of the Empire. In reply to this, Nicholas gave them to understand that “temporal laws are not always to be applied to ecclesiastical causes, inasmuch as they are often at variance with the provisions of the canons.” Further, he instructs them that in causes of this nature the jurisdiction of the Pope is paramount; his sentence, the highest and irrefragable expression of the Church’s judicial authority. “Even if Rhotad had not appealed, you ought not to have deposed a bishop without consulting the Pope, in violation of so many decretals and precepts of our predecessors, which the Roman Church reverently preserves among its archives.” And whereas it was objected (in all probability by Hincmar) that these decretals were not to be found in the Code of Canons, and therefore were not obligatory, Nicholas declares that all injunctions of the Pope are of equal authority, equally binding on the faithful, whether included in the collection of canons or not. The obvious tendency of such a doctrine was to render the Pope independent of the legislation of Councils and, in fact, to supersede the legislative functions of the Church altogether.

It appears, then (1), that the practice of referring causae majores, such as the deposition of a bishop, to the judgment of Rome in the first instance, was unsanctioned by the Code of Canons (that of Dionysius Exiguus) at this time received in the Gallican Church. And (2), that the practice was said to be justified by certain decretal epistles of ancient Pontiffs, which, nevertheless, had not been inserted in the authorized body of Canon law. Baronius and most historians infer that the decretals thus alluded to are none other than the documents which had then recently made their appearance under the name of “Isidore Mercator,” and which long afterwards were discovered to be forgeries. There is no reason to suppose, however, that Nicholas was aware that they were forged; indeed, since he never quotes from the Isidorian collection, and since it was first circulated in a part of Europe far distant from Rome, it is probable that he had never seen it. On the other hand, supposing these documents to be genuine, they would, of course, have possessed considerable weight and authority towards determining the points in debate. Presumably, in the absence of proof to the contrary, they were genuine; and accordingly Hincmar, though he may have had his private suspicions, did not object to them publicly on the score of authenticity, but because, in the first place, these epistles were sometimes inconsistent with themselves, and next, because in some cases they were at variance with the ancient canon law. The latter was the principal gravamen. It was a question of comparative and relative authority. There might exist, not improbably, whether at Rome or elsewhere, decretal epistles of the early Popes, in addition to those which had been collected by Dionysius, and embodied in his Codex Canonum. Any and all such utterances of the Apostolic See, if agreeable to the legislation of Ecumenical councils, Hincmar declared himself ready to accept with the utmost veneration. But he declined to invest these dicta of individual Pontiffs with an authority co-equal with that of the Church in her legislative synods. It was this latter portentous assumption of the Papacy that formed the strain of the contest so gallantly sustained by Hincmar and his suffragans, and by several successive generations of the Gallican hierarchy. The controversy, in the ninth and tenth centuries, did not turn upon the genuineness of the particular collection of decretals edited by the Pseudo-Isidore (for it would seem that in those days there was not sufficient critical skill to detect the fraud) but upon the degree of ecclesiastical force and obligation attaching to any documents of that nature, when put in competition with the synodical statutes of the Church.

Pope Nicholas showed a similar spirit of encroachment in the matter of certain priests who were deposed by a provincial council at Soissons in the year 853, as having been uncanonically ordained by Ebbo, a former Archbishop of Reims, who had himself been deprived for taking part in the treasonable conspiracy against Louis le Debonnaire. They appealed to the Apostolic See; and the Pope—although there was no just ground of exception to the proceedings at Soissons, which had been confirmed by his predecessor—ordered the Bishops to meet a second time and revise their sentence. Hincmar behaved on this occasion with remarkable moderation and forbearance. He pointed out that it was impossible to cancel the decrees of the former synod, which had been passed by legitimate authority, and were fully justified by the facts ; but at the same time he suggested that in virtue of the power conferred upon them by the Pope’s commission, it was open to them to commute a sentence which his Holiness considered too severe, and to satisfy the requirements of discipline by the “more excellent way” of charity. Accordingly the Council, while carefully maintaining the validity of the previous acts in condemnation of the accused, restored them to the priesthood as a measure of “indulgence,” and out of deference to the wishes of the Holy Father.

Under Adrian II, who succeeded Nicholas, the Gallicans again contended for the lawful jurisdiction of their local Councils in the case of Hincmar, Bishop of Laon, a nephew of the Metropolitan of Reims. The younger Hincmar, a turbulent, headstrong man, finding that he was likely to be condemned by the sentence of his brethren, availed himself of the resource which was found more and more convenient by those who sought to evade justice, and appealed to the Pope. The appeal was disregarded by the French prelates, who, at the Council of Douzi in 871, pronounced Hincmar guilty, and deposed him from his see; the sentence of deposition being signed by eight Archbishops and thirteen Bishops. In their synodical epistle to Pope Adrian, these prelates begged his Holiness, if he should think proper to revise their proceedings (which they did not anticipate), to do so in the form prescribed by the Canons—namely, by appointing commissioners to examine the affair afresh in the province to which it belonged; and demanded that Hincmar should not be reinstated prior to such investigation. “For up to this time,” said they, “no decree of antiquity has ever been admitted in derogation of this privilege in the Gallican and Belgic churches.” Adrian, in reply, insisted on the prerogative of his See; commanded Hincmar to attend personally at Rome to pursue his appeal; and in the meantime forbade any fresh appointment to the See of Laon. But the resolute opposition which he encountered both from the King (Charles the Bald) and the episcopate induced him ere long to change his tone. “Let me remind you,” said the King, in a letter evidently dictated by Hincmar, “that the prerogative of St. Peter is in force, as St. Leo declares, when his decrees are founded on the laws of equity; whence it follows that if unjust they are of no authority.” And the bishops significantly remarked that before pronouncing sentence upon Hincmar, they had caused the canons of Sardica to be read in synod. The Pope now made an important concession; he promised that if Hincmar were permitted to proceed to Borne he would forbear to decide upon the case, and would cause it to be finally adjudicated in the province. The result was that the deposition remained valid, and a successor was appointed to the See of Laon. The unfortunate Hincmar was afterwards treated with barbarous rigour; he was kept a close prisoner, and was deprived of his eyesight.

The influence of Hincmar of Reims was again clearly predominant in a council held at Pontyon in the year 876; when the Gallican prelates resisted the pretensions of Ansegisus, Archbishop of Sens, who had been appointed by Pope John VIII primate and Vicar Apostolic in Gaul and Germany. The newly-crowned Emperor, Charles the Bald, who had lately returned from Rome, was present on this occasion, together with two Papal legates. The Pope’s letter was read, constituting Ansegisus his representative in France, empowering him to convoke councils, and to exercise a general superintendence over ecclesiastical affairs. The Bishops desired leave to read the document for themselves; but the Emperor refused to allow this, and demanded their unqualified submission to the mandate. Upon this they replied that they were ready to obey the Pope’s commands, provided always that they were in conformity with the ancient canons, and with those decrees which the Popes themselves had promulgated as enacted by the Councils. They were pressed by the Emperor and the legates at several successive meetings to accept the appointment unconditionally, but to no purpose; nothing was to be obtained from them beyond their former carefully guarded answer. The Bishop of Bordeaux, who was ambitious of being translated, through the favour of the Emperor, to the Archbishopric of Bourges, was the only prelate who expressed himself willing to acquiesce in the demand. The Emperor, much irritated, declared that he had authority from the Pope to carry his orders into effect in the matter, and proceeded to install Ansegisus in a chair of state next to the legates, thus establishing his primatial dignity in the face of the assembled episcopate. Hincmar protested against this as a violation of the Canons. Renewed efforts were made subsequently to induce the bishops to recognise Ansegisus in his new position; “but he obtained nothing more at the conclusion of the Council than he had done at the beginning.” There cannot be a clearer proof of the paramount importance attached by the Gallican Church to the principle of synodical legislation, and to the authority of the primitive system of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Hincmar inculcates this doctrine at great length and with singular power in one of his epistles. “If,” he says, “in this humble synod of ours anything has been superadded or sanctioned, through the complaisance of two or three prelates, the silence of others, or the pride of imperial power, in contravention of the sacred canons, or of Pontifical decrees promulgated agreeably to those canons, or at variance with the ancient privileges secured to every Metropolitan by the self-same laws—if any such crude and inconsiderate measure has been broached, it must be understood that the great majority of our body did not consent to it, but most resolutely rejected it with heart and mouth; and the judgment of the majority carried with it due weight and effect—an effect which, with the help of God, will last for ever. For, as S. Leo writes to Maximus, Bishop of Antioch, whatever may have been attempted, or for a time extorted by violence by any one, in opposition to the statutes of Nicaea, can do no prejudice to those inviolable decrees. Far easier were it to dissolve the bonds of any other compact, be the contracting parties whom they may, than that the regulations of the aforesaid canons should be in any particular abrogated.”

Thus the Pontifical rescript in favour of Ansegisus remained practically null and void. The Archbishops of Sens assumed from that time forward the title of “Primates of Gaul and Germany;” but it was a mere nominal distinction, unattended by jurisdiction or authority.

The circumstances attending the deposition of Arnulf, Archbishop of Reims, in 991, afford another proof of Gallican tenacity in adhering to the regulations of the ancient discipline. Arnulf, a natural son of King Lothaire, had been convicted of high treason against Hugh Capet, and was in consequence deposed by a Council held at the monastery of St. Bale, near Reims, f It was urged in his defence that the Council had proceeded irregularly; that the affair ought to have been notified in the first instance to the Pope, and that it was for him to summon a council to take cognizance of the charge and pronounce judgment. The Bishop of Orleans, who conducted the prosecution, replied that the Pope (John XV) had been informed, that during many months the bishops had awaited his answer, and that, since none had arrived, they were justified in acting on their own authority. “The Church of Rome,” said this prelate, (or rather Gerbert, who, no doubt, composed the speech which he attributes to him), “is for ever to be honoured in memory of St. Peter; and the decrees of the Popes are to be duly respected, saving always the canons of Nicaea and of other councils, which must remain eternally in force. For we must take good heed that neither the silence nor the new constitutions of the Pope are allowed to prejudice the ancient canons of the Church. If his silence is to prevail, it follows that all laws—all the decrees of antiquity—must be suspended so long as he remains mute. But if we are to be bound by his new constitutions, where is the use of enacting laws at all, since they may be rescinded at once by the will of a single individual? Do we, then, wish to detract from the just prerogatives of Rome? By no means. But, alas! how pitiable is the condition of Rome at present! The throne of the Leos and the Gregories, of Gelasius and of Innocent, is occupied by monsters of licentiousness, cruelty, and impiety. Let us pray for the conversion of our superiors; but, meanwhile, let us look for advice and direction to some other quarter than Rome, where all is corrupt, and justice is bartered for gold.” The bishop then proceeds to comment upon the famous dicta of Popes Innocent and Gelasius, to the effect that Rome is the judge of the universal Church, while she herself cannot be judged at all; that all the world is entitled to appeal to Rome, but that from her judgment there is no appeal. “If this be so,” says the orator, “we have at least a right to demand that the Roman Pontiff shall be one capable of pronouncing an indisputable judgment; whereas it is reported that, at present, Rome is given up to the most barbarous ignorance. But, even supposing that the present Pope were a Damasus,” he continues, “what have we done to contravene his decree?! We never attempted to decide this cause until no hope remained of our obtaining a decision from Rome. And as to holding a council without bis permission, the Council of Nicaea, so specially reverenced by Borne herself, ordains that councils shall be held in each province twice every year, without any mention of the authority of the Pope. In short,” he concludes, “to avoid further disputing, if the judgment of Rome be just, we will accept it willingly; but, if unjust, let us obey the Apostle, and refuse to listen even to an angel from heaven, if he should command anything contrary to the Gospel. If Rome is silent, as in the present case, let us consult the laws of the Church. What other course is open to us, since Rome appears to be abandoned by all aid, divine and human, nay, even to have abandoned herself?”

The bishops and clergy of the province elected, as successor to Arnulf, the accomplished Gerbert, then President of the Ecclesiastical College at Reims, afterwards Pope Sylvester II.

Pope John XV denounced these proceedings as uncanonical, and ordered another council to meet and reconsider the judgment. The bishops assembled accordingly at Chelles, and resolved that the former sentence must be confirmed; declaring, moreover, that they regarded as null and void whatever the Pope might ordain in opposition to the decrees of Councils. Upon this the Pontiff held a synod at Rome, annulled the deposition of Arnulf and the appointment of Gerbert, and excommunicated all the bishops who had taken part in those acts, including Gerbert himself. The French prelates, instigated by Gerbert, set at nought the sentence of interdict; and Gerbert indulged on the occasion in grossly insubordinate and abusive language against the Pope. John XV, roused into energy, sent a legate into France, who held a council at Mouson in 996, when Gerbert was suspended from his archiepiscopal functions, until sentence should be definitively passed upon him at a future council convoked at Reims. Hugh Capet, who had warmly supported Gerbert, died at this juncture; and the loss of his patron seems to have determined the archbishop to relinquish the contest. He absented himself from the Council of Reims, and that body, under the dictation of the Pope’s legate, pronounced his deposition from the see, and replaced Arnulf in his former dignity, cancelling the proceedings against the latter prelate, on the ground that a bishop could not be condemned without the consent of the Pope. This exposition of the existing discipline was apparently correct in the case of a metropolitan. On the other hand, if an accused prelate agreed to accept his episcopal brethren as his judges (which Arnulf seems to have done),f he thereby forfeited the right of appeal to Rome, and the verdict of the provincial court was final.

This whole case is much embarrassed by the political intrigues and rivalries which prevailed at the time. Arnulf represented the dethroned Carolingians; Gerbert was the partisan of the Capetian family, who had just succeeded to power. So long as Hugh Capet lived, the Gallican bishops were resolute in asserting their synodical rights, and in protesting against attempts to subvert them by the introduction of rules of discipline hitherto unheard of; and Arnulf, accordingly, was kept in prison, while Gerbert occupied the archiepiscopal throne. But no sooner had the crown descended to King Robert on the death of his father, than he entered into a secret compromise with the Pope, by which he agreed to sacrifice Gerbert, provided a dispensation were granted him for his marriage with Queen Bertha, which was objected to at Rome on the score of affinity. In consequence of this understanding, the royal influence was brought to bear upon the Council of Reims, and this, in conjunction with the powerful pressure exercised by the legate, produced the change of sentiment in that assembly, by which Gerbert was displaced and Arnulf re-established. The transitional character of the epoch, and the feebleness of the new dynasty, contributed greatly to the success of the Papal tactics on this and other like occasions. The first Capetian monarchs were but feudal chieftains, surrounded by a host of nominal vassals very little, if at all, inferior to themselves in possessions and authority. To a prince thus situated it was an object of no common importance to secure the support of the reigning Pontiff; and not unfrequently it was found convenient to purchase it by conniving at acts which were grievously prejudicial to the rights and welfare of the National Church.

