Artaud de Montor, in his Lives of the Popes writes in this connection: "Assuredly, if the archbishops and bishops made no resistance to the signing of the four articles; if they thought that such a notification might become useful to the Church; if they recognized that the authority of the Pope was to be thus boldly limited; if they thought it requisite to curb what Bruno called the Tiberine tyranny, they must now at length have discovered that they were subject to a perfectly insatiable authority, which would employ not even the language of the country to exhort and enjoin them to exert their authority in diffusing a doctrine more administrative than Christian, and more military than religious, with a view to substitute for the words of peace, concord, and mildness, new words of command, injunction, unbridled will, to which Catholicity was no longer accustomed. From the Attorney-General who thus lectures the bishops, to the Attorney-General who has immediately under his hand the secular power, there is, in such times, but a step. The same hand countersigned a document, and ordered the sword to leap from the scabbard."
In the meantime the Roman court was not idle. On the 11th of April, 1682, Pope Innocent XI. annulled the propositions by a brief, and refused to grant canonical bulls to the bishops named by King Louis XIV. The hostile attitude of France continued openly for ten years, and it was only in 1693 that the King agreed that the provisions of his edict were not to be enforced. The spirit of Gallicanism, however, after being thus fostered for a decade in the schools and colleges of France was not to be eradicated by a mere permission of tolerance. A generation had grown up imbued with its false principles and ready to cast broadside through the country the seeds of a lasting hostility towards the Papal prerogatives. In fact, all through the whole course of the eighteenth century the creed of Gallicanism governed in a large measure the whole action and liturgy of the French Church. Its attitude of independence in regard to the Holy See very naturally encouraged that rising anti-Christianism which found its most potent foe in the successor of St. Peter. Even in the nineteenth century it possessed a certain life. Napoleon, in his Organic Articles, imposed it upon the seminaries of France even more strictly than did Louis XIV., at an earlier day. It has ever been the great obstacle to Catholic unity in France, the source of persecution against the Church; and if it virtually died in that country about the time of the Vatican Council, in 1870, its absence was never more noteworthy and consoling than at the present day when the whole French episcopacy stands united to a man in its loyalty and devotion to the Holy See.
VAN ESPEN.
Scarce had the battles of Jansenism and Gallicanism been ended, than a new campaign of destruction was inaugurated against the peace and unity of the Church. Born of the confusion of Jansenism, it found a sponsor in Bernard Van Espen, the Flemish canonist, it was introduced to the world by Febronius, and it reached its development under the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II.
Until the eighteenth century the student of canon law believed his task fulfilled if he had read diligently the great Code of ecclesiastical law, if he had commented upon the Decretals, and had drawn therefrom conclusions entirely in harmony with the mind of the Church. This mode of procedure seemed altogether too slow and antiquated to Van Espen, Professor in the University of Louvain, who accordingly put forth, between the years 1693 and 1728 a new work upon the laws of the Church, the method of which was startling as its purpose was revolutionary. It was styled the Universal Ecclesiastical Law. It was no attempt to study or tabulate the old laws; it was rather an investigation, conducted in a spirit of prejudice, into the origin and authority of the laws by which the Church was governed, and an endeavor to minimize thereby the rights and prerogatives of the Roman See in favor of lesser and more recent human institutions.
The new system of Van Espen was taken up with avidity by every student who imagined he had a grievance against the Holy See. It became the order of the day to wander back piously to the primitive days of Christianity, to explore its history for evidences of modern institutions, to seek therein for the organization of the Vatican and the Roman Curia, and not finding them in days of Clement and Cletus, to raise the voice in loud protestation against the novelties introduced by the Popes. They scoured the ages of history to gather up every expression of hostility against the Temporal Power or the institution of the Cardinalate; they recorded scrupulously every complaint against the revenues of the Holy See; they revived the epithets concerning the "superstition, the fanaticism, and the darkness" of the Middle Ages. In a word they framed a system whose watchword was the destruction of the Papal supremacy, the exaltation of episcopal pretensions, and the ultimate domination of the State in the affairs of the Church.
FEBRONIANISM.
The theories of these pseudo-canonists nowhere found greater favor than among a certain class of prelates in Germany, who besides their jurisdiction as bishops of the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed the further dignity and revenues of prince-electors in the German Empire. These combinations of politician and churchman could hardly regard with favor the pre-eminence of a Bishop in Rome who claimed however justly the rights of jurisdiction in any manner over them. They thus welcomed with open arms any daring spirit who would minimize or destroy the value of the Papal supremacy, and thus leave them in undisturbed possession of their pretended rights, carrying as these did with them a broad license to all the worldly luxuries and distractions of a political court.
The prince Bishop of Treves in Germany was one of this kind, and it is not surprising that when a canonist or theologian of the new order suddenly appeared at his court that the latter should receive all the honor and encouragement such a bishop could bestow. The court of the Bishop of Treves produced in the middle of the eighteenth century such a spirit in Johannes von Hontheim, a suffragan of the electoral diocese, and better known under his pseudonym of Febronius. In 1763 appeared in Germany some copies of a mysterious quarto entitled: The State of the Church and of the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pontiff, bearing the name of Justinus Febronius, and the place of publication Bouillon, though the author was in reality Johannes von Hontheim, and the place of its publication, Frankfort-on-the-Main. The book, finally increased to five volumes, was rapidly spread throughout Europe. In Venice it appeared in two editions, Latin and Italian. In France it was translated twice. In Spain the Council of Castile defrayed in part the expenses of a new translation, and that edition according to Cardinal Capara became the law for the Court and the Nation. Portugal provided both a Latin and a Portuguese text which latter was distributed gratuitously. Germany also produced both a Latin and German edition.
The book was condemned by Clement XIII., in 1764, and anathematized by the greater number of the German bishops upon its appearance, yet it made so much noise in the world, was so highly eulogized by the ignorant, and so greedily welcomed by the enemies of the Church, besides the fact that it has served to sanction so many desolating assaults upon the faith, the hierarchy and the discipline of the Catholic Church, that it is necessary to discuss it in detail, in order to undeceive many who even today hold some of the views espoused by Febronius.