Summa summae S. Thomae, Tomus III

[ I answer 1°. What this celebrated declaration is will be sufficiently understood from the text itself, which we here append :

«The decrees and liberties of the Gallican Church, so zealously defended by our forefathers, many strive to destroy, together with their foundations resting upon the sacred canons and the tradition of the Fathers; nor are wanting those who under their pretense do not fear to diminish the primacy of blessed Peter and of his successors the Roman Pontiffs instituted by Christ, and the obedience owed to them by all Christians, and the reverend majesty of the Apostolic See, the Church in which faith is preached and unity preserved, owed by all nations. Heretics also omit nothing whereby they may set forth as odious and burdensome to kings and peoples that power in which the peace of the Church is contained, and by such frauds may dissociate simple souls so far from the communion of mother Church and of Christ.

«That we may ward off these inconveniences, we archbishops and bishops gathered at Paris by royal mandate, representing the Gallican Church, together with the other ecclesiastical men deputed along with us, having held a diligent deliberation, have judged these things to be sanctioned and declared.

I. — «First, that to blessed Peter, and to his successors the vicars of Christ, and to the Church itself, power over spiritual things and those pertaining to eternal salvation, not however over civil and temporal things, was handed over by God, the Lord saying :

My kingdom is not of this world, and again : Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's ; and consequently stands that apostolic saying : Let every soul be subject to higher powers; for there is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained by God. Whoever therefore resists the power resists the ordinance of God. Kings therefore and princes in temporal things are by the ordination of God subject to no ecclesiastical power, nor can the Church by authority of the keys depose them directly or indirectly, or absolve their subjects from faith and obedience, or release them from the sacrament of fidelity sworn, and this sentence is necessary to public tranquillity, no less useful to the Church than to the empire, consonant with the word of God, the tradition of the Fathers and the examples of the saints, and must be wholly retained.

II. — «Thus however full power over spiritual things is inherent in the Apostolic See and in the successors of Peter, the vicars of Christ, so that there stand at once firm and unmoved the decrees of the holy oecumenical council of Constance, approved by the Apostolic See, confirmed by the very usage of the Roman Pontiffs and of the whole Church, and guarded with perpetual devotion by the Gallican Church, concerning the authority of general councils, which are contained in sessions IV and V thereof; nor is he approved by the Gallican Church who weaken the force of their decrees, as though of doubtful authority and less approved, or twist the sayings of the council to the time of schism alone.

III. — «Hence the use of apostolic power is to be moderated by the canons composed by the Spirit of God and consecrated by the reverence of the whole world; the rules, customs and institutes received by the kingdom and the Gallican Church also avail, and the boundaries of the Fathers remain unshaken; and it pertains to the greatness of the Apostolic See that the statutes and customs confirmed by the common consent of so great a See and of the churches obtain their own stability.

IV. — «In questions of faith also the chief parts belong to the supreme Pontiff, and his decrees pertain to all and each of the churches, yet nevertheless his judgment is not irreformable unless the consent of the Church accede.

«Which thing, accepted by the Fathers, we have decided to send to all Gallican churches and to the bishops presiding over them, the Holy Spirit authoring it, that we may all say the same thing, and be in the same sense and in the same opinion.»

I answer 2°. What is to be thought of the aforesaid declaration will be found by weighing each article singly, especially by comparing it with the constitution Pastor aeternus, on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, edited and promulgated in the Vatican synod.

1° The doctrine of the first article of the Declaration was abundantly refuted in our preceding article, where the temporal power which belongs to the Roman Pontiff is treated.

It must be observed that in this article the word of Christ is invoked amiss, Ioann., XVIII, 36 : My kingdom is not of this world, as though it signified that the kingdom or the power and authority of Christ, and of his Vicar, nowise and under any respect whatever regard the things of this world or temporal things. The context invincibly proves that the sense of this passage was boldly twisted into a prop of erroneous doctrine. For Pilate asking : Art thou king of the Jews? Jesus answers : My kingdom is not of this world... But now my kingdom is not from hence. To the question repeated, he answers again : Thou sayest that I am king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth. From these things it is plain that Christ was constituted king by the Father, from whom he heard it, Psal. II, 8 : Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt rule them with an iron rod, etc. By the aforesaid words he asserted only that his power arises not from human will, but from divine institution. Of what kind it is, and unto what it extends, in the person of the Roman Pontiff, was determined above. Here let it suffice to show that the usurped words are altogether beside the matter.

2° In the second article it is affirmed that the full power of the Roman Pontiff, even in spiritual things, is not full, seeing that it is inferior to the authority of a general council, according to the decrees published in sessions IV and V of the general council

of Constance. That this is false was demonstrated in the preceding article. As to what specially touches the decrees of Constance, it was said and proved that this council was not oecumenical at the time when it published these decrees, nor could it even then have had oecumenicity, and moreover that Martin V, elected legitimate Pontiff, did not hold them ratified. Seek these things there, in the answer to the first objection.