The new principle propounded by Nicholas I and his successors, on the strength of the pseudo-Decretals, that no Council was legitimate unless sanctioned by the Holy See, rendered it necessary to extend largely the system of legations ; and this became one of the most marked features of the Papal policy during the middle ages. Prom the eleventh century the legates a latere were the ordinary means of communication between Rome and the provinces of the West; their powers were lavishly augmented, and all ecclesiastical affairs of any importance passed through their hands. They were authorized to convoke Councils throughout the provinces within their legations; and in these Councils they presided, taking precedence of the Metropolitan and all other prelates. They could suspend or depose any bishop who was bold enough to question their mandates; they might reserve to the judgment of the Holy See any point upon which they could not persuade the provincial synod to endorse their views. In this way the canonical jurisdiction of the Episcopate was virtually superseded. There were instances, doubtless, in which the legatine functions were discharged to the manifest advantage of the Church; such as that of Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII), who, being sent to France in that capacity by Pope Victor II, fulfilled the mission with such exemplary zeal as to effect a complete revival, both doctrinal and disciplinary, among the clergy of all ranks. Nor is it to be denied that much was done by .this means towards effecting general unity of ecclesiastical action—an object of essential moment, if the Church was to hold her own in the great impending struggle against feudal despotism. Nevertheless, the practice of governing by legates was not established without considerable opposition in France. Sometimes this arose from the zeal displayed by the Papal representatives in their efforts of reform, and the severe penalties which they inflicted upon clerical offenders; as in the case of Hugues, Bishop of Die, legate of Gregory VII, who deposed the three Metropolitans of Reims, Lyons, and Sens, for simony, concubinage, and other delinquencies. But more frequently they provoked resistance by overstraining their authority, and innovating upon the usages of antiquity. Ivo of Chartres was more than once brought into collision with the legate Hugues, Archbishop of Lyons, who held the office under several Pontiffs in succession. Hugues, on one occasion, had summoned the Gallican prelates to meet in a general synod, although Pope Urban II himself had already presided at two Councils in France within the same year. Thereupon Ivo was consulted by the king (Philip I) as to the lawfulness of such a proceeding. He replied without hesitation that it was contrary to Apostolic institution, and to the received custom of the Church; and that it was the king’s duty, after taking counsel with the bishops of the realm, to repel such acts of injustice and oppression. Again, the same legate refused to confirm the appointment of a newly elected Archbishop of Sens, except on the condition that he should previously acknowledge upon oath the primacy of the See of Lyons, which was a contested point between the two Metropolitans. The archbishop-elect declining to comply, Hugues forbade the bishops of the province to proceed to his consecration. This piece of presumption drew from Ivo of Chartres a letter full of dignified rebuke. He told the legate that he and his colleagues entertained profound respect for the authority which he represented, and were ready to execute at all hazards the orders of the Holy See regarding the preservation of the Faith and the correction of morals; but he bade him beware of imposing obligations as to matters indifferent, to the prejudice of the canons of the Church and the authorized customs of the Fathers. He reminded him of the celebrated maxim of Pope Zosimus, that it is not in the power even of the See of Rome to ordain anything contrary to the constitutions of the Fathers, or to make any alteration in them. The canons, he observed, contain precise directions as to the mode of consecrating a Metropolitan; he was surprised, therefore, at the attempt to enforce on the new prelate an oath of subjection to the Archbishop of Lyons as primate, when it was notorious that no such declaration had ever yet been required, either in the province of Sens or elsewhere. In conclusion, he exhorted Hugues to turn his attention to the really important objects connected with his mission; and warned him of the danger and scandal of contending about trifles, while the weightier matters of the law are systematically neglected.

The same high-spirited prelate addressed a stern remonstrance to Pope Paschal II, who had annulled certain acts of a Gallican Council upon a representation made by the legate. “Of what use will it be”, he asks, “to celebrate Councils for the future, since their judgments, though supported by the gravest weight of authority, are liable to be reversed at any moment on the complaint of a single individual? Wherefore we entreat your Holiness to consider carefully the relative advantages and disadvantages attending such interference, and to embrace a wiser policy; so that synodical sentences may not be rescinded except in extreme cases; and that the apostolic constitutions may be more scrupulously observed.”

The excessive amount of power enjoyed by the legates gradually rendered them odious in France, especially to the bishops, who found themselves almost dependent on the pleasure of these intrusive functionaries for their continuance in office. Their luxurious habits of living, their covetousness, their arrogant demeanour, their corrupt administration of justice, added to the general aversion they inspired; and by the time of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the legatine office had become the source of some of the most crying evils that infested the Church. The French monarchy, in proportion as it acquired strength and stability under the kings of the “third race,” applied itself vigilantly to the task of checking these abuses; an object which was successfully attained before the close of the fifteenth century. It appears that, from the first, the legates could not exercise their office without the express consent of the crown. The Pope ascertained beforehand that the mission of the proposed legate would be acceptable to the sovereign; and the latter, in his turn, made request to the Pope whenever be desired the presence of a special envoy from Rome. No sooner had the constitution acquired its modern shape, than the Courts of Parliament were charged with the duty of examining the Papal bulls appointing legates; and of making such regulations as to the discharge of their functions as might be judged needful to the security of the realm. Clauses were inserted by their authority in the act of verification of the royal letters patent, which stipulated that the office of the legate must be executed in conformity with the canons, the prerogatives and ordinances of the king, the laws of the realm, the liberties of the Gallican Church, and the privileges of the Universities. The legate was warned that if any infraction of these rules should occur, the illegal act would be treated as null and void, and that upon complaint being made to the Parliament, it would be cancelled as “abusif.” In course of time the following were also laid down as constitutional maxims in France: That the Pope’s legate has no jurisdiction as an ecclesiastical ordinary; that he may not supersede, nor in any way disturb, the lawful jurisdiction of metropolitan and diocesan prelates; that he cannot take cognizance, in first instance, of any cause affecting the clergy; that he cannot cite before him any of the king’s subjects, nor assume any sort of judicial or magisterial authority over them. In consequence of these jealous precautions, the Pontifical legates found themselves ere long comparatively powerless. Subsequently to the reign of Philip the Fair, or at all events from the middle of the fourteenth century, Gallican synods were but rarely held under their presidency; while on the other hand Provincial Councils, canonically celebrated by the Metropolitans and their suffragans, were frequent during the same period.

During the troubles of the “great Schism,” the Church of France distinguished itself by a series of memorable Councils, the results of which decided the national policy, and, indeed, the general course of ecclesiastical affairs in Europe, in those disordered times. It must be remarked, however, that the composition of these celebrated assemblies was somewhat irregular; they were not, strictly speaking, ecclesiastical synods, but rather gatherings of all the personages most eminent in rank and authority, both in Church and State. They were convened by the Crown. The right of suffrage upon the purely religious questions in debate was assigned to the prelates and clergy; the decisions at which they arrived were reported to the king, and, after having received the sanction of the royal council, were carried into effect by the joint action of the civil and spiritual authorities. The same mode of procedure was followed at the great national assembly of Bourges in 1438, which enacted the second “Pragmatic Sanction.”

The organic change which practically abolished the Councils of the Church in France dates from the era of the Reformation. It appears to have originated in the pecuniary necessities and tyrannical exactions of the Crown during the “Wars of Religion.” At the Colloquy of Poissy (December, 1561), the clergy entered into an engagement with the Government to pay the interest of one of the principal public securities—the “Rentes de l’Hôtel de Ville,” for the space of six years ensuing. This tax, together with an immense addition for other purposes, having been duly acquitted, the same contribution was imposed for a further period of ten years; and in the sequel it became a permanent assessment on the property of the Church, under the name of the “decime ordinaire.” It was resisted, however, with considerable spirit, in 1579; when deputies were despatched from every province and diocese to petition Henry III to call a general assembly of the ecclesiastical order for the settlement of the affair. With much difficulty the king was induced to consent ; and the clergy were summoned to meet at Paris, with an express proviso that not more than three representatives were to be elected for each province. They assembled at Melun, and forthwith proceeded to discuss two questions in which their order was vitally interested at that day—the promulgation of the Council of Trent and the revival of free episcopal election. Their object, doubtless, was to extort concessions from the Government upon these points, in exchange for any further sacrifice of temporalities which it might be in contemplation to demand from them. They urged their wishes on the king by repeated deputations, and in most importunate terms; but altogether without satisfaction. Thus provoked, the Assembly declared in the name of the clergy that they would no longer be answerable for the annuities of the Hotel de Ville. Symptoms of popular irritation followed; the Parliament interfered, and the clergy were compelled to yield. They agreed to guarantee the dividends in question for an additional period of ten years; and, moreover, to pay the king an annual subsidy of 1,300,000 livres for six years. From this date the “General Assembly of the Clergy of France” was held regularly once in ten years; and besides the decennial sessions, called “Assemblies du Contrat,” an intermediate meeting, the “Assemblée des Comptes,” took place every five years, for the purpose of auditing the accounts of the receiver-general. The former consisted of four representatives for each ecclesiastical province, two from the episcopal and two from the priestly order; making in all sixty-four members. The deputies of the second order were ecclesiastics beneficed within the province which elected them. They had the privilege of being reputed resident on their cures while attending the assembly, and during the session were exempt from arrest and civil process. The assembly nominated one or more of the prelates, being deputies, to act as presidents.

The Assembly of the clergy could not meet but by the king’s command. Commissioners on behalf of the crown were appointed to open its sitting, and were the bearers of a royal missive demanding a renewal of the “contrat,” and also the “don gratuit,” a heavy impost disguised under that ironical name. The commissioners also communicated to the assembly the affairs which the king desired to bring under its notice; these were chiefly matters of external Church policy, which, having been discussed in the Council of State, were referred to the clergy for the benefit of their advice. All questions of theology, however, or of a purely spiritual character, were left to the discretion of the ecclesiastics themselves.

The question was mooted on several occasions, whether deputies of the second order possessed a judicial voice in discussions upon doctrine, or whether their functions were consultative only,—the decision resting solely with the bishops. This was at length determined by the Assembly of the year 1700, which ruled that pastors of the second order had no right, in virtue of their ecclesiastical status, to act as judges of doctrine; but that if their constituents distinctly stated, in the official return, that they empowered them to take part in such deliberations, in that case the Assembly would admit the claim. The power, however, must be conferred in positive terms.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that these modern convocations of the clergy were by no means equivalent to synods of the ancient normal typE. In the first place, the bishops were not present as a body, in virtue of their office as rulers of the Church, but only by a deputation of two of their number for each province; and the representation of the priesthood was still more glaringly defective—two deputies only being returned by the parochial clergy of an entire province, and these, almost invariably, members of the Cathedral Chapters. It is true that the principle of representation was not unfairly carried out; since a preliminary meeting was held, called the “assemblée diocésaine,” at which the beneficed clergy of each diocese nominated two of their body to act in the “assemblée provincial” and by the votes of the latter the deputies were elected who were to serve in the “assemblée générale” at Paris. The scantiness of numbers was remedied to some extent by the practice of applying to bishops, and other persons of eminent station and merit, not being members of the Assembly, for their advice in cases of difficulty. This course was commonly taken when the Assembly was about to pass censure on books containing heterodox doctrine.

Again, the subject-matter treated of in these Assemblies was for the most part of a temporal nature; their principal business consisted in voting supplies for the service of the Crown, and apportioning the amount to be raised among the different dioceses. It was for this reason that the Government permitted them to be held with such unfailing regularity ; while on the other hand, the celebration of provincial synods,—recommended as it was by the immemorial prescription of the Church,—was, from the sixteenth century downwards, systematically discouraged, if not prohibited, by the civil authority.

And lastly, although these Assemblies were plenipotentiary, and could not be appealed from, in all affairs connected with the taxation of the clerical body, their doctrinal decisions carried with them no conciliar prestige, and were not regarded as binding on the conscience of the faithful. They were not empowered to enact canons; and their manifestos, though received with the respect inseparable from the position of their authors, by no means commanded the invariable and universal acquiescence of the Church.

In the interval between the quinquennial sessions of the Assembly, the affairs of the clergy were managed by two officers called “agens-généraux du clergé,” whose functions were of considerable importance. They were named by the ecclesiastical provinces in rotation, and held office for five years. Their duty was to watch over the interests of the Church generally, and in case of any infraction of its liberties, or other proceeding tending to its detriment, they were to forward an immediate complaint to the Crown; for which purpose they were entitled to claim personal access to the Council-board of the sovereign. In any sudden emergency requiring prompt action, the agens-généraux were authorized to apply to the bishops who might be in Paris or at the Court, who thereupon held an extraordinary meeting to determine the course to be taken under the circumstances. These private episcopal conferences were often of essential service to the Church. They were not recognized by the State, inasmuch as the prelates assembled on these occasions were not formally deputed to represent their brethren. Nevertheless the influence of the government of the day was not unfrequently brought to bear upon them for the attainment of some political object;—a pressure which could hardly be resisted. This was instanced very notably at more than one critical period of the Jansenist controversy.

It must not be forgotten, that in addition to these various forms of synodical and quasi-synodical action, the Church of France anciently possessed a direct means of making its voice heard in the national councils. The clergy constituted one of the Estates of the realm, and ranked first in order of precedence. As often as the States-General were convoked, the clergy of each bailliage met, at the summons of the Governor of the province, and proceeded to elect deputies to represent them in the supreme legislature. They had the right, in common with the other two orders, of presenting to the throne a “cahier de doleances,” or memorial setting forth their views upon any or all branches of the public administration, and urging their demands of reformation or redress. Moreover, a certain number of clerical councillors (conseillers-clercs) were attached to nearly all the courts of Parliament throughout the kingdom; whose authority in civil causes was equal to that of the lay magistrates. In the reign of Philip VI. there were fifty conseillers-clercs in the Parliament of Paris alone.

The supremacy of the Church in her judicial capacity—and indeed the entire system of ecclesiastical polity elaborated by Gregory VII, and other Pontiffs of like calibre—was accepted in France for many ages with the same submission as in other parts of Christendom; and the clergy shared largely in the general ascendency which thus accrued to their order. The essential principles of that system were proclaimed by none with more clearness and ability than by the great Gallican theologians of the twelfth century;—such as Geoffrey of Vendome, Hugh of St. Victor, Ivo of Chartres, Hildebert of Le Mans, and Bernard of Clairvaux. These writers teach that the temporal power, no less than the spiritual, is ordained by God; they maintain the distinction, and the mutual independence, of the two elements; but they concur in extolling the spiritualty as immeasurably superior to the temporalty; and affirm that, in consequence, the Church must exercise a certain dominant influence over the whole economy of human government. Some few theorists of extreme views (for instance, John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres) went so far as to attribute to the Church, or rather to the Pope, a direct authority, of Divine right, over the administration of all temporal affairs. But the more common opinion reduced it to an indirect influence, arising from the unquestionable prerogative of the Church as the instructor and guide of conscience. All baptized Christians, it was argued, are subject to the control of the Church in matters of faith and religious duty. The Gospel is not one thing for the multitude and another perfectly different thing for monarchs and nobles. The prince, in common with his meanest vassal, is committed to the pastoral oversight of those whom Christ commissioned to feed His flock; and it belongs, therefore, to them to inform and direct his conscience as to the right administration of his trust. As a Catholic, he is the son of the Church, not its governor; in things pertaining to religion, it is his place to be a learner, not a teacher. Such was the simple basis of a system which, in its organized application to the details of government and the diversified realities of life, ruled the world for upwards of five centuries.

Though founded on a great and indisputable truth, it became dangerous at length, by reason of the false deductions which were drawn from it. For it was inferred that, in case of serious delinquency in faith or morals, a sovereign was amenable to corrective discipline; and that, as a last resource, he might be excommunicated. Now, according to the prevailing belief of those days, the ban of excommunication carried with it penal consequences, not only of a spiritual, but of a temporal and civil nature. A monarch under such an infliction, being cut off from the unity of the Christian body, was deemed no longer fit to bear rule over Christians. From this latter fact, then, an extreme conclusion was arrived at, radically subversive of all monarchical authority ; namely, that if the offender remained stubbornly impenitent, it was competent to the Pope to absolve his subjects from their oath of allegiance, and practically to depose him from the throne.

Nor were these mere theoretical maxims, confined to dry treatises of theology, to the conventual cloister, or the lecture rooms of Universities. The world beheld them, in many memorable instances, logically reduced to practice. Several Carolingian princes—Louis le Debonnaire, Lothaire, Charles the Bald—were dethroned by the authority of Gallican synods; and the legality of the proceeding was questioned by no man; nay, was acknowledged by the deposed monarchs themselves. King Robert, again, was excommunicated by Pope Gregory V. Philip I by Gregory VII; Philip Augustus by Innocent III, who, moreover, kept the whole of France under an interdict for eight months. Even the heirs of the Caesars—Henry IV, Henry V, Frederick II—had cause to rue the day when they presumed to measure themselves against the mysterious theocracy represented by the Vicar of Christ.

