Gallicanism is the belief that popular secular authority—often represented by the monarch's or the state's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the pope. Gallicanism may be contrasted with ultramontanism. Gallicanism shares some similarities with the ecclesiology of Anglicanism, but while it plays down the authority of the Pope in church, it generally does not deny that there are some authoritative elements to the papal office as ('first among equals'). Other terms for the same or similar doctrines include Erastianism, Regalism, Febronianism, and Josephinism.

Gallicanism originated in France (the term derives from , the Latin name of Gaul), and is unrelated to the first-millennium Catholic Gallican Rite. In the 18th century, it spread to the Low Countries, especially the Netherlands. The University of Notre Dame professor John McGreevy defines it as "the notion that national customs might trump Roman (Catholic Church) regulations."

Background

Gallicanism is a group of religious opinions that was for some time peculiar to the Catholic Church in France. These opinions were in opposition to the ideas which were called ultramontane, which means "across the mountains" (the Alps). Ultramontanism affirmed the authority of the pope over the temporal kingdoms of the rest of Europe, particularly emphasizing a supreme episcopate for the pope holding universal immediate jurisdiction. This eventually led to the definition by the Roman Catholic Church of the dogma of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.

Gallicanism tended to restrain the pope's authority in favour of that of bishops and the people's representatives in the State, or the monarch. But the most respected proponents of Gallican ideas did not contest the pope's primacy in the Church, merely his supremacy and doctrinal infallibility. They believed their way of regarding the authority of the pope—more in line with that of the Conciliar movement and akin to the Orthodox and Anglicans—was more in conformity with Holy Scripture and tradition. At the same time, they believed their theory did not transgress the limits of free opinions.

Proponents of Gallicanism presented a number of theories as to its origin.

  • The more moderate held that Gallican ideas and liberties were simply privileges – concessions made by the popes, who had been quite willing to divest themselves of a part of their authority in favour of the bishops or kings of France. Thus the extension of the king's authority ecclesiastical matters was not new. This idea appeared as early as the reign of King Philip IV, in some of the protests of that monarch against the policy of Pope Boniface VIII. In the view of some partisans of the theory, the popes had always thought fit to show special consideration for the ancient customs of the Gallican Church, which in every age had distinguished itself by its exactitude in the preservation of the Faith and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline.
  • Others dated the Gallican approach to the time of the early Carolingians, and explaining them somewhat differently, when the popes found it necessary to delegate certain prerogatives to the king in order that some control be exerted on the Frankish nobles who had taken possession of episcopal sees. The popes had, therefore, granted to Carloman, Pepin, and Charlemagne a spiritual authority which they were to exercise only under papal control; which authority had been inherited by their successors, the Kings of France. it dealt Gallicanism a fatal blow. Three of the four articles were directly condemned. As to the remaining one, the first, the council made no specific declaration; but an important indication of the Catholic doctrine was given in the condemnation fulminated by Pope Pius IX against the 24th proposition of the Syllabus of Errors, in which it was asserted that the Church cannot have recourse to force and is without any temporal authority, direct or indirect. Pope Leo XIII shed more direct light upon the question in his Encyclical Immortale Dei (12 November 1885), where we read: "God has apportioned the government of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the former set over things divine, the latter over things human. Each is restricted within limits which are perfectly determined and defined in conformity with its own nature and special aim. There is therefore, as it were a circumscribed sphere in which each exercises its functions jure proprio". And in the Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10 January 1890), the same pontiff adds: "The Church and the State have each its own power, and neither of the two powers is subject to the other."