Gallicanism

Noun

Gallicanism (countable and uncountable, plural Gallicanisms)

1. (historical) The doctrine that the church of France is autonomous, especially in relation to the pope; also, the intellectual movement in support of this doctrine and the policies expressing it.
   • […] after being ordained, [Wake] went to Paris in 1682 as chaplain to Viscount Preston. Here Wake came into close touch with Gallicanism […]1912, “Wake, William”, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, volume 12, page 237
   • Moreover, the enthusiasm with which Hecker’s ideas had been received among Catholic liberals in France served to increase Leo XIII’s suspicion that Americanism was yet another attempt, not so very different from the Gallicanisms of the past, to assert the independence of a national church from Rome.1999, Michael W. Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism, →ISBN, page 8

   Antonyms:

   anti-Gallicanism, ultramontanism

2. (broadly, derogatory, often) Support for the autonomy of national churches.
   • Ultramontanism (dominance by the Vatican) conflicted with Gallicanism (freedom from the Vatican) as the Church tried to come to terms with the changes of the nineteenth century.2006, John C. Super, “Papacy”, in J. Michael Francis, editor, Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia, volume 1, →ISBN, page 823
   • Douthat himself immediately tweeted that “it’s synodality when the Germans want something, Gallicanism when the Americans want something.”2018 November 19, Chad C. Pecknold, “Synodality Upended”, in First Things
3. A liturgical feature distinctive of the Gallican Rite.
   • It must be remembered that the Gelasian Sacramentary is a Gallican recension of a Roman Sacramentary, and that it abounds in Gallicanisms.1895, F. E. Warren, “Introduction”, in The Antiphonary of Bangor: An Early Irish Manuscript in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, part 2, page xxviii
   • The earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon books are full of Gallicanisms: just as the Stowe Missal, though it contains the Roman Canon, betrays at every turn its Celtic origin.1904, C. J. B. Gaskoin, Alcuin: His Life and Work, page 217