Geoffrey, Abbot of Vendome and Cardinal, a.d. 1095, is said to have been the first to point out the mystical significance of the “two swords” in the Gospel of St. Luke. This fanciful interpretation soon became popular with ecclesiastical writers; and an argument was derived from it which was seriously regarded as establishing the supremacy of the Pope over both worlds, spiritual and temporal. Such is the use made of the allegory by St. Bernard, in a well-known passage of his treatise “De Consideratione,” addressed to Pope Eugenius III. “If anyone should deny that the material sword belongs to you, I think he cannot have paid attention to the words of Christ, who commanded Peter to put up his sword into the sheath. This sword, then, is assuredly yours, to be drawn at your demand, although by other hands than yours. If it were not at your disposal, when the Apostles said, Lord, behold here are two swords, our Lord, instead of answering, It is enough, would have said, It is too much. The two swords, then, belong to the Church—the spiritual and the material. It is for the Church herself to draw the spiritual sword, by the hands of the sovereign Pontiff; the material sword is to be drawn in defence of the Church, by the hands of the soldier, at the solicitation of the Pope and by order of the prince.” Again, in a letter to the Cardinals who had just elected Pope Eugenius, Bernard exclaims, “God forgive you! what have you done ? Was there no man to be found of greater wisdom and experience, who would have been better qualified for so high an office? In truth it seems ridiculous to choose a poor creature covered with rags (Eugenius was a Cistertian monk) to rule over princes, to give laws to bishops, to dispose of kingdoms and empires. Was this a man to gird on the sword and execute vengeance on the people—to bind their kings in chains and their nobles with links of iron?”

A remarkable statement to the same effect occurs in the writings of Hugh, Abbot of St. Victor at Paris, another mediaeval doctor of high repute. Speaking of the two principles of government, “the one,” he says, “is called the temporal, the other the spiritual; both contain different orders and degrees of power; but on each side they are dependent on a single head, from which they derive as from their source and root of unity. The temporal power has for its head the prince; the head of the spiritual is the sovereign Pontiff. To the royal authority belong all things which are earthly and connected with the natural life; all that is spiritual, all that appertains to the spiritual life, is placed under the government of the supreme Pontiff. But by how much the spiritual life is nobler than the earthly, and the soul than the body, in that proportion the spiritual power exceeds in honour and dignity that which is earthly or secular. For to the spiritual power it belongs both to establish the earthly, that it may exist, and to judge it, if it should act amiss. But the spiritual power itself is instituted by God alone, and if it should err, it can be judged by none but Him; as it is written, The spiritual man judgeth all things, but he himself is judged of no man.” He then shows from the Old Testament history that the priestly office was first instituted by God, and the royal authority afterwards organized through its ministry. “Hence in the Christian Church the bishops still consecrate kings, both sanctifying their power by benediction, and forming it by institution. If then, according to the Apostle, he who blesseth is greater than him. who is blessed, it follows manifestly that the temporal power is inferior to the spiritual, from which it receives benediction.”

It was easy thus to define in words the comparative nature and functions of ecclesiastical and political authority; but, in practical operation, the system was found to involve insuperable difficulties. The spiritual and the temporal are ideas distinct in theory, but as a matter of experience neither element confines itself strictly to its proper sphere. Who will undertake to fix the precise point where the purely spiritual ends and the purely temporal begins? It is probably impossible, under any circumstances, that the balance should be maintained at an exact equipoise. It has been in all ages a history of alternate action and reaction—of aggression and repulse. Nay, even the theory of the Hildebramline school is inconsistent with itself; for, if once it be admitted that the Church, represented by the Pope, possesses a directive power over the civil ruler, and may take cognizance of his acts judicially in case of alleged error, the independence of the two principles, however affirmed in words, is in fact overthrown. Such a prerogative is capable of indefinite extension. It may be so exercised as to be a means of perpetual interference with the ordinary administration of civil affairs; for what human government is exempt from error? If every instance. of mistaken judgment, every act of unwise or unjust policy, on the part of a civil ruler, were liable to be arraigned and corrected by the magisterium of the Church, an utter subversion must follow of the Divinely-ordained scheme of government. The temporal power would be neutralized and absorbed by the spiritual.

A tendency towards anomalies of this kind was early manifested in the dealings of the Papacy with the great monarchies of Europe. For instance, Innocent III, in the year 1199, attempted to impose his arbitration on the kings of France and England, under the plea that peace was necessary in order that they might turn their combined arms against the infidel. On this occasion the Pontiff explained at length, in a letter to the Gallican bishops, that he did not pretend to adjudicate disputed questions about feudal rights, but claimed to decide “concerning sin,—the censure of which belongs, beyond all doubt, to us, and we are bound to exercise it in respect of all persons whatsoever.” He founds this claim upon the precept of our Lord, “If thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault,” &c... “And if he neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church; but if be neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” “Let not the king, then,” continues Innocent, “account it injurious to his dignity to submit himself to the judgment of the Apostolic See in this matter, after the example of Valentinian, Theodosius, and other illustrious princes. For we do not rely on any human constitution, but on the Divine law; our authority is not from man, but from God. No man of sane mind is ignorant that it appertains to our office to correct any and every Christian in respect of mortal sin; and if he should despise our correction, to enforce it by means of ecclesiastical penalties.” The right thus insisted on to pronounce and execute judgment in all cases “in respect of sin,” gave an incalculable advantage to the ecclesiastical over the temporal authority. Any intrusion of the lay element into the spiritual domain was an act of sacrilege—of impious rebellion against the Divine economy; whereas, on the other hand, the Pope possessed the means of exercising, though indirectly, unlimited jurisdiction in things temporal; he might interpose in the concerns of civil government as often as he judged it necessary either for the personal welfare of the sovereign or for the general interests of the Church. This extraordinary system— which in the great war of Investitures had triumphed over the combined antagonism of the proudest dynasties of Europe—was destined to receive its death-blow in France. The crisis arrived in the opening years of the fourteenth century. The events which then occurred were of extreme gravity, not only as regards the history of the relations between Church and State in France, but as practically decisive of the entire question between secular and Pontifical authority throughout the world.

Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII, the principal combatants on this memorable occasion, were well matched, both in point of ability and resolution; each alike confident of the justice of his cause; the one no less determined to establish the independence of his throne and temporal sovereignty than the other to uphold what he considered the indefeasible liberties of the Church, and the supremacy of its “magisterium” over all orders and ranks of Christians.

The Pope, however, laboured under one disadvantage, and it was fatal. The principles for which he strove were indeed the very same that his predecessors, Gregory VII, Alexander III, Innocent III, Innocent IV, Gregory IX, had illustrated with such marvellous success. But the times were not the same; the tide of public feeling had turned, and was setting powerfully in an opposite direction; and whereas the decrees of former Pontiffs had been accepted with unreasoning submission, Boniface was destined to be met by reckless criticism, insolent rebuke, and even by vindictive violence. Moreover his personal character was unhappily such as to aggravate the difficulties of his situation. Arrogant, irritable, peremptory, headstrong, his every movement fanned the flame of strife, and infused into it a bitterness which forbade the hope of accommodation. Such has been the case repeatedly in the most eventful conjunctures of the world’s history. Inability to read the signs of the times, want of tact, want of calm judgment, of moderation, of perception of the proper moment, manner, and limits of concession,—these are faults which have proved the ruin of empires quite as often as misdeeds of deeper dye; and it was through such faults that the vast fabric of Roman supremacy in things temporal was shaken to its centre by the despotic monarchy of France.

With regard to the original ground of quarrel, Philip was clearly in the wrong; for his favourite tax, the “maltote,” having never been sanctioned by the Pope, could not be imposed upon the clergy according to the existing provisions of the law. In condemning this irregular proceeding, then (by the bull “Clericis laicos”), Boniface did no more than enunciate a principle which was confessedly in force, although it had been repeatedly violated in practice. But the tone and language which he employed in doing this were so extravagant, that the King could hardly recede without compromising his dignity. He persisted, therefore, in asserting his right, as a matter of principle, to tax the clergy; but he argued a priori, as if there had been no legislative enactments in existence on the subject. “The kings of France,” he said, “have always possessed the power of taking necessary measures for the defence and preservation of the realm against its enemies. The Church does not consist of the clergy only, but of the laity also. Christ purchased freedom from sin and from the yoke of the ancient law for clergy and laity alike; and therefore the clergy have no right to appropriate to themselves exclusively that liberty which belongs to the whole Christian body. Special privileges have indeed been granted to the ministers of the Church by the Popes, at the instance or with the consent of secular princes; but such privileges cannot deprive the sovereign of what is indispensably required for the good government and integrity of his dominions. The clergy are subjects of the crown, members of the body politic, like other men; and are in consequence bound to contribute towards its preservation. It is contrary to the law of nature to excuse them from this obligation, while they are permitted to waste the property of the Church in luxuries of dress and equipage, in banquets and other worldly vanities.” These were truths undeniable in themselves, but inconclusive in the case in hand; for it was a notorious fact that the clergy were not, with respect to liability to State taxation, on the same footing with other classes; that they were exempted from it by long continued usage, resting on the canons of Councils, which had been recognised and confirmed by the State itself. The gist of Philip’s argument was, that they ought not to enjoy such exemption; in other words, that the legislation of past ages was mistaken, and required amendment. His object was to make a radical change in the system as it stood; to do away with all distinction between clergy and laity, so far as concerned the duty of replenishing the public exchequer. This might be a politic enterprise in the interest of royalty; but it was one which the Pope, from his point of view, might not unfairly resist.

Moved, however, by the representations of the Archbishop of Reims and his clergy, who anxiously deprecated a collision between the Church and the civil power, Boniface, in a second bull, put forth a conciliatory explanation of the first. His prohibition, he said, was meant to apply to compulsory imposts, not to voluntary contributions. It did not include, again, the customary payments due from bishops and other ecclesiastics in respect of their temporal fiefs held under the Crown. Nor did it touch the case of a great and sudden exigency, when all the resources of the kingdom were required to repel the invasion of a foreign foe. These concessions, though somewhat tardy, were graciously received by Philip; he expressed himself satisfied, and the misunderstanding was apparently at an end.

But a fresh breach was occasioned not long afterwards by the affair of Bernard de Saisset, Bisbop of Pamiers; and here the consequences were more serious. Boniface had erected Pamiers, heretofore a convent of Canons Regular, into an Episcopal See; and had nominated Bernard de Saisset the first bishop, by his own sole authority, without consulting with the Metropolitan of the province, or the king. This proceeding Philip allowed to pass in silence. The new prelate, an ambitious, violent man, assumed the temporal lordship of Pamiers, to the prejudice of the Comte de Foix, to whom it had been granted by the Crown. Finding the Count too strong for him, he sought assistance from the Pope; and Boniface appealed to Philip to support the refractory bishop against his lawful superior. It is not surprising that the monarch declined a request so totally opposed to all the principles of feudalism. Upon this Boniface proceeded, in a spirit of singular bad taste and gratuitous insolence, to appoint Saisset, whom the king could not but regard as a rebellious vassal, his legate or nuncio at the court of France. In this quality it appears that Saisset was guilty of offensive and even treasonable language against Philip; who, losing patience, caused the bishop to be suddenly arrested, and committed to the custody of his Metropolitan, the Archbishop of Narbonne. A special envoy, Pierre Flotte, was then despatched to Rome, to demand that the prisoner might be forthwith degraded from the episcopal office and stripped of every privilege belonging to the clerical order, so that the king might cause justice to be done upon him by the secular arm, as an incorrigible offender.

Philip damaged his cause by these precipitate acts. To arrest the Pope’s nuncio was a violation of the law of nations, to say nothing of the acknowledged privileges of the clergy; and what could be more palpably unjust than to summon the Pope to degrade his own representative, upon a mere vague charge unsubstantiated by proof ? Boniface was fully justified in resisting the demand; and had his resistance been conducted with moderation, there is reason to believe that it would have terminated in his favour. As it was, he allowed himself to be hurried by resentment into a series of measures which, after exposing him to unparalleled indignities, at length brought his life to a pitiable close.

On one and the same day, December 5, 1301, the angry Pontiff despatched five separate bulls or rescripts to France. The first contained a request or command to Philip to set the Bishop of Pamiers immediately at liberty, to restore to him all his possessions which had been seized on his arrest, and to permit him to proceed freely to the Pope’s presence at Borne. This document was not intemperately worded, though it intimated that the king had incurred the sentence of excommunication by laying violent hands upon a bishop. But it was accompanied by others couched in a more trenchant style. By the “Salvator mundi,” Boniface revoked all the privileges which he had granted to Philip, alleging that they had been scandalously abused. The “Ausculta, fili,” commenced with an unqualified assertion of the subordination of the temporal authority to the spiritual. “God has set me, though unworthy, above kings and kingdoms, having imposed upon me the yoke of Apostolic servitude, to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant, in His name. Wherefore let no man persuade you that you have no superior, or that you are not subject to the supreme head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He who thinks so is a madman, and, if he persists in his error, is convicted as an infidel.” The Pope then enters on an elaborate detail of his .complaints against Philip. “Although it is certain that the nomination to all benefices belongs to the Pope, and that you can have no right to any such patronage without the consent of the Holy See, you oppose our collations, and claim to act as judge in your own cause. You drag before your tribunals the bishops and other clergy of your kingdom, both regular and secular, even for matters concerning property which they do not hold from you in fief. You exact from them tenths and other imposts, although lay men have no authority whatever over the clergy. You hinder the bishops from employing the spiritual sword against offenders, and from exercising their jurisdiction over conventual houses. You observe no moderation in disposing of the revenues of vacant episcopal sees, which you call, by an abuse, the ‘ droit de regale.’ You squander these revenues, and then turn into plunder what was intended as a means of preserving them intact.” He announces, in conclusion, that, out of pastoral solicitude for his soul’s health, and for the reputation of a kingdom which is dear to him, he has summoned the archbishops and bishops, the abbots, and superior clergy of France, to appear before him at Rome, that he may there deliberate upon the affairs of his realm with persons devoted to its interests, and whom he (the king) could have no reason to suspect.

The bull convoking the French prelates and clergy to assemble in Council at Rome was expedited on the same day.

