17th–18th centuries (1682)

Gallicanism, Febronianism and ultramontanism: the limits of papal authority

One of the chief theological questions of Catholicism in the 17th–19th centuries was the nature and extent of papal authority. The Gallicans regarded the pope as a constitutional monarch subject to the council; the ultramontanes ("beyond the mountains") as an absolute monarch from whom even the council's authority derives. Richer (1611) made Gallicanism theological: the only head of the church is Christ, who delegated authority to the faithful, and the pope is the servant of the council. The Six Articles of the Sorbonne (1663) and Bossuet's Four Articles (1682) affirmed the king's independence in temporal matters, limited the pope's authority by the ancient canons and denied his infallibility as a binding dogma. Febronius (1763) taught that the pope's authority comes from the whole church and a council may judge him; de Maistre and Lamennais, by contrast, placed the pope above kings and held him to be infallible.