3° The third article injuriously assigns arbitrary limits to the monarchical power of the Roman Pontiff. For it supposes that Christ, when he constituted his Church, committed her governance to Peter and his successors, as pastors and rectors supreme, in such wise that it were licit for any particular church to bend this authority at its pleasure in disciplinary matters and render it powerless. And the papal majesty is so much the more offended as to royal power is attributed the right of sanctioning thus the canons of that particular church, that they remain unshaken, obtain their own stability and prevail over the ordinances of the Holy See; whence the Roman Pontiff, whom the first article excludes altogether from secular affairs, even when spiritual questions arise out of them, is subordinated in spiritual matters to royal authority by this third article. Most gravely therefore is the primacy of the Roman Pontiff injured, and the unity of governance in the Church destroyed.

4° As to the fourth article, since there is denied to the Roman Pontiff the prerogative of infallibility which above was asserted of him from Scripture and tradition, and especially from the solemn definition published in the Vatican synod, he must now be held formally a heretic.

From the premises it is plain that the Gallican Declaration is to be rejected in all its parts. As soon as it was published, it was reproved and condemned by the Holy See. The Roman censors, in the congregation of Cardinals and theologians to whose judgment it had been specially committed by Innocent XI, pronounced that the Gallican propositions could not be proscribed more mildly than by abstaining at most from the note of heresy; namely, that the other inferior notes were to be inflicted upon them. Whence Innocent XI, by letters given in the form of a brief on April 11 of the same year 1682, disapproved, rescinded and annulled what had been done in the said assemblies, and declared them perpetually null and void. Alexander VIII, his successor, by a more solemn constitution, which begins Inter multiplices, given August 4, 1690, decrees thus : «Of our own motion and with certain knowledge and mature deliberation of ours, and from the plenitude of apostolic power, all and singular which, as well regarding the extension of the law of the regalia, as regarding the declaration on ecclesiastical power, and the four propositions contained therein, were done and transacted in the aforesaid councils of the Gallican Clergy held in the year 1682, together with all and singular mandates, arrests, confirmations, declarations, epistles, edicts and decrees, issued or published by any persons whatsoever, whether ecclesiastical or lay, qualified in any manner whatever, exercising whatever authority and power ¹,... are by the law itself null, void, invalid, empty, utterly and altogether devoid of force and effect from the very beginning, and are and shall forever be, and no one is bound to observe them or any one of them, though they be fortified by oath,... we declare and decree by the tenor of these presents. And nevertheless, for the greater caution, and insofar as may be needful, the acts and transactions aforesaid and all the other premises, with equal motion, knowledge, deliberation and plenitude of power, we disapprove, annul, make void and abolish, and utterly and altogether empty them of force and effect, and protest against them and concerning their nullity before God.» To the ecclesiastical men who had been present at these assemblies, and whom afterwards the king designated to episcopal sees either new or higher, Innocent XII refused to grant bulls of canonical institution, unless by suppliant letters they besought him that they grieved «indeed vehemently and above what can be said, from the heart,» concerning deeds of this sort. Finally Louis XIV, who had commanded that the Declaration be delivered to all and held by all, himself testified to the same Innocent XII that he had ordered that no one be bound to observe the edict given on this matter.

Omitting several other condemnations of the Holy See upon this unfortunate Declaration, there must be added the judgment passed upon it by Pius VI, in the constit. Auctorem fidei, given August 28, 1794, by which the acts and decrees of the synod of Pistoia held in the year 1786 are reproved and rescinded : «Nor must there be passed over in silence, he says, the notable rashness of that synod full of fraud, which dared, not only to adorn with most ample praises the declaration of the Gallican assembly of the year 1682 long since disapproved by the Apostolic See, but, that it might win greater authority for it, insidiously to mock it in a decree inscribed On Faith, openly to adopt the articles contained therein, and to seal with a public and solemn profession of those articles the things delivered scattered through that very decree. Whereby indeed, far graver ground for demanding satisfaction of the synod offers itself to us than was offered to our predecessors concerning those assemblies, but no slight injury is inflicted also on the Gallican Church herself, which the synod judged worthy that its authority be called in as patronage of the errors with which that decree was contaminated. Wherefore, whereas our venerable predecessor Innocent XI, as soon as the acts of the Gallican assembly appeared, by letters in the form of a brief on April 11 of the year 1682, and afterwards more expressly Alexander VIII, by the constitution Inter multiplices, on August 4 of the year 1690, by reason of his apostolic office, disapproved, rescinded, and declared null and void them; much more strongly does pastoral solicitude exact of us to reprove and condemn the recent adoption of these things made in the synod, affected by so many vices, as rash, scandalous, and especially, after the publication of the decrees of our predecessors, most gravely injurious to this Apostolic See, as we reprove and condemn it by this present constitution of ours, and will it to be held as reproved and condemned.»

This Declaration, as unfortunate as celebrated, most hostile to the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, pierced by the last shaft by the constit. Eterni Patris of the Vatican synod, lies quite slain [and lifeless, upon whom, if it were again formally brought to trial, the note of heresy would certainly be branded.]