The “ Ausculta, fili,” convinced Philip that the real drift of the Pope’s policy was nothing less than to destroy the substantive reality of monarchical power; and that he must either prepare to fight the battle to the last extremity, or consent to hold his crown as a dependency of the Holy See. He took his measures with characteristic vigour. He caused the Nuncio, Jacques des Normands, who had brought the obnoxious bulls to France, to be conducted under a guard to the frontier, in company with the Bishop of Pamiers, whom he banished for ever from the realm. The “ Ausculta, fili” (or, as some historians think, an abridgment of it, expressed in still more insulting terms) was publicly burnt at Paris. And lastly, on the 10th of April, 1302, the king held a grand Parliament, or meeting of the three estates of the kingdom, in the cathedral of Notre Dame, and frankly asked the advice of his people in the critical state of his relations with the Holy See. Was it their opinion that the sovereign was subject to the Bishop of Rome, not only in spirituals, but as to the conduct of his temporal government? Was the kingdom of France an independent monarchy, or was it held in feudal vassalage from the Pope? To this question the nobles and the deputies of the commons responded, with unanimous enthusiasm, that the crown was held of God alone, and that they were ready to sacrifice both property and life rather than submit to the outrageous usurpations of Pope Boniface, even if the king himself were not disposed to withstand them. The clergy, however, hesitated. They were not incapable, as they had often shown, of resisting the unconstitutional claims and exactions of the Popes ; but on the other hand, they entertained no small apprehension of the despotic character of Philip, and shrunk from the prospect of a struggle which might possibly end in a violent severance of the National Church from the centre of unity. At first they endeavoured to evade a direct reply; urging that the Pope’s language had been misunderstood, and that he by no means intended to assume any supremacy in things temporal over the Crown and Government in France. This explanation, however, was not accepted; and such was the prevailing exasperation against Boniface, that the representatives of the clergy were constrained at length to give in their adhesion to the votes of the other two orders. They entreated the king to allow them to proceed to Rome according to the Pope’s citation; but this was positively refused. They then addressed a pathetic letter to the Pope, to acquaint him of the imminent danger of a schism between France and Rome, and of a rupture between the clerical order and the people. “The laity shun us,” they said, “and exclude us from their society, as if we sought to betray them. They despise the censures of the Church, by whomsoever pronounced, and use every precaution to make them ineffectual. In this extremity we have no resource but to appeal to your prudence; and we implore you, with tears in our eyes, to preserve the ancient union of the Church with the State, and to consult our safety by revoking the orders you have sent us to repair to your presence.” Boniface, in reply, rebuked them for their pusillanimity in yielding to the dictation of a tyrannical prince and his council, and threatened them with punishment if they disobeyed his summons to Rome. “To deny the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual,” said he, “and to assert that they are independent powers, is nothing less than to set up two contradictory principles, like the Manichean heretics.”

An attempt was now made to adjust the quarrel by means of negotiation and mutual explanation. Four French prelates were despatched to Rome for this purpose. The Pope, receiving them in full consistory, expatiated in a bland and conciliatory tone on his anxious desire to preserve the harmony which had existed in all ages between the realm of France and the Apostolic See. To pretend that he had ever laid claim to any superiority over Philip as to temporal jurisdiction was, he declared, a malicious falsehood, invented by Pierre Flotte for his own wicked purposes. He had never advanced any such senseless opinion, well knowing that the power of temporal and of spiritual government are alike ordained of God. “At the same time,” continued Boniface, “the King cannot deny that he owes submission to the Roman Pontiff in respect of sin”.

This phrase, “in respect of sin,” so frequent in the mouths of the Popes of the middle age, contains the key to their whole line of policy with regard to the question in dispute. It is true that they did not claim any direct jurisdiction over princes as to their administration in things temporal; but indirectly, in virtue of their functions as supreme directors in matters of conscience, their pretensions amounted nearly, if not altogether, to the same thing. Kings, in common with all other Christians, were responsible to the Church “in respect of sin”—that is, in respect of her right to guide the conscience. Upon this plea it is obvious that the Pope might claim to arbitrate in any and every case within the range of human action. It belonged to him to judge how far, under any given circumstances, the parties concerned had incurred the guilt and penalties of sin. The keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were in his custody; it was for him to bind or to loose, to condemn or to absolve, according to his view of the requirements of due spiritual discipline. As a dogma of the Catholic Church, this was incontestable in the abstract; the existence of such power was universally admitted, and was believed to reside essentially in the person of the Pope. But its application, with reference to limits, method, and detail, was a matter of infinite delicacy and difficulty. The Pope might exaggerate, misconstrue, or abuse this power; and if he should do so to an exorbitant or scandalous degree, a hostile reaction was sooner or later inevitable. The elements of such a reaction had long been in course of preparation both in France and elsewhere; and the actual outburst was merely a question of time.

The French envoys failed to obtain any concession from Boniface as to the convocation of the Council at Rome. It was held accordingly at the time appointed; and was attended, in defiance of the King’s prohibition, by four archbishops, thirty- five bishops, and six abbots, of the Gallican Church. Immediately afterwards appeared the famous constitution, “Unam sanctam”—a document which in style and language was insufferably provoking, although in point of doctrine it contained nothing that had not been repeatedly advanced before, and expressed, indeed, the common belief of Catholics at that day. It commences by asserting the unity of the Church as the body of Christ, and that it is governed under Christ by St. Peter and his successors. Then follows a quotation of the well-worn passage from St. Bernard, concerning the “two swords” and their mutual relations. The Bull goes on to state that it belongs to the spiritual power to establish the temporal, and to judge it if it fails in its duty; according to the words of the Almighty by the prophet, “Behold, I have set thee over nations and kingdoms,” &c. When the temporal power errs, it must be judged by the spiritual; when an inferior spiritual power transgresses, it must be judged by its superior; but if the supreme authority shall be in fault, it is accountable to God alone; it cannot be reached by human judgment, as the Apostle testifies—“He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” This authority is not human, though exercised by human hands; but rather Divine, having been divinely granted to Peter and his successors in the words, “ Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, &c. Whosoever resists the authority which God has thus constituted, resisteth the ordinance of God. To deny this is nothing less than the Manichean heresy of two coordinate principles. Wherefore we declare, define, and pronounce, that it is necessary to the salvation of every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” This conclusion was not so formidable, after all, as might have been expected from the premises. From such an unqualified statement of the subjection of earthly authority to spiritual, the Pope might have drawn the inference that civil rulers are answerable to the Church, and to the judgment of its bead, for the entire conduct of their ordinary government. Instead of this, he contents himself with a general declaration of the necessity of obedience to the Apostolic See—a sentiment which in that age was disputed by no man, but to which, nevertheless, different individuals began to attach different meanings.

The bull “Unam sanctam” was followed by a sentence of excommunication against all persons, of whatever degree, who should molest, despoil, or impede those who desired to proceed to or return from Rome. This was, of course, directed against Philip, although it did not designate that prince by name. He had seized and confiscated the property of the bishops who chose to obey the Papal summons contrary to the commands of their temporal sovereign.

Philip replied to these denunciations by holding a second great Council on the 1st of December, 1302, when it was enacted that no French subject could leave the kingdom without the King’s consent, under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of goods; and a renewed prohibition was published against exporting from France money, jewels, horses, and munitions of war.

The crisis was evidently at hand. But before resorting to extremities, Boniface sent the Cardinal Le Moine, by birth a Frenchman, as his legate to Philip, charged to make certain propositions by way of satisfaction to the Apostolic See. The following were the principal articles insisted on:—That the King should revoke his prohibition to the clergy to proceed to Rome; and should acknowledge that the Pope has the right to nominate to all benefices, to dispose of their revenues, and to levy duties upon them. He was further to own that no sovereign can lawfully seize the property of the Church, nor summon ecclesiastics to lay tribunals, either in personal actions or in regard to estates which were not held of him in fief. Moreover, he was to engage to correct the prevalent abuses of the droit de regale, and to preserve the revenues of vacant churches for the future incumbents. He was to remove all hindrances to the due exercise of ecclesiastical discipline. He was to repair the evil which he had committed by debasing the coinage of the realm; and, finally, he was to treat the city of Lyons and its territory as independent of the crown of France. It was not likely, and probably was not expected, that a prince of Philip’s imperious temper would accept such terms in their full extent. He replied, however, in a tone of moderation. It was from no want of respect for the Church that he had forbidden the prelates to quit France, but simply by reason of circumstances which appeared to him of a dangerous nature. He was willing to restore the property of those who had gone to Rome without his permission. Far from wishing to obstruct the liberty of the spiritual sword, he was prepared to support it, so long as it observed the bounds of law and established usage. If any of his officers had abused their powers in this respect, he was ready to punish them and to rectify their mistakes. If anyone had been wronged in the administration of the droit de regale, he offered to satisfy him by reimbursement. With reference to the disposal of benefices, the seizure of temporalities, and the citation of ecclesiastics before the civil courts, he had followed, and would always follow, the customs generally received in the realm. As to the alterations in the coinage, he had been forced to adopt them by the necessities of the State, but he had already taken steps for remedying the evils caused by that measure. Finally, he declared himself sincerely desirous to maintain the ancient union between the Roman See and France, and he entreated the Pope not to imperil it by attacking the liberties and privileges of the Gallican Church.

We have in this last sentence one of the earliest symptoms of that wilful misapprehension of the “Gallican liberties,” which became in the sequel so convenient an instrument of royal despotism. The faults of Pope Boniface were neither few nor small. He might have been justly accused of striving to exalt the dominion of the spiritual power to a pitch incompatible with the rights and functions of the crown; but certainly he was not chargeable with seeking to abridge the liberties of the Church, as they were then established by general usage. It was the King, not the Pope, who was labouring to extinguish the immunities immemorially enjoyed by the ecclesiastical order. The “liberty of the Church,” in the sense in which it was invoked by Philip and other subsequent monarchs of like character, signified in reality that the clergy, instead of being as heretofore dependent on the Pope, were to be practically subject to the crown. In the very act of redressing grievances arising from a jurisdiction which, though wrongly exercised, was in its essence . real and true, they substituted for it the yoke of another jurisdiction which had no legitimate foundation whatever.

The professions of Philip may or may not have been made with perfect sincerity. In any case they ought to have called forth further exertions on the part of Boniface to effect an understanding. Instead of this, he now ordered his legate to excommunicate the king by name; including in the sentence all nobles, prelates, and magistrates who might support or countenance him. Philip, unmoved by thunders which had scared some of the boldest of his predecessors, summoned forthwith his Council at the Louvre, and caused a formal act of accusation to be published against the Pope, charging him with having usurped his office, with heresy, with simony, infidelity, and other monstrous offences. He declared his intention to procure with all despatch the convocation of a General Council, as the proper tribunal to take cognizance of so grave a cause, and appealed to its decision, and that of a legitimate Pope, on the questions in dispute. The ecclesiastics present, as well as the other two orders, signified their assent to this impeachment of Boniface, though they expressed their belief that he would fully clear himself from the crimes imputed to him. Twenty-six prelates, with eleven abbots, signed the act of appeal; and no fewer than nine cardinals concurred in the measure.

Boniface repudiated with contemptuous scorn the notion that he could be arraigned judicially before a General Council. “ What?” he said, “do they demand a Council to sit in judgment on the Pope? No Council can be assembled but by me, and with me.” Philip, however, urged on by the “legistes,”—a class rapidly rising into power, and rancorous in its hostility to Boniface and the Holy See—persisted in his scheme, canvassed actively for support in Spain and other foreign countries, and sent special envoys to the Italian cardinals to secure their adhesion and their presence at the forthcoming Council, which it was proposed to hold at Lyons. Guillaume de Nogaret, one of the most unscrupulous of Philip’s councillors, was charged, or charged himself, with the task of personally summoning the Pope to attend at the appointed time and place. In case of resistance to this mandate, his Holiness was to be forcibly compelled to submit.

Boniface, upon this, retired from Rome to Anagni, and prepared to launch against his adversary that most tremendous bolt of the Pontifical artillery, a bull releasing Philip’s subjects from their allegiance, and declaring him deposed from the throne. His kingdom was bestowed upon Albert, King of the Romans.

This document was to have been solemnly promulgated in the cathedral of Anagni on the 8th of September, 1303, the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. But on the day preceding, Nogaret, who had prevailed upon the principal citizens of Anagni to favour his design, entered the town at the head of 300 soldiers, invaded the palace, and presented himself abruptly before the aged Pontiff, whom he found seated on his throne, and wearing the tiara and other ensigns of his Apostolic office. Sciarra Colonna, who accompanied Nogaret, assailed him with savage reproaches, and is said to have been brutal enough to strike him on the face with his iron gauntlet. Boniface was seized forthwith, and committed to prison, in order, as his captors said, to ensure his appearance at the Council at Lyons. The people of Anagni, however, resenting these outrages against the French, drove them with severe loss from the city, restored the Pope to liberty, and conducted him in triumph to Rome. But his fate approached. At the age of upwards of eighty, it was scarcely possible that he should rally from the shock of the violence and barbarous treatment to which he had been subjected. The iron had entered into his soul. He was attacked by fever, which produced delirium and frenzy; and death released him from his sufferings on the 11th of October, 1303.

The opposition excited by the abuse of power, whether spiritual or temporal, is seldom satisfied with redressing the particular grievance from which it arose. When thus far successful, it is commonly impelled forward, and occupies fresh ground; it advances unjust pretensions, invades established rights, and becomes in its turn intolerably oppressive. The victory of Philip over Boniface—the violent recoil of that Pontiff’s extravagance upon his own head—was no mere isolated episode of history ; it was a turning point in the constitutional system of Europe. It was the commencement of a widespread reaction, on the part of the laity, against ecclesiastical predominance. From that time forward may be traced a clear and continuous current of opposition, not merely to the uncanonical encroachments of the Papacy, but to the rightful independence of the Church, and the legitimate exercise of its jurisdiction. The uniform tendency of legislation in France, from the fourteenth century downwards, was to reduce the Church into subservience and subjection to the Crown. Under colour of repressing Ultramontanism, protecting the Gallican liberties, and reforming abuses, the State succeeded in transferring to itself nearly the whole of the external dominion enjoyed by the hierarchy during the preceding ages.

VI.

The ecclesiastical courts had acquired extensive powers from a very early period of history. The Emperor Constantine authorized the bishops to act as judges in matters affecting their clergy; and it was declared lawful for lay citizens to appeal in civil causes (not in criminal) to the episcopal tribunals; the sentences thus pronounced being enforced by the State. These provisions were gradually enlarged by successive enactments, until at length the administration of justice throughout the empire was concentrated in great measure in the hands of the clergy. By the Code of Justinian the bishops were constituted the legal guardians of orphans, widows, minors, lunatics, paupers, prisoners, and generally of all who were comprehended in the category of “miserabiles personae.” All testamentary and matrimonial questions—all matters relating to bankers, usurers, Jews, Lombards—everything involving contracts and engagements upon oath—all cases arising out of the Crusades—the management of hospitals and other charitable institutions—all charges of sacrilege, perjury, incontinence, and in short, all proceedings originating in human delinquency or sin—were consigned in course of time to the judicial arbitration of the Church.

This vast development of spiritual jurisdiction became a prolific source of abuse; and it was the work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to curb and curtail it. An attempt bad been made, indeed, by the feudal aristocracy, during the reign of St. Louis, to confine the competence of the episcopal courts to charges of heresy, usury, and matters concerning the sacrament of marriage. But the reactionary movement acquired greater force in the time of Philippe de Valois, as appears from the account of a memorable conference held in the presence of that monarch in 1329, when the whole question of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction was argued between Pierre de Cugnières, Avocat-General in the Parliament, on behalf of the Crown, and the Archbishop of Sens and the Bishop of Autun, as defenders of the Church. De Cugnières contended that the spiritual and the temporal power have each a separate province; that the two jurisdictions cannot be exercised in conjunction; and that, consequently, the bishops ought to relinquish the judicial functions incidental to their rank as feudal lords, and restrict themselves to those belonging properly to the pastoral office. To this it was replied, by the Bishop of Autun, that although the two jurisdictions are distinct, they are by no means incompatible; but may be united in the same hands, whenever that arrangement may be judged conducive to the general welfare. He cited various instances from Scripture in support of this view. The discussion was kept up with spirit and ability on both sides. The king’s advocate exhibited a catalogue of sixty-six gravamina, or articles in which he alleged that the ecclesiastical courts bad exceeded their powers. The officials of the bishops, he said, asserted a right to take cognizance of causes relating to landed property, to the exclusion of the civil jurisdiction. They cited laymen to their bar even in personal actions, and if the parties declined to plead, they compelled them by means of excommunication to submit to their illegal proceedings. “If a person excommunicated for debt fails to pay the sum required by the sentence, the fine is forthwith augmented, and the secular judge is enjoined, under spiritual censure, to enforce the payment by seizure of goods. If he demurs, he is pronounced excommunicate, and cannot obtain absolution except by satisfying the whole demand.” Other articles complained that the bishops, in order to enhance their power, were in the habit of giving the clerical tonsure to persons manifestly disqualified;—to children under age, to married men, to those of illegitimate birth, to the grossly ignorant, to many who sought the privileges of the Church merely for the sake of screening themselves from the just punishment of crime. The episcopal baillis and prevots, designedly chosen from the clergy, incurred debt and practised every kind of extortion with impunity, since there was no means of bringing them to justice. These officers, whenever they chose to treat persons as excommunicate, rightly or wrongly, prevented all men from trading with them, working for them, or holding any sort of intercourse with them; whence it often happened that the land remained uncultivated. It was a common case for twenty, thirty, forty, or more individuals to be brought up and fined in different amounts for the offence of having associated with those who lay under the ban of the Church. The Bishop of Autun manfully combated these charges upon various grounds;—alleging the provisions of statute law, ancient custom, the permission of the Crown, the superiority of the clerical order in legal knowledge and general character. No immediate changes resulted from this remarkable debate. The king declared that he had no intention whatever to attack the acknowledged privileges of the clergy. The bishops assured him that all well-founded grievances should be redressed without delay; and they were ultimately dismissed with an intimation that sufficient time would be allowed for the fulfilment of their promise, but that, in case of failure to observe it, the king would be compelled to take the affair into his own hands.

