Contenu du sommaire : La culture gallicane. Références et modèles (droit, ecclésiologie, histoire)

In investigating why France failed to become Protestant, one does not often look at the relation between ecclesiology and political thought. One takes Seyssel to be the exemplar of "medieval constitutionalism" and never accounts for the connection between the ecclesiology and politics of the Parlement and University of Paris. This article will examine this connection through Cosme Guymier's commentary (1486) on the Pragmatic Sanction. Canonist and magistrate, he joined conciliarist political thought to Gallican politics, hinted at the beginnings of what would later unite the absolute monarchy and the Parlement against heresy, and suggested why the Reformation was constitutionally unnecessary in France.

Despite frequent hostility towards the papacy, which waxed and waned depending on circumstances but never vanished, erudite Gallicans of the later sixteenth century felt compelled to accept a major role for it in French Catholicism. This was largely due to the importance they placed on historical continuity as a way of understanding and legitimating a monarchy that had, after all, been intertwined with the papacy since its inception and which (so they believed) could for better or worse no longer be conceived of apart from it. It was also, however, also the consequence of a mode of personal identity that also privileged historical continuity, but on the level of piety towards church, king, and family.

During the winter of 1589-90, at the time of the arrival of the Caetani Legation in France and subsequently in Paris, a battle of legal rulings started between the Parliament of the Catholic League and that of the Politiques. This was not just a moment of controversy between Leaguers and Royals; it also marked the beginning of a political policy and a project of separating the Church of France from the Roman Catholic one.

From the outset, Gallican texts are anchored in the depths of history, a history that carries them back to the earliest Christian times. The theology of tradition that they draw from this period determines that their laws shall remain ever after faithful to this origin. When the Church of Africa enters into this writing system, it serves as an alternative model, both Latin and primitive, to the papacy. In particular, the Gallicans ' attention is seized by its local autonomy, its episcopal unity and its appeal procedure, and this allows them to develop an ecclesiological reading that casts doubt on the judicial primacy of the Roman See. The Church of Africa is thus a model for understanding the relationship between local bishoprics and universal ecclesial unity.

The first edition of the Gallia Christiana, issued in four volumes in 1656, was produced by the twin brothers Scévole (or Gaucher) and Louis de Sainte-Marthe. The design of this work and the methods of production and content of this publication raise questions about the place it occupied in the Gallican landscape of the time. However, in themselves the institutional and financial patronage of the French clergy did not constitute a certificate of Gallicanism. Despite a quickly extinguished controversy over the notices devoted to Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, this erudite research, as faultless as possible for its time, accompanied the movement towards a unitary consciousness of the Church of France, considered as Christendom's "pars nobilissima".

Louis Ellies Du Pin (1657-1719) is one of the few French authors of the late seventeenth century to offer a relatively unbiased view of Byzantine history: he recounts with subtlety the major clashes between the Byzantine Church and the papacy from the seventh to the fifteenth century. It seems that his lack of prejudice and his interest in Medieval orthodoxy may partly be on account of his Gallican sensibility.

It is well known that the promotion of the bishop figure is of primary importance to gallicanism in general, and to Bossuet's gallicanism in particular. Strongly influenced by Dionysius'concept of hierarch, Bossuet's conception of episcopate shows some remarkable differences with this heritage: Indeed, Bossuet decreases the importance of the intermediate bodies (such as the priests, and most of all the deacons); he views the hierarchy as an authoritative relationship, and not as a transmission of knowledge; and he tends to emphasize the paradoxical nature of the bishop's situation, always oscillating between strengh and weakness.

In his work as a polygraph, Nicolas Bergeron evokes many aspects of Gallican culture, thus revealing its richness and malleability in the second half of the 16th century. By compiling court decisions that guaranteed the liberties of the Gallican Church, and by reviving Pierre de Cugnières' founding myth, he passed on a considerable ideological legacy to his descendant, polygraph Pierre Bergeron. The various ways in which the latter, as well as Laurent Bouchel, appropriate this heritage reveal the diversity of possible approaches to recording a vivid memory of Gallicanism, between reinterpretation, nostalgia, and controversial debate.

In the political context of the Interdict of Venice, Jacques Leschassier, parliamentary lawyer and correspondent of Paolo Sarpi, defended the Canons of Senlis. They had opposed their bishop, who, in accordance with Tridentine legislation, had refused them the right to grant dimissory letters. Leschassier's victory was accompanied by the publication of scholarly works claiming to reconstitute the canon code of the primitive Church. The way the trial played out and its ecclesiological stakes help to illuminate two aspects of its reception : the enthusiastic publicity that the major Paris Gallicans made of it and, locally, the meaning of Gallican freedoms and the social consequences of the weakening of épiscopal power.

This article analyzes the position of the jurist and magistrate Simon Vigor (1556-1624) regarding Roman and theocratic doctrine as formulated by Cardinal Bellarmin in his Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei (1586-1593) and in his De potestate Summi Pontificis in rebus temporalibus (1610). Following the theories of Edmond Richer, the famous author of the De ecclesiastica et politica potestate liber unus (1611) that had provoked a tremendous scandal when it was published, Simon Vigor ultimately defends a radical Gallicanism reminiscent of the De Republica ecclesiastica of Marc Antonio De Dominis, an apostate archbishop who had fled to the court of James I of England.

The président de Thou was among the creators of the new intellectual configuration that dominated the entire 17th C. Even as he situated himself within the tradition of the Gallican magistrates, he was part of a movement of rupture from it. Socially, he broke off hereditary ties with the old municipal patrician class of Paris and became a prototype of the nobleman of the gown through cultural imitation of the nobles of the sword. Most important, his work contributed to the dismissal of the major fields of knowledge that the Renaissance had inherited: dogmatic theology and legal science. The prestige of his monumental Latin Histoire opened up a new European literary space. Without this work, literature could not have attained the power that it enjoyed under Richelieu, nor could the monarchy have attained the absolutist practice of its own power.

Guillaume Du Vair (1556-1621), counsellor in the Parliament of Paris during the Catholic League crisis and friend of Pierre Pithou, Nicolas Le Fèvre and Jacques-Auguste de Thou, was strongly engaged in favour of the Gallican cause. He examined the articles of the council of Trent and rejected those contrary to the freedom of the French Church. Defending the legitimacy of Henry IV against the League, he valued Politics over Religion and preferred the interests of the French Kingdom to the injunctions of Rome. Without being himself a scholar or a theorist, Du Vair consistently helped spread the ideas of his friends, the "Politiques".

Long perceived as an extreme Gallican, the Navarre Doctor J. de Launoy was above all an independent and original scholar. A study of his writings, in particular a thematic collection of letters, exposes a more classical vision of him; it establishes the singularity of his contribution to the ecclesiastical and canonical debates of his time. In systematically proving the historical and theological truths of the Doctrine of France, he weakened Tridentine perspectives and established a model of the Church capable of responding to the yearnings of many Christians.