Summa summae S. Thomae, Tomus III

[I answer. No. It is proved from historical facts.

1° Before the Council of Constance, that is, before the year 1413, the doctrine expressed in the Declaration of 1682 was utterly unheard of, in Gaul as well as in all other regions. Everyone admitted the definition of the Second Council of Lyons, of the year 1274, namely: « The Holy Roman Church herself also obtains the supreme and full primacy over the whole Church, which she truly and humbly acknowledges herself to have received with the fullness of power from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles, of whose successor the Roman Pontiff is; and just as she is held before all others to defend the truth of faith, so too, if any questions should arise concerning faith, they must be defined by her judgment... And all Churches are subject to her, and their prelates give her obedience and reverence. »

It has been proved above, from certain and unshaken monuments, that the doctrine consigned so clearly in the acts of this council flourished everywhere. It flourished also in the University of Paris, as appears from the testimonies adduced of St. Thomas, who on this point agreed with his master Albert the Great¹. In the year 1387 this whole university, in a consistory before Clement VII, to whom it adhered as to the legitimate Pope, professed through master Peter of Alliaco the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff in these words: « The Holy Apostolic See, as that chair of Peter upon which, Jerome being witness, the Church is founded, as is had in the same question (cause 24, q. 1, c. 25), chapter Quoniam vetusto, and as Cyprian says, dist. 93, canon Qui cathedram. Concerning which See there was said, in the person of Peter the Apostle sitting in it: Peter, I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not, Luke, XXII, 32. This, therefore, is the see to which the determination of faith and the approval of truth and the detestation of heretical impiety especially pertain. »

When the king of France was pressing Clement V to declare that his predecessor Boniface VIII had been a heretic — not indeed as Pope, but as a private doctor — the nobles of France, in a supplicatory libel offered to this Pontiff for that purpose, expressed the common doctrine thus: « The question is not about the heresy of a former Pope as Pope, but as a private person. For he could not be a heretic as Pope, but as a private person. Nor was ever any Pope, insofar as he was Pope, a heretic. »

Catholic writers beyond number could be heaped up who, before the Council of Constance, held the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, and above all his inerrancy, as undoubted, and none who adhered to the contrary opinion can even now be detected. Which fact Theophilus Raynaud notes, among other learned men, in his little work Autòn eça, punct. xi, tom. xx of his Works: « It would be vain for me to hunt out many theologians, since all without exception who flourished before the Council of Constance could be brought forward. For this truth was not called into question among Catholics except from the time of the Councils of Constance and Basel. But all who went before taught unanimously that papal definitions, published even without a general council, make a thing de fide, and that every judgment concerning faith belongs finally to the Apostolic See. Thus Ruard Tapper states expressly, in his third theological oration, num. 7. » The same is asserted by Bannez, on 2a 2ae of St. Thomas, quest. 1, art. 10, concl. 3; Cardinal de Aguirre, Defensio cathedrae Petri, disput. VII, sect. 2, num. 13.

2° Ballerini, De potestate ecclesiastica, appendix, § 12, affirms that the authors of the opinion called Gallican, which had previously been unheard of among Catholics, were Peter of Alliaco and John Gerson, his disciple. Yet he thinks that these two doctors also sometimes stood for the contrary doctrine, and declined into the error about the Pope's fallibility in decrees of faith only by contradicting themselves. And indeed Peter of Alliaco, in the legation he conducted at Avignon before Clement VII in the name of the University of Paris, following the ancient tradition and resting on the promises of Christ, affirmed: « Of which See (the Roman) there was said, in the person of Peter sitting in it: Peter, I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. »

Similarly, in the treatise he offered to the same Clement and the cardinals, after praising the same promise of Christ, he approves what is said by Jerome about the Roman See in the chapter Haec est fides, cause 22, q. 1, c. 3, namely: « She has always remained immaculate, and will remain so in the future. » And he immediately infers: « From all which it is sufficiently clear that her faith never fails, » as Christ had promised.

Not otherwise John Gerson, in a sermon delivered before Alexander V on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, giving the reason why the Greek Church had been corrupted by errors concerning faith, but not the Latin one, deduces thence the indefectibility of the Roman faith, because « Latinity itself has a purer and immaculate seat in Peter, for whose faith, lest it fail, he specially prayed who in all things was heard for his reverence. »

And although he attributes the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Roman Pontiff