From this date the aggressions of the civil power upon the spiritualty became more and more frequent and determined; and in course of time all matières profanes were assigned to the sole cognizance of the royal courts. Gradually, by means of various subtle distinctions, such as that between “délits communs” and “cas privilegiés” the clergy were brought within the ordinary limits of secular authority. Laymen were forbidden to resort to the ecclesiastical judges; and the Crown assumed jurisdiction in causes affecting the temporalities of the Church, upon the ground that they constituted a beneficial interest which was subject to the control of the law of the land, like any other property.

It was not long before a decisive blow was aimed against the jurisdiction of the Church in France, by the claim advanced by the Crown, or rather by the Parliaments, to hold a tribunal of appeal from the judgments of the ecclesiastical courts. The institution of the “appel comme d’abus” subjected all judicial acts of the officers of the Church to the revision and correction of secular law. The invention of this expedient has been attributed to the redoubtable Pierre de Cugnières; at all events it originated early in the fourteenth century, though a considerable time elapsed before it became, general. The appel comme d’abus, in its most common acceptation, was a complaint preferred against the ecclesiastical judge, on the plea that he had exceeded or abused his legitimate powers. The appeal lay to the Grande Chambre of the Parliament in civil, and to the Chambre de la Tournelle in criminal, actions; its effect was that, when admitted by the court, the case was thereupon heard and adjudged afresh, such adjudication being final. The authority of Popes and Councils was alleged in justification of the practice; e. g. that of the great Lateran Council under Innocent III, which enacted, in its forty-second canon, that “as the laity are forbidden to usurp the rights of the clergy, so the clergy must take care not to intrude upon the privileges of the laity. Wherefore we prohibit all clerks from employing any pretext of ecclesiastical liberty as a means of enlarging their own power at the expense of the secular jurisdiction.”

The appel comme d’abus was ultimately established as admissible against the Church courts in the four following cases:— 1. When the spiritual power had encroached upon the temporal jurisdiction. 2. When there was a manifest contravention of the ancient canons, the liberties of the Gallican Church, or the ecclesiastical constitutions received in the kingdom. 3. When the ecclesiastical judge had infringed any royal ordonnance duly promulgated. 4. When a decision had been given contrary to the arrets of the sovereign courts of Parliament. It was ruled, moreover, that the appeal could not be entertained unless the matter in question was of real importance and evident public interest; and further, that the abuse complained of must be patent and notorious. But these restrictions were disregarded in subsequent practice. The right of appeal to the Parliaments was extended indefinitely to matters great and small, and that upon pretexts transparently frivolous; so that, instead of acting as a wholesome check on any inordinate stretch of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, its general tendency was to obstruct that necessary exercise of discipline without which Church authority is little more than a name. The clergy in their assemblies made repeated remonstrances on this subject to the crown, representing that the practice led to contempt and hatred of the spiritual jurisdiction, encouraged vice, shackled and thwarted the administration of things sacred, and overburdened the consciences of the secular judges. They also prayed that the cases might be precisely specified, in which an appeal from spiritual to lay courts was held allowable; but the reply was always vague and evasive. They were reminded that circumstances might arise which were unforeseen and unprovided for; and that conflicts might occur in consequence between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The French monarchs, it is true, gave injunctions from time to time to the officers of their courts to beware of transgressing the bounds of their legal competence in the matter of appeals; but practically, the appel comme d’abus became the favourite resource of all persons disaffected to the Church, for the purpose of defeating any attempt to put in force the regulations of her ancient discipline.

It was a disputed point, whether the appel comme d’abus had a “suspensive,” or only a “devolutive,” effect; that is, whether the execution of the sentence appealed against was suspended during the prosecution of the appeal, or whether it remained in force, and the case was merely transferred to the superior court for a fresh hearing. The general opinion was that with regard to sentences for the correction of manners and ordinary ecclesiastical discipline, the appeal had no suspensive force.

It is to be observed that the appel comme d’abus was available reciprocally as a remedy against the temporal courts, in case of abuse of power or unlawful intrusion into the province of the Church. This is laid down by Pierre Pithou in his enumeration of the “liberties of the Gallican Church and De Marca refers to it as the constitutional method of obtaining redress for any encroachment of the civil power on the rights of the Church or of its ministers. Instances are on record of its being exercised with full effect. An ecclesiastic, if cited before the temporal court for a matter not legally within its competence, might demand to have the case sent back to be tried before the bishop’s official; and if this were refused, he was entitled to appeal, comme d’abus, to the Grande Chambre of the Parliament.

At the Council of Trent the appel comme d'abus was vehemently attacked by theologians of various nations, and was as pertinaciously defended by the ambassadors of Charles IX of France. The result was that it was maintained in full vigour; and, indeed, it was not to be expected that the Crown, having once succeeded in establishing so effectual an engine for neutralizing the judicial action of the Church, should afterwards be induced to relinquish it. Accordingly, although the ancient ecclesiastical jurisdiction in France, like the rest of the mediaeval organization, was swept away by the torrent of the great Revolution, the usage of the appel comme d’abus has survived to our own times. Proceedings of this kind still take place occasionally before the Imperial Council of State.

In proportion as Feudalism declined, the French Crown assumed to itself all those rights, prerogatives, and emoluments connected with the Church, which had previously been enjoyed by the local seigneurs. The most important of these was the droit de régale (jus regaliae), which gave to the lay suzerain the administration of the revenues of episcopal sees while they remained vacant, together with all the patronage belonging to them; though this latter was held to apply properly only to those benefices which had no cure of souls. The régale was a point on which the kings of France became especially jealous, and which they vindicated with the utmost energy on many memorable occasions. It seems to have been fully established in the time of Philippe le Bel, who gave the following explanation of it in a letter to the Bishop of Auxerre: “As in the case of the vacancy of a lay fief, it is legally held by the seigneur, together with its revenues; and this occupation continues, according to the universal custom of our realm, until another vassal succeeds, who may do feudal service in place of the former; so, during the vacancy of a cathedral church, we and our predecessors have taken possession both of the temporal jurisdiction and of the temporal property, the fruits of which belong to us for the time being. Nor is it only as to the property of bishops that we exercise this power; we dispose in like manner of the temporal jurisdiction and revenues appertaining to vacant prebends and dignities of all kinds.”

By a famous ordinance of Philippe de Valois, known as “the Philippine,” the droit de regale was asserted still more dogmatically, and made to extend not only to benefices vacant de facto, but also to those which ought to be vacated de jure; i.e. those which . were held without a legitimate canonical title.! This proceeding called forth strenuous remonstrances from Pope Benedict XII., as contrary to all principles of justice and ecclesiastical liberty. The same Pontiff protested against the misconduct of the royal officers, who, under shelter of the regale, were accustomed to waste, alienate, and destroy the temporal possessions of the Church, often damaging the vacant benefices seriously and permanently. It is evident, indeed, that by wantonly prolonging a vacancy, an unscrupulous monarch might easily convert the droit de regale into an instrument of indefinite spoliation and oppression.

VII.

Such were some of the vicissitudes to which the Gallican Church was subjected, in its relations both to the Apostolic See and to the civil government, down to the middle of the fourteenth century. The great Schism of the West (a.d. 1378-1429) formed so critical ail epoch in its history, and led ultimately to consequences so momentous, that it is necessary to examine it with some minuteness of detail.

This grave calamity is distinctly traceable to the ill-advised secession of the Popes to Avignon, in the person of Clement V. That Pontiff is commonly supposed to have obtained the tiara by means of a simoniacal contract with Philip the Fair, which bound him, among other articles, to take up his residence in France. But this account, which rests mainly on the authority of the Ghibelline historian Villani, has been partially discredited by more accurate researches in our own day; and it seems probable that the change of residence was made voluntarily, for the purpose of escaping from the violent contentions which were raging at the time at Rome between the rival Orsini and Colonna factions.t Be this as it may, the step was fatal to the independence of the Papal throne. Having once taken refuge on Cisalpine territory, Clement could not avoid acting with more than common deference to the wishes and interests of the King of France. This was notoriously his motive in the most important transactions of his reign—in the judicial proceedings against the memory of Boniface VIII,—in the iniquitous suppression of the Templars,—and in his support of the princes of Anjou in the Kingdom of Naples. Moreover (and it was upon this that subsequent events chiefly turned) a French Pope was naturally disposed to create French cardinals; and prelates of that nation accordingly figured almost exclusively in the promotions to the conclave during this period. Thus they formed in course of time a decided majority of the sacred college.

The luxury, pride, avarice, and tyranny of the Popes who sat at Avignon are proverbial in history. The kings of France connived at their excesses, and pressed them to remain permanently in their new capital; obtaining the more readily, by this policy, Pontifical sanction for the exactions and usurpations which they themselves practised on the National Church. The general result was a lamentable degradation of the supreme spiritual authority. Protection and security was all that was afforded to the Pontiffs ostensibly; but their real condition for seventy years was one of splendid vassalage to the French Crown.

Bitter were the lamentations poured forth by the Romans over this “second Babylonish captivity,” and earnestly did they implore the successor of St. Peter to resume the natural and only legitimate seat of his primacy. Gregory XI, overcome by their importunities, returned to Rome in 1377, and died there early in the following year, mournfully forecasting the misfortunes which were soon to fall upon the Church.

There were at that moment twenty-three Cardinals, of whom eighteen were Frenchmen. Of these, however, six had remained at Avignon, and one was absent in Tuscany; so that the actual conclave by which the Pope was to be chosen consisted of no more than sixteen members. Nevertheless, if the French had been united, they might have commanded the election ; but they were divided by a jealousy against the Limousins, to which province three preceding Pontiffs had belonged. The consequence was that the minority of the French coalesced with the Italians, and secured a preponderance. Considerable pressure was also exercised on the conclave by the magistrates and citizens of Rome, who clamoured tumultuously for “a Roman Pope,” or, at all events, for a native-born Italian. It was under this stress of circumstances that Bartolomeo Pregnano, a Neapolitan, Archbishop of Bari, was elevated to the Papal chair in April, 1378, and took the title of Urban VI. But after an interval of some months the French cardinals, anxious above all things to retain the Pontifical court in their own land, and irritated, moreover, by the tyrannical severity of Urban’s government, retired to Fondi in the Kingdom of Naples, declared the former election void by reason of constraint and intimidation, and conferred the tiara upon Robert Cardinal of Geneva, who was immediately crowned under the name of Clement VII. A deplorable schism ensued. The King of France, after instituting a lengthened and rigorous inquiry at Rome, and holding repeated consultations with his prelates and the theologians of Paris, determined to support Clement, who was thenceforward recognised by the French as rightful Pope. He obtained afterwards, chiefly through French influence, the adhesion of Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Sicily. The rest of Europe acknowledged the authority of Urban VI.

It was natural that Clement should fix his abode in proximity to the most powerful of the sovereigns who had embraced his cause. He established himself at Avignon, where he was surrounded by thirty-six cardinals, almost without exception French; and as it was necessary to provide these dignitaries with revenues befitting their rank, their claims became a burdensome tax on the ecclesiastical property of the realm. The Popes of Avignon had laid heavy hands on the endowments of the Gallican Church, even while they enjoyed the undivided allegiance of Christendom; but the evil was vastly intensified when their jurisdiction was confined to France and some few neighbouring countries. The system of disciplinary abuses was now carried to its most scandalous extreme. By means of reserves, expectatives, and dispensations, Clement accumulated all the higher preferments on his own devoted partizans; and the clergy were shamefully pillaged by multifarious devices in order to enrich the Pontifical exchequer. The oppressive impost called annates, or the first-fruits of benefices, was largely augmented, and enforced with extortionate rigour. It was assessed not only on “benefices consistoriaux,” but on all preferments indiscriminately; and the demand was at last trebled in amount, the emoluments of three years being swallowed up in succession, instead of the first year’s income only. By this proceeding incumbents were not unfrequently reduced to absolute want, and compelled to become vagabonds and mendicants.! Another exaction, that of the “decimes,” or tenths, which was levied without mercy upon the entire temporalities of the Church, provoked a formidable resistance from the University of Paris.

It is impossible to describe adequately the profound perplexity, dismay, and confusion which arose from this protracted warfare between the rival vicars of Christ. With regard to the intrinsic merits of the dispute there was much to be pleaded on both sides; nor has the Church ever thought fit to decide the question authoritatively. It is obvious, however, that if either Pope had been canonically chosen, the other was a mere pretender; and the latter, in that case, was not only himself schismatical, but had involved all his adherents in the guilt and penalties of schism. The only alternative hypothesis—namely, that both Popes were alike uncanonical—was still more distressing; for if so, then the Catholic body possessed no legitimate visible head—a state of things which, according to the theology of that day, was so abnormal as to be almost subversive of its Divine constitution.

It was felt to be imperative that measures should be taken towards the removal of evils which threatened nothing less than the total disintegration of organized Christianity in the West; and the distinction of having inaugurated a practical movement to that end, which was substantially, if not completely, crowned with success, belongs without question to the Church of France.

The remedy proposed was that of appeal to a General Council, as the supreme tribunal of Christendom;—competent, should the necessity arise, to pass judgment even on the Pope himself. This is commonly quoted as one of the peculiar principles of Gallicanism ; but in point of fact it is an original constitutional law of the Church Catholic. It was not contended, even by the strictest Gallicans, that the Church ought to be governed, under ordinary circumstances, by a succession of General Councils; but that such a legitimate method of final decision existed, and that the schism was an emergency which justified and necessitated its application. The Church possessed, by the charter of her Divine foundation, powers which had been granted for the express purpose of preserving her organic unity ; and if she had hitherto forborne to exercise those powers under the existing calamity, it was all the more important that they should not be suffered to fall into further disuse and oblivion, while every day was adding to the inveteracy of the evils which they were designed to counteract.

The University of Paris—at this time the most celebrated school of theology in Europe—interposed, and laboured with indefatigable zeal to procure the reunion of the distracted Church. Its Chancellor was Pierre d’Ailly (Petrus de Alliaco), afterwards Cardinal and Bishop of Cambrai. Its leading divines were the illustrious Jean Gerson, who succeeded D’Ailly in the post of Chancellor, Nicolas de Clemangis, Gilles Deschamps, and Jean de Courtecuisse. The first movements of these energetic reformers were visited with severe censure, and even punishment, by the corrupt court of Charles VI. One of their body, a learned professor named Jean Rousse, was arrested and imprisoned by the Regent, the Duke of Anjou, merely for having suggested that the only effectual means of healing the schism was the convocation of a General Council. His colleagues obtained bis release with difficulty, and on the express condition that they would henceforth support the Pope of Avignon, Clement VII. So powerful were the ties of interest which attached the French monarchy to the Cisalpine Pope, that anything like scepticism as to Clement’s legitimacy was treated as a serious crime. It was notified to the heads of the University that no further mention must be made of the election of another Pope, or the calling of a General Council, under pain of the King’s signal displeasure.

