1615–1799

Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephinism, and the French Revolution's Assault on the Church

In France the crown never officially ratified the decrees of Trent. The clergy adopted them on their own in 1615, a precedent later cited by defenders of "Gallican liberties". Under Louis XIV the Sorbonne issued the Six Articles on royal independence in temporal affairs (1663). The 1682 assembly of clergy, drafted by Bossuet, adopted the Four Gallican Articles, which limited papal power and denied papal infallibility. Jansenism was spreading at the same time. In 1713 the pope condemned it with the bull "Unigenitus".

Similar movements arose outside France. The German bishop Justinus Febronius argued in an 1763 treatise that supreme church authority belongs to a council of bishops rather than the pope. He was condemned by the Inquisition in 1764. Emperor Joseph II of Austria applied similar principles of state control over the church ("Josephinism", including an 1781 edict of toleration). Pius VI condemned them in 1794. In England itself, 1,500 lay Catholics signed an 1791 statement denying papal infallibility as dogma.

All these currents were ended by the French Revolution. After the fall of the Bastille (1789), the authorities confiscated church lands and abolished monastic vows (1790). They imposed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which split the clergy into "jurors" and "non-jurors". Pius VI condemned it in 1791.

As the Revolution radicalized, the Terror (1793–1799) turned to open persecution. Christianity was replaced by the "cult of Reason" and then by Robespierre's "cult of the Supreme Being". Two to five thousand priests were executed. Pius VI himself was taken prisoner to France, where he died in 1799.