D’Ailly and his brethren, nothing daunted, persevered in their endeavours to pave the way for a pacification; and eventually they wrung from the Government a reluctant permission to summon a special meeting of the whole academical body, to deliberate on the expedients for extinguishing the schism.

Consultations were held accordingly in the year 1394. The result was that the plans proposed reduced themselves to the three following:—1. The voluntary resignation of both Popes; after which the two colleges of cardinals might unite and proceed to a fresh election. 2. A compromise by means of arbitration; and 3. The convocation of a General Council, which, it was argued, would derive from the universal consent of the faithful irrefragable authority to pronounce judgment under the circumstances. The first of these methods—the vote de cession —was that preferred by the University. Their views, having been embodied in an elaborate memorial admirably drawn up by Nicolas de Clemangis, one of the most accomplished scholars of his time, was presented by a deputation to the King. Its contents were likewise communicated to Pope Clement; who forthwith declaimed against it in full consistory as a “defamatory libel on the Holy See, saturated with the poison of calumny.” Such was the violence of his agitation that a fit of apoplexy ensued, of which he died on the 16th of September, 1394.

An attempt was now made to dissuade the cardinals of Avignon from proceeding to a fresh election; but in vain. Determined at all hazards to prolong the schismatical succession, they gave their votes to Pedro de Luna, a man of overbearing and obstinate temper, who assumed the title of Benedict XIII.

The labours of the Gallican theologians began at length to bear important fruit. In February, 1395, the king convoked an extraordinary assembly of prelates, clergy, princes, and nobles, at Paris, sufficient in numbers and dignity to represent the nation in Church and State, to discuss the proposals of the University as set forth in their Memorial. The Council decided in favour of the “voie de cession”, and, in consequence, a distinguished embassy, including the king’s uncles the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, and his brother the Duke of Orleans, was dispatched to Avignon, to tender this unpalatable advice to Pope Benedict. But after a long course of illusory negotiation, it was found impossible to persuade the two antagonists to embrace this mode of settling their differences. Benedict met the remonstrances of the French court and clergy with coarse abuse and furious menaces; and after a time, wearied by his perverseness and duplicity, the Gallican Church took the decisive step of withdrawing from his obedience. The royal edict to that effect appeared on the 27th of July, 1398, and was registered by the Parliament on the 29th of August following. All the acts of Benedict were thereby pronounced null and void. Appeals to the Pope during the “soustraction d’obedience” were to be dealt with as if the pontifical chair were vacant; they were to be heard by the Metropolitan, and in the last resort were to be carried before the Provincial Council. Various regulations were adopted for reviving the ancient forms of election,—for abolishing reservations and expective graces,—and for replacing the collation and institution to benefices in the hands of the lawful ordinaries. In short, a restoration was proclaimed of the primitive franchises and discipline of the Gallican Church.

But the existing crisis of affairs was by no means propitious to the execution of such wholesome measures, particularly as regards the re-establishment of free elections. It was found that the mere act of repudiating the authority of the Pope did not ipso facto redintegrate the Church in the enjoyment of her independence. On the contrary, the State took advantage of the interregnum to extend its sphere of intrusive action in the domain ecclesiastical; and the clergy soon discovered that they had only exchanged the oppression of a spiritual despot for the still more questionable domination of the civil power. The nominees of the sovereign and his ministers monopolised the higher preferments; the Courts Christian were impeded in the exercise of discipline; the Parliaments assumed a wider jurisdiction; and the power of the clerical order declined apace.

The “subtraction of obedience,” though adopted after mature deliberation, was the work of an extreme party, of the doctors of the Sorbonne. It was viewed with misgiving and regret by the more moderate, that is the majority, of the national clergy, who saw that its inevitable tendency was to weaken and depress the Church in her relations with the civil Government. Pope Benedict had been besieged and imprisoned in his palace at Avignon by the royal forces; and this harsh treatment added to their dissatisfaction. So strong was the reaction that at length, through the influence of the Duke of Orleans, supported by D’Ailly, Gerson, and Clemangis, it was resolved to restore the allegiance of France to Benedict. This act was proclaimed by royal edict on the 30th of May, 1403; the Pope having solemnly engaged, as a preliminary condition, to resign in the event of the death, abdication, or deposition of his opponent.* He promised likewise to confirm all ecclesiastical appointments made during the interregnum ; to summon without delay a Council of his obedience to treat for the termination of the schism; and to abide faithfully by the decision of that assembly. The Pope, however, violated these articles without scruple; fresh opposition was stirred up in consequence; and at a third great convocation of clergy (December 21, 1406) the decisive conclusion was arrived at that it was indispensably necessary to have recourse to a General Council for the reformation of the Church in its head and its members. This was followed up by a royal declaration to the effect that, if the unity of the Church were not restored by the Feast of the Ascension next ensuing, the kingdom of France would finally renounce both Popes, and assume a position of neutrality. Upon this the two popes opened a negotiation, ostensibly with a view to an accommodation by the method of cession; but their behaviour soon led to the conviction that they were secretly leagued together to prolong the schism. An act of inconceivable rashness on the part of Benedict, who launched a bull threatening the University and the whole realm with interdict and the king with deposition, produced a burst of vehement indignation in France; where, in August, 1408, the Government published a second withdrawal of obedience, abandoning the “voie de cession” as hopeless, and declaring itself in a state of neutrality until the meeting of the General Council, which had been convoked at Pisa by the two colleges of Cardinals for the spring of the following year.

On this occasion the French Church carefully renewed its regulations of internal discipline to be observed during the suspension of intercourse with the Holy See. The different grades of appellate jurisdiction were precisely defined. From the Archdeacon the appeal lay to the Bishop ; from the Bishop to the Metropolitan; from the Metropolitan to the Primate, or (where no primatial authority was recognized) to the Provincial Council. Each Metropolitan was to assemble the Council of his province every year; its duration was never to be less than a month. Free election was to be the rule for all dignities which by their nature or by ancient institution were elective. The election of Bishops to be confirmed by the Metropolitan; that of metropolitans by the Primate or the Provincial Council. Other articles prescribed the mode of proceeding as to dispensations, absolution from ecclesiastical censures, and the decision of cases specially reserved to the Pope. It was expressly announced that the spiritual courts would take the common law as their standard of jurisprudence in preference to the precepts of the Roman Chancery, wherever there was a divergence between the two codes.

These arrangements show that the first theologians of that age, however strongly attached to the Roman patriarchate and the Petrine primacy as traditional principles of government, did not deem them indispensable to the life, authority, and normal functions of the Church. Such, indeed, were the obvious lessons of this disastrous schism.

The authority of the forthcoming Council of Pisa lay open to serious question. In the first place, it was the received doctrine of that day that a General Council could be convoked only by the supreme Pontiff, and moreover, that he must preside over it either in person or by his legates. Neither Pope could do this while the schism existed; since the very purpose of resorting to the Council was to determine between their conflicting pretensions, and to appoint a legitimate head of the Church. It had been argued, again, that under such circumstances the duty of convening the Council devolved upon the cardinals; but this led to a further difficulty; for, if it were doubtful who was the true Pope, it was doubtful likewise whether the cardinals were lawfully appointed, and whether they had the right to initiate such proceedings. These problems, however, were met and solved in a masterly manner by such clear-sighted reasoners as D’Ailly and Gerson. The latter, in his famous treatise ‘De auferibilitate Papae’, pointed out that the Church must of necessity possess the same power which belongs to every other corporate society, namely that of removing a chief officer who is unable or unworthy to execute his functions, and providing another in his place. “All positive laws,” says Gerson, “are subject to modification according to the exigency of successive wants; and the present is one of those occasions when it is wiser to regard the spirit than the mere letter of the law, and to be governed by those primary sanctions which^- are unchangeable and divine.”

D’Ailly, in like manner, demonstrated that in certain cases, one of which is that of a schism, rendering it difficult to determine between rival claimants of the Papacy, the ultimate appeal must unquestionably be to a General Council. That supreme tribunal, if the pretenders should obstinately refuse to resign, might depose them, and afterwards proceed to the election of a Pope who would be recognized throughout the Church.

The Council met at Pisa on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1409, amid intense excitement throughout Christendom. The preponderance of the French Church on this great occasion as manifest and irresistible. It was represented by eight cardinals, the titular Patriarch of Alexandria, Simon de Cramault, the Metropolitans of Lyons, Bourges, Toulouse, Tours, Narbonne, and Vienne,—thirty bishops present in person, and the proctors of forty-six others who were unable to attend,—a vast multitude of abbots, canons, heads of orders, and other dignitaries, together with deputations from the Universities of Paris, Orleans, Angers, Toulouse, and Montpellier.

Following the course indicated by the Parisian doctors, the Synod proclaimed, in its 14th session, that it represented the Church Universal, and had authority to decide the questions of the union of the Church and of the schism. It next proceeded in due form to depose Popes Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, as schismatical, heretical, perjured and incorrigible; released all Christians from the obligation to obey them ; and declared the Holy See to be vacant. The election of a new Pope followed immediately. The Cardinals entered the Conclave on the 15th of June, each having previously signed an agreement which pledged him, in case he should be chosen, to continue the Council until it should have effected a substantial reformation. The choice fell upon the Cardinal of Milan, Peter of Candia, who took the title of Alexander V. The new Pontiff engaged at his election to continue the Council of Pisa for the avowed purpose of dealing with the crucial question of the reformation of the Church. Ultimately, however, he prorogued that assembly for three years, postponing the project of reform until it should resume its labours. Alexander held the Papal chair scarcely a year, and was succeeded, in May, 1410, by Balthazzar Cossa, under the name of John XXIII. It was under the presidency of this pontiff that the celebrated Council of Constance, styled the Sixteenth Ecumenical, commenced its sittings on the 5th of November, 1414.

The master-spirit of this assembly was Jean Gerson, now Chancellor of the University of Paris; who impressed upon it, by force of character as well as of argument, those irrefragable views of ecclesiastical polity which for so many years he had energetically laboured to establish. A large part of Gerson’s works is occupied by an elaborate exposition of the rights and functions of Ecumenical Councils. This was necessary under the circumstances of the time; for the expedient which he advocated, notwithstanding the well-known practice of the Church in earlier ages, was strange to the existing generation ; it was of a tentative character, and had somewhat the air of being a contrivance pro re nata.

“It may be asked,” writes Gerson to his friend Cardinal D’Ailly, immediately before the opening of the Synod, “it may be asked whether this Council is above the Pope. I reply, certainly it is. It is superior to the Pope in authority, superior in dignity, superior in office. From the decisions of such a Council there is no appeal. Such a Council has power to enact new laws, and to abrogate existing and ancient laws. The constitutions and decrees of such a Council are incapable of being changed or dispensed with by any power inferior to itself. The Pope cannot, and never could, dispense with the sacred canons framed by a General Council, unless the Council itself, for some weighty reason, should specially authorize him to do so. The Pope cannot alter, nor even interpret, the acts of the Council, much less can he dispense with them; since they are like the Gospels of Christ, over which the Pope has no jurisdiction whatever. Let the Catholic Church take heed above all things never to concede to the Pope, under any pretext, the power of dispensing with the canons of a General Council, or even of altering or interpreting them; this ought to be done solely by another council, to be convoked from time to time for the reformation of the Church. For it is plain as daylight that the greater part of what was done and ordained by the four great (Ecumenical Councils, and others subsequent, has been almost annihilated and cast into oblivion by the growing avarice of Popes, cardinals, and prelates; by means of papal reservations, the iniquitous practices of the Apostolic Chamber and chancery, by corrupt dispensations, indulgences, and the office of the “Penitentiary.”

“The first object of the Council,” he continues, “is the election of one universal and unquestioned Pastor, approved by the whole Church; and, in the next place, there must be made a certain limitation and modification of the power of the said pastor; which power is at present excessive, and has grievously impaired and damaged the rights of other prelates.”

The same maxims were asserted, but in more unmeasured language, by Gerson’s colleagues, the doctors deputed to the Council by the University of Paris. “The Church militant,” they observed, is more necessary than the Pope; for men can be saved without the Pope, whereas beyond the Church there is no salvation. The Church is better than the Pope; because the Pope is made for the Church ; now, as Aristotle teaches, the end is superior to the means. The Church is more honourable than the Pope ; for Christ multiplies upon her gifts and graces without number, which cannot be said of the person of the Pope. The Church is stronger than the Pope ; since the gates of hell, that is the vices and heresies of mankind, have never prevailed against her; whereas they have often prevailed against the Pope. The Church is more steadfast in the faith than the Pope; for the Pope has sometimes departed from the faith, which can never be the case with the universal Church. The Pope receives from the Church the trust of sovereign authority; for he derives it through the ministry of those who elect him. It follows that the power which belongs actually to the Pope belongs habitually to the universal Church. The Church lawfully assembled can in certain cases arraign, condemn, and even depose the Pope; because, since the Pope acquires his power from the Church, the Church can deprive him of it, should it be abused. The Church, represented by a General Council, has more authority than the Pope, because the Council can frame decrees which the Pope is bound to observe. Hence St. Gregory declared that he would not believe the Gospels unless he were determined to such belief by the authority and witness of the Church.” The Parisian divines affirmed in conclusion that the Church could not take any more effectual step towards its own thorough reformation than to prescribe the regular continuation of General Councils; at the same time by no means omitting the due celebration of Provincial Councils.

The strong predominance of Gallican opinion at Constance found expression in the well-known decrees passed by the Council in its fourth and fifth sessions, in spite of vehement opposition from the cardinals and bishops of the Italian “nation.”

“This holy Synod of Constance, being a General Council lawfully assembled in the name of the Holy Ghost, and representing the Church militant, has received immediately from Jesus Christ a power to which all persons of whatever rank and dignity, not excepting the Pope himself, are bound to submit in those matters which concern the faith, the extirpation of the existing schism, and the reformation of the Church in its head and its members.”

“Whosoever, be his dignity what it may, without excepting the Pope, shall obstinately refuse to obey the statutes, ordinances, and precepts of the present Council, or of any other General Council lawfully assembled, shall be subjected, unless he repent, to proportionate penance, and punished according to his deserts, recourse being had, if necessary, to the assistance of the secular arm.”

By other articles it was declared that the Council could not be transferred or dissolved without its own consent: and all the ecclesiastical acts of John XXIII, from the day of his flight from Constance, were pronounced null and void. It was likewise enacted that a second Ecumenical Council should be held five years after the dissolution of the present; another at the expiration of seven years after the second, and thenceforward one at the interval of every ten years.

Such was the first synodical definition made by the Western Church as to the relative powers and jurisdiction of the Pope and a General Council. The position of affairs at that crisis rendered such an utterance needful and unavoidable; but it cannot be denied that an element of strife was thus introduced, which developed step by step into a series of calamitous results.

From this moment may be dated the formal divergence of the .Cisalpine or Gallican from the Ultramontane theology. Every ingenious device has been exhausted by the latter school in order to evade and nullify the force of these memorable decrees of Constance. But the attempt is in no slight degree embarrassing. For, on the one hand, it would be suicidal to deny the authority of the Council, because the deposition of John XXIII, the election of Martin V, and the succession of subsequent Popes, would thereby be invalidated. Yet, on the other, these acts of the fourth and fifth sessions, if taken in their widest sense, are felt to be fatal to the theory of the Pope’s absolute monarchy. Various arguments have been advanced to meet the difficulty. It is alleged that the Council did not intend to lay down a theological truth of universal obligation, but only to assert a rule of discipline applicable to abnormal circumstances, such as prevailed during the schism. It is obvious, however, that the Fathers of Constance go further than this; they predicate of “any other General Council lawfully assembled” the same authority, legislative and judicial, which they claimed for their own tribunal then sitting. And, moreover, among the famous articles of reformation which were adopted in their fortieth session (Oct. 30, 1417), and which the Pope elect engaged to propose for consideration at the meeting of the Council next ensuing, was one (art. 13) entitled “Propter quae et quomodo Papa possit corrigi et deponi.” Whence it is clear that the possibility was contemplated of circumstances which might compel the Church again to exercise its juridical power over the Pope, as it had done on the late occasions. This seems decisive as to the mind and purpose of those who framed the decrees of Constance.

But it is asserted, again, that the obnoxious definitions were never confirmed by the Pope, and consequently have no canonical authority. Martin V, who was elected in November, 1417, and presided in the four concluding sessions of the Council, expressed his approval in general terms of all its acts which had been passed “conciliariter;” but Bellarmine and others contend that the particular acts in question were not such, inasmuch as they were not preceded by full and mature synodical discussion. They therefore consider that the acts referred to in the bull of confirmation were those only by which the Council condemned the heresies of Wickliff and John Huss.

It will be allowed, however, that among the conciliar acts which were confirmed by Martin V, that of the deposition of John XXIII, his predecessor, must be included; for, unless that was a canonical proceeding, he himself was not the lawful occupant of the Apostolic See. Yet that act demonstrated the supremacy of a General Council over the Pope ; and that not over a doubtful Pope, but over one acknowledged by the Council itself to be the true and rightful successor of Peter. Implicitly, therefore, Martin confirmed the doctrine asserted by the Council, even supposing that he did not expressly confirm the definitions of the fourth and fifth sessions.

This argument was pressed against him with conclusive effect by Gerson in his treatise on the right of appeal from the Pope to a General Council. “If it be not lawful,” he says, “to appeal from the individual Pope to a Council which represents the whole Church Catholic, then such a Council is not the supreme tribunal of the Church; but if the Council is not possessed of such sovereign jurisdiction, then the Council of Constance had no right to depose John XXIII; consequently he is still the legitimate Pope, and his Holiness Martin V, in that case, is no more than a pretender.”

Upon the whole, the language of Pope Martin, both on the occasion above referred to, and in his bull of February 22, 1418, must be held to signify the assent of that Pontiff to all doctrinal definitions made at Constance, including those which have since been so warmly controverted. Nor does it appear, after all, on a dispassionate view of the case, that anything is propounded in those definitions which is either beyond or beside the immemorial tradition of the Church. Was it a novel doctrine, that an (Ecumenical Council has authority to make laws for the whole Christian community, and that the Pope, more directly than any other individual, is bound to conform to them, to maintain their integrity, and to enforce their observance? Had not this truth been acknowledged most emphatically by the Popes themselves for ages anterior to the Council of Constance? Do not their official professions and protestations on this subject occupy page after page in the collected code of ecclesiastical jurisprudence ? The decrees of Constance, fairly construed, amount to no more than this, that it is obligatory on the Pope to obey the canons of Ecumenical Councils. Why should such a declaration be less acceptable to Popes of the fifteenth century than it was to those of the fifth ? Why should Martin and Eugenius hesitate to sanction it, while it is endorsed by the concurrent testimony of their predecessors of happy memory, Zosimus, Boniface, Gelasius, S. Leo, S. Gregory, Leo IV, and many others?

But although the doctrine of the supremacy of General Councils, thus authoritatively proclaimed, is of the deepest importance as a rule of ecclesiastical polity, De Marca and other authors warn us against the mistake of supposing that the so-called “liberties of the Gallican Church” consist wholly, or even chiefly, in the maintenance of this abstract principle. The true liberty of the Church, whether in France or elsewhere, lies in its being governed in conformity with the ancient canons, and with those laws which from time to time are enacted synodically, in accordance with the original principles of its constitution.

In pursuance of the arrangement made at Constance, a Council was convened at Pavia in 1423; but after a few weeks it was transferred to Sienna, and thence subsequently to Basle. Eugenius IV, who succeeded Martin, apprehending probably that this assembly, if permitted to proceed independently, would follow in the track of that of Constance, and apply itself with indiscreet zeal to the work of reform, attempted to dissolve it, and proposed that it should meet a year later at Bologna, where it would have been in great measure under his own dictation. This led to a rupture between the Pope and the Council; and years of confused strife ensued (into the details of which it is unnecessary to enter) totally frustrating the measures so urgently required for the purification of the Church.

The position assumed by the Gallican Church at this juncture was peculiar, and in some respects questionable. It declared decidedly in favour of the Council of Basle; many French prelates repaired thither, and ambassadors were sent by the King, Charles VII, to Pope Eugenius, to beseech him to support the authority of the Synod, and to protest against its dissolution. The Fathers stood firm at their post, appealing to the principles solemnly asserted at Constance, that the Pope is bound in certain specified cases to submit to an Ecumenical Council, and that the latter cannot be translated, prorogued, or dissolved, without its own consent. The gift of infallibility, they affirmed, resides in the collective Church. It does not belong to the Popes, several of whom have erred concerning the Faith. The Church alone has authority to enact laws which are binding on the whole body of the faithful. Now, the authority of General Councils is identical with that of the Church. This was expressly determined by the Council of Constance, and acknowledged by Pope Martin V. The Pope is the ministerial head of the Church, but he is not its absolute sovereign; on the contrary, facts prove that he is subject to the jurisdiction of the Church; for well-known instances are on record of Popes being deposed on the score of erroneous doctrine and immoral life, whereas no Pope has ever attempted to condemn or excommunicate the Church. Both the Pope and the Church have received authority to bind and loose; but the Church has practically exerted that authority against the Pope, whereas the latter has never ventured to take any such step against the Church. In fine, the words of Christ himself are decisive of the question—“If any man neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto you as a heathen man and a publican.” This injunction was addressed to St. Peter equally with the rest of the disciples.

The Council proceeded to cite Eugenius by a formal monition to appear in person at Basle; and on his failing to comply, they signified that on the expiration of a further interval of sixty days, ulterior means would be put in force against him. Their firmness, added to the pressing solicitations of the Emperor Sigismund, at length induced the Pope to yield. He reconciled himself with the Council in December, 1433; acknowledged that it had been legitimately convoked ; approved its proceedings up to that date; and cancelled the act by which he had pronounced its dissolution.

Elated by this triumph, the Basilian fathers commenced in earnest the task of church reform, and passed several decrees of a character vexatious to the Pope, particularly one for the total abolition of annates. A second breach was the consequence. Eugenius, under’ pretence of furthering the negotiation then pending for the reunion of the Greek and Latin branches of the Church, published in 1437 a bull dissolving the Council of Basle, and summoning another to meet at Ferrara. The assembly at Basle retorted by declaring the Pope contumacious, and suspending him from the exercise of all authority. Both parties proceeded eventually to the last extremities. The Council, after proclaiming afresh, as “Catholic verities,” that a General Council has power over the Pope, and cannot be transferred or dissolved but by its own act, passed a definitive sentence in its thirty-fourth session (June 25, 1439) deposing Eugenius from the Papal throne. The Pope retaliated by stigmatizing the fathers of Basle as schismatical and heretical, cancelling their acts, and excommunicating their president, the Cardinal Archbishop of Arles.

Meanwhile an energetic and independent line of action was adopted by the government in France. The Crown, in concert with the heads of the Church, availed itself of a train of events which had so seriously damaged the prestige of the Papacy, to make a decisive advance in the path of practical reform, and to establish the long-cherished Gallican privileges on a secure basis. For this purpose Charles VII. assembled a great National Council at Bourges, in July, 1438, at which he presided in person, surrounded by the princes of his family, and by all the most eminent dignitaries spiritual and temporal; and here was promulgated the memorable ordinance known as the “Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.”

The French Church, it must be observed, did not recognise the deposition of Pope Eugenius, but adhered to his obedience, rejecting Felix V., whom the Council of Basle elected to succeed him, as a pretender. I continued, nevertheless, to support the Council, and to assert its supreme legislative authority. Hence there arises a considerable difficulty in limine as to the character of the proceedings at Bourges. For the deposition of Eugenius was either a rightful and valid exercise of conciliar authority, or it was not. If it was not—if the Council had wrongfully and uncanonically condemned the successor of Peter—how could it be infallible ? and why should its legislation in other particulars be indisputable? On the other hand, if the deposition was a valid one, with what consistency could the French continue to regard Eugenius as their legitimate pastor? It was a knotty dilemma.

The position, however, though logically open to objections, was not without its practical advantages. For, since France maintained a good understanding with both the contending parties, both found it conducive to their interest to send deputations to the Council of Bourges; Pope Eugenius, with a view to obtain its support for the rival council which he had opened at Ferrara; the fathers of Basle, in order to make known their decrees, which, as agreeing with the received doctrine of Gallican theologians, would, it was hoped, meet with a cordial welcome throughout France. The assembly at Bourges did not fail to profit by these exceptional circumstances. It accepted the decrees of Basle, yet not absolutely, but after critical examination, and with certain modifications;—a course which, by implication, asserted a right to legislate for the concerns of the French Church even independently of a General Council acknowledged to be orthodox. The following explanation of this proceeding was inserted in the preamble of the celebrated statute finally agreed upon by the authorities at Bourges. It is there stated that this policy was adopted “not from any hesitation as to the authority of the Council of Basle to enact and promulgate ecclesiastical decrees, but because it was judged advisable to adapt those decrees to the usages, circumstances, and requirements of the French realm and nation.” So that it appears, on the whole, that while the French professed great zeal on this occasion for the dogma of the superiority of a General Council over the Pope, the principle practically illustrated at Bourges was that of the supremacy of a National Council over every other ecclesiastical authority. Such were the anomalies which arose out of the strange necessities of the time.

The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges embraces twenty-three articles. The first treats of the authority of General Councils, and of the time and manner of convening and celebrating them. The second relates to ecclesiastical elections, which are enjoined to be made hereafter in strict accordance with the canons, by the cathedral, collegiate, and conventual chapters. Reserves, Pragmatic Sanction legalised the nomination by the Crown to the bishoprics and other Church dignities; and he describes this as constituting the “Gallican liberties.” On the contrary, that edict restored, in distinct terms, “the canonical elections to all metropolitan, cathedral, collegiate, and conventual churches, according to the provisions of annates, and “expective graces,” are abolished; the rights of patrons are to be respected, provided their nominees be graduates of the Universities, and otherwise well qualified. The Pope retains only a veto in case of unfitness or uncanonical election, and the nomination to benefices “in curia vacantia,” i.e., of which the incumbents may happen to die at Rome, or within two days’ journey of the Pontifical residence. The King and other princes may occasionally recommend or request the promotion of persons of special merit, but without threats or violent pressure of any kind.

Other articles regulate the order of ecclesiastical appeals, which, with the exception of the “causae majores ” specified by law, and those relating to the elections in cathedral and conventual churches, are henceforth to be decided On the spot by the ordinary judges; appeals are to be carried in all cases to the court immediately superior; no case to be referred to the Pope “omisso medio,” i.e., without passing through the intermediate tribunals. The remaining clauses consist of regulations for the performance of Divine service, and various matters of discipline.

The reader will remember that Pope Eugenius, on the occasion of his temporary reconciliation with the Council of Basle in 1433, expressed his approbation of all its synodal acts up to that date; and this sanction of their validity is held by Galileans to extend to the period of the second and final rupture in 1437. It follows that the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, so far as they coincide with the decrees of Basle prior to 1437, were authorized by the Holy See; and this includes them all with two exceptions, the common law.” It was this right of canonical election that formed the keystone of the “liberty” of the Gallican Church; the practice of Royal nomination was a contravention, evasion, and abuse of that invaluable franchise. In order to obtain a statutable right to nominate the prelates of the realm, the Crown was obliged to abolish the Pragmatic Sanction, which was replaced by the Concordat of Bologna.

The Pragmatic Sanction was registered by the Parliament of Paris on the 13th of July, 1439; becoming thereby part of the statute law of France. Its publication caused universal satisfaction throughout the kingdom. At Rome, on the other hand, it was indignantly censured and resolutely opposed. Eugenius IV vainly strove to obtain the King’s consent to an alteration of some of its details. Nicolas V protested against it without effect; but the superior genius and subtle measures of Pius II were more successful. This Pontiff denounced the Pragmatic at the Council of Mantua in 1460, as

…“a blot which disfigured the Church of France; a decree which no Ecumenical Council would have passed, nor any Pope have confirmed; a principle of confusion in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Since it had been in force, the laity had become the masters and judges of the clergy; the power of the spiritual sword could no longer be exerted except at the good pleasure of the secular authority. The Roman Pontiff, whose diocese embraced the world, whose jurisdiction is not bounded even by the ocean, possessed only such extent of power in France as the Parliament might see fit to allow him.”

The ambassadors of Charles VII, however, reminded his Holiness that the Pragmatic Sanction was founded on the canons of Constance and Basle, which had been ratified by his predecessors; and when the Pope proceeded to threaten France with an interdict, and to prohibit all appeal from his decisions to a future council, the King caused his procureur-general, Jean Dauvet, to publish an official protest against these acts of violence, concluding with a solemn appeal to the judgment of the Church Catholic assembled by representation. While awaiting that event, Charles declared himself resolved to uphold the laws and regulations which had been sanctioned by previous Councils.

Louis XI, urged by alternate menaces, entreaties, and flattery from Rome, revoked the Pragmatic Sanction shortly after his accession. The step accorded well with his own arbitrary temper; for he could not endure the privilege of free election by the cathedral and monastic chapters; nor was he less jealous of the influence exerted, under the shelter of that privilege, by the high feudal nobility in the disposal of Church preferment. He seems to have expected, moreover, that while ostensibly conceding the right of patronage to the Apostolic See, he should be able to retain the real power in his own hands. The event disappointed his calculations. No sooner was the decree of Bourges rescinded, than the Pope resumed and enforced his claim to the provision of benefices in France. Simony, and the whole train of concomitant abuses, reappeared more scandalously than ever; and Louis found himself despised by his subjects as the dupe of Papal artifice.

The Parliamentary Courts, meanwhile, assumed a determined attitude in defence of the right of election guaranteed by the Pragmatic Sanction. They pronounced the abolition of that act illegal, and treated it as null and void; they insisted on their own authority in entertaining appeals against ecclesiastical abuses; they eagerly supported anyone who showed a disposition to withstand the pretensions of Rome in the matter of patronage. The king, smarting under the trickery of the Pope, made no attempt to restrain them in this line of conduct; and the result was that the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction was never fully executed, having never been legalized by the forms of the Constitution. On the other hand, the Popes so far maintained the advantage they had extorted from Louis, that the ancient franchise of the Church as to elections became virtually extinct in France.

Things remained in this unsettled state during the reigns of Louis XI, Charles VIII, and Louis XII. The latter prince, on coming to the throne, published an edict re-establishing the Pragmatic Sanction; and this step, added to his ambitious enterprises in Italy, brought him into hostile collision with Pope Julius II. The king, unwilling to make war on the head of the Church without some semblance of ecclesiastical sanction, convoked a Council at Tours in September, 1510, and consulted the clergy on a series of questions arising out of the disturbed state of his relations with Rome. They decided, in accordance with the known views and wishes of the sovereign, that it is lawful for an independent prince, if unjustly attacked, to defend himself against the Pope by force of arms—to withdraw for a time from his obedience—to take possession of the territory of the Church, not with the purpose of retaining it, but as a temporary measure of self-protection—and to resist the pretensions of the Pontiff to powers not rightfully belonging to him. Citations to appear at Rome might, under such circumstances, be safely disregarded; as also Papal censures, which would be null and void. If the emergency should arise, the Council added, the king ought to be governed by the ancient principles of ecclesiastical law, as confirmed and re-enacted by the Pragmatic Sanction.

The Gallican clergy sent a deputation to Pope Julius on this occasion, to entreat him to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards the princes of Christendom; and they determined, in case their advice should be fruitless, to demand the convocation of a General Council, to take cognizance of the Pope’s conduct, and prescribe the measures necessary for the guidance and welfare of the Church.

An ecclesiastical congress, calling itself a Council-General, but altogether unworthy of that august title, was held, in fact, in the following year at Pisa, under the auspices of the King of France and the Emperor Maximilian. The Pope refused to appear there, and convoked a rival synod at Rome, summoning the cardinals who had authorized the meeting at Pisa to present themselves at his court within sixty days. On the expiration of this term he publicly excommunicated them, degraded them from their dignity, and deprived them of their preferments.

Thus the Western Church once more exhibited the spectacle of a “house divided against itself,” as during the scandalous strife between the synods of Basle and Florence; and for some time a formal schism appeared imminent. The so-called Council of Pisa consisted of the four rebellious cardinals, twenty Gallican prelates, several abbots and other dignitaries, the envoys of the King of France, deputies from some of the French Universities, and a considerable number of Doctors of the Faculty of Paris. This assembly justified its position on the ground that there are extraordinary cases in which a Council may be called without the intervention of the Pope; and that, since the present Pontiff had neglected to obey the decree of the Council of Constance which enjoined a similar celebration at the interval of every ten years, the cardinals were bound to take the initiative in the matter, according to a solemn engagement which they had made in the conclave when Julius was elected. After repeating the stereotyped formula concerning the supreme authority of General Councils, and the imperative necessity of a reformation of the Church in its head and in its members, the fathers addressed themselves professedly to the herculean task thus indicated; but little or nothing was effected of any practical importance.

Political emergencies compelled them ere long to transfer their sessions to Milan; and here, on the 21st of April, 1512, they had the hardihood to publish a decree suspending Pope Julius from all Pontifical functions, as “a notorious disturber of the Council, the author of schism, contumacious, incorrigible, and hardened.”

Louis XII accepted this sentence by a special edict, and ordered it to be registered and published by the Parliament of Paris; upon which the Pope replied by excommunicating the king, laying the whole of his dominions under an interdict, and absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance. Louis protested against this bull, and further expressed his indignation by causing coins to be struck bearing the arms of Prance encircled by the menacing legend, “Perdam Babylonis nomen.”

Victory declared eventually for the Pope. He succeeded in organizing a formidable coalition against the French; they were expelled ignominiously from the Milanese; the terrified members of the pseudo-council crossed the Alps in precipitate haste, and took refuge at Lyons, where their situation and pretensions were little short of ridiculous.

In the meantime the fifth Council of Lateran, styled by the Roman Church oecumenical, though its right to that title was scarcely better than that of the assembly at Pisa, commenced its sittings on the 10th of May, 1512. The Pope presided in person, at the head of fifteen cardinals, and upwards of a hundred prelates, almost all Italian. Here the acts of the schismatical assemblies at Pisa, Milan, and Lyons were solemnly condemned and annulled, and the censures pronounced on the King of France were confirmed. In the fourth session (December 10, 1512) a vigorous attack was made on the Pragmatic Sanction. The letters-patent of Louis XI were read, by which it had been suppressed at the instance of Pius II; after which a monition was published summoning all supporters of that act, of whatsoever rank or dignity, to appear at Rome within sixty days, and show cause why it should not be finally revoked and abolished. The fifth session was not held till the 16th of February, 1513; and a few days afterwards the turbulent reign of Julius II. was brought to a close by death. The views and policy of his successor, Leo X, were of a totally opposite character. He made it his first object to restore peace to Christendom; and circumstances soon enabled him to arrive at a definitive adjustment of the perplexing questions which had been so long pending with the Government of France. Unfortunately, that adjustment amounted to a deliberate betrayal of the first principles of the constitution of the Church; principles which the Apostolic See ought to have defended and enforced at all hazards.

Louis XII, who was greatly dishearten by his late reverses, lost no time in signifying his desire to effect a reconciliation with the new Pope. This was granted him on easy terms. The French ambassadors attended the eighth session of the Lateran Council, and renounced in their master’s name the pretended Councils of Pisa, Milan, and Lyons, accepting that of the Lateran as the sole legitimate and indubitable Council, and engaging that the assembly still in session at Lyons should separate within one month. It was also promised that a deputation of the French clergy should repair to Rome to solicit absolution. The fulfilment of this latter article was delayed upon various pretexts, and the Pope, as an act of indulgence, postponed it to the eleventh session of the Council, which was not held till the 19th of December, 1516. Meanwhile the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, an object which the Court of Rome pursued with extraordinary energy, remained in suspense. But an event occurred ere long which wonderfully facilitated the desired arrangement. Louis XII expired in January, 1515, and was succeeded by Francis I.

It was after the splendid triumph of the French arms at Marignano that Leo judged it advisable to negotiate a final treaty of reconciliation with the Gallican Church. The young monarch, flushed with victory, was at that moment in a position to demand advantageous terms; and it was plain that any agreement must be of the nature of a compromise. Antoine Duprat, Chancellor of France, to whom Francis entrusted the management of this delicate business, was a diplomatist well capable of pressing the terms of a bargain in a sense corresponding with his master’s interests; and, knowing that the paramount point with Rome was the abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction, he exacted, as the price of it, a boon which legalized and perpetuated the predominance of the Crown in directing the administration of the Church.

The celebrated Concordat of Bologna bears date the 18th of August, 1516. Many of its provisions were identical with those of the Pragmatic Sanction, for which it was substituted ; but there were some conspicuous exceptions. The most important article is that relating to the right of nomination to bishoprics and other “benefices consistoriaux”; this was transferred in express terms from the capitular bodies to the Crown. The king was to present, within six months after the vacancy, a doctor or licentiate in divinity to the Pope, who was thereupon to confirm the appointment and confer canonical institution;—a veto being thus secured to the Holy See upon any choice which did not satisfy the requirements of the canons. The Pope was still to nominate to benefices “in curia vacantia”; and it was further agreed that every private patron having from ten to fifty benefices in his gift should place one presentation at the disposal of the Pope for the time being, or two, if the number exceeded fifty. Papal “reservations” and “expective graces” were abolished. The right of University graduates to preferment was recognized, and their privileges considerably extended. Ecclesiastical causes were to be decided within the realm by the ordinary tribunals, or by commissioners named by the Pope in the case of “causae majores” statutably reserved to his cognizance.

But the omissions from the Concordat were of crucial significance. Entire silence was observed with respect to the memorable decrees of Constance, Basle, and Bourges, which had established the superiority of Councils over the Pope. No mention was made of the annates, which the Pragmatic Sanction bad suppressed; and in consequence of the tacit understanding between the contracting parties on this head, the claim to that impost was immediately revived by the Pope, who regarded it as a right inherently annexed to his See. “Thus,” as Mezerai remarks, “the Pope surrendered to the king a purely spiritual privilege, and obtained in return a purely secular advantage.”

This arbitrary measure excited an outcry of indignation throughout France, and the mandate for its registration was most stubbornly resisted by the Parliament of Paris. After ten days of discussion, the magistrates came to a resolution that it would be contrary to their duty to accept the new ordinance; they appealed against it to “the Pope better informed,” and to the next General Council lawfully assembled. Meanwhile they declared that the Pragmatic Sanction ought to be observed more strictly than ever. If the king was absolutely determined to enforce the reception of the Concordat, they begged that he would cause it to be promulgated in the same way as in the case of the Pragmatic Sanction, namely, by a lawfully convened Council of the Gallican Church. The new decree was combated in like manner by the University of Paris. That body posted notices throughout the city forbidding all booksellers and printers to print and publish it. They drew up an elaborate memorial, setting forth the manifold evils which had arisen from the disuse of free election; tracing to that source the ignorance, incompetence, and depraved morals, which disgraced the higher clergy, as well as the spoliation of the National Church by the inordinate exactions of Rome. In conclusion, the University appealed to the Pope “better informed,” and to a future legitimate Council freely assembled. The act of appeal stated that, “although the Pope holds his authority immediately from God, he is not on that account incapable of error; that if he should command anything contrary to the precepts of Divine law, the faithful are not bound to obey him; and that if he shall persist in attempting to enforce submission, the only remedy is to appeal from him to the decision of the Church Universal—a right which none can gainsay, since it is founded on the law of God and that of nature.” Francis, much irritated, issued an edict annulling these proceedings as seditious, and insisting on the immediate acceptance of the obnoxious ordinance. At first the command was disregarded; but the despotic power to which the monarchy had been steadily advancing ever since the time of Philip the Fair prevailed in the end.

In the eleventh session of the Lateran Council (December 19, 1516), Leo X promulgated the bull “Pastor aeternus,” by which the Pragmatic Sanction was finally abrogated and annulled. It begins with a pompous eulogy of the Christian virtue of obedience; after which it recites that the late Pope Julius, finding that the Pragmatic Sanction (“which might well be called the depravation of the kingdom of France”) was still in force, to the peril of souls and the detriment of the Holy See, had caused it to be examined by a Commission of Cardinals, and had cited the French bishops, chapters, and Parliaments, to appear as parties to the cause at Rome. The Pope goes on to state that, after the death of his predecessor, be had judged it right to pursue the same course, and had summoned the parties interested by repeated monitions; in spite of which no one had yet appeared to allege reasons in defence of the measure in question. Under these circumstances he had determined to abolish it altogether, after the example of Leo the Great, who, at the Council of Chalcedon, revoked what had been rashly ordained by the second Council of Ephesus in opposition to the Catholic faith. The fact that the Pragmatic Sanction had been authorized by the councils of Bourges and Basle was no obstacle to its revocation; for it had not been accepted until after the translation of the latter Council by Eugenius IV, which destroyed its validity; since the sovereign Pontiff has plenary power over Councils, to convoke, translate, and dissolve them. In fine, he declares that the Pragmatic Sanction has no authority whatever; he cancels all the decrees, statutes, and regulations, contained in it; he condemns and annuls all that was done with respect to it in the assembly of Bourges. And forasmuch as it is necessary to salvation that all Christians should be subject to the Roman Pontiff, according to Holy Scripture, the Fathers, and the constitution of Boniface VIII, “Unam sanctam,” he therefore renews that constitution, without prejudice to that of Clement V, beginning “Meruit,” and forbids the faithful, clergy and laity, regular and secular, of whatever order, rank, or condition, to make use of the Pragmatic Sanction for the future, or to decide any cause in conformity with its provisions. The penalty denounced was the greater excommunication and deprivation for ecclesiastics, and the forfeiture of fiefs and all dignities in the case of civilians. Another bull, substituting the Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction, was read in the same session.

The Parliament of Paris persisted in its opposition until it was on the brink of an open rupture with the sovereign. A royal message, on the 12th of March, 1517, warned the magistrates that, if the new edict was not registered and published without further discussion and delay, his Majesty would be compelled to resort to extremities which would give them cause for regret. It was now felt that it would be dangerous further to resist the king’s pleasure; the Parliament, therefore, yielded in form; but this was done in the most reserved and qualified terms possible, under protest that it was purely an act of submission to the crown, and that the Parliament by no means designed thereby to authorize or approve of the Concordat. The magistrates also declared that they would continue to adjudicate appeals in ecclesiastical matters in accordance with the Pragmatic Sanction as heretofore.

Nor did this forced surrender terminate the struggle. The execution of the Concordat was vigorously contested for years afterwards. Cathedral and monastic chapters proceeded to elect bishops and abbots under the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction; and every such case became a fresh source of exasperation between the contending powers. The disputed elections were referred for arbitration, according to the views and feelings of the parties interested, sometimes to the Council of State, sometimes to the Parliament of Paris. Conflicting judgments were pronounced; the Royal Council decided for the royal nominee; the Parliament ruled that the individual on whom the choice of the chapter had fallen was duly elected. But the Parliament, though clamouring loudly for the “Gallican liberties,” and making a gallant stand for national independence as against the usurpations of Rome, was unable to maintain its ground against the overpowering despotism of the Crown. The monarchical authority ultimately achieved a complete triumph. In 1527 a peremptory royal ordinance prohibited the courts of Parliament from taking further cognisance of causes affecting elections to consistorial benefices and conventual priories; and all such matters were transferred to the sole jurisdiction of the Council of State. After this the agitation against the Concordat gradually subsided.

But although, in virtue of its compulsory registration by the Parliament, the Concordat became part of the law of the land, it is certain that the Gallican Church never accepted this flagrant invasion of its liberties. On the contrary, the clergy lost no opportunity of protesting against it, and petitioned the crown unceasingly for the restoration of freedom of election. In their assembly at Melun in 1579 they adopted a “remonstrance” to Henry III, demanding this privilege as belonging to the Church by Divine right. “It would have been for the interest of the Pope and of the kings of Prance,” they argued, “if the Concordat had never come to pass. Since that time the Church of France has declined; heresy made its appearance at the same moment, and has gained ground to the extent which we now witness. The condition of the Church while the elections were in force, as compared with that which has resulted from the royal nominations, shows that it was vitally important to maintain the primitive rule; and the foresight of our Parliament has thus been fully vindicated, in its refusal to approve the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction; which law it justly regarded as the main safeguard against the abuses which have since been prevalent.” Similar representations were made to the throne by the synod of 1588, when the Bishop of S. Brieux reminded his Majesty that his grandfather, Francis I, when lying on his death-bed, had acknowledged to his son, Henry II, that “there was nothing which weighed so heavily upon his conscience as the measure by which he had suppressed the free elections, and assumed the nomination to cathedrals and monasteries.”

The practical working of the Concordat seems to have been, in some respects, preferable to that of the system of capitular election, which had engendered scandalous abuses. But it was attended with one signal disadvantage. Under the new order of things both those who attained and those who aspired to the high places of the Church became, almost inevitably, courtiers; their spiritual character was in perpetual danger of being merged in that of temporal grandees and political functionaries. The bishops were unquestionably more national in their views and tendencies under the modern arrangement—more vigilant in resisting the aggressions and encroachments of the Papacy; but, in the same proportion, they were less capable of opposing any effectual barrier to the strides by which the monarchy was marching towards absolute dominion. They dared not assume the attitude of fearless champions of the constitutional rights of their order, and of the Divine economy of the Church; they contracted a tone of servile dependence, unqualified admiration, and fulsome flattery, in their communications with the sovereign. In addition to this, the “haute noblesse” were enabled, by means of the new system, to establish almost a monopoly of the richer Church preferments. Bishoprics and abbacies became practically hereditary in certain great families, and were regarded as the ordinary provision for younger sons. This grave abuse was palpably fostered by the article of the Concordat which declared princes of the blood royal and persons of noble birth eligible for preferment without being graduates of the Universities.! A race of dignitaries was thus created who rarely owed their promotion to any claims on the score of theological attainment or pastoral efficiency.

Although it would be difficult to imagine anything more diametrically opposed than the Concordat to the primitive institutions of the Church, the circumstances under which it was obtained were such that it might be colourably described as a national protest against certain usurpations and exactions hitherto practised by the court of Rome. This operated, in great measure, as a veil to its true character. So keen was the satisfaction caused by the removal of some of the heaviest burdens under which the Church had groaned for centuries through spiritual misgovernment, that the immense increase of power which was thrown at the same time into the hands of the civil ruler was comparatively overlooked. Thus the Concordat was complacently quoted by its admirers as establishing the “Gallican liberties”; whereas it was, in fact, the most formidable blow that had yet been dealt towards their extinction. The interests which it really served were those of modern pseudo-Gallicanism;—a system of which it is no exaggeration to say that it proved ruinous to the National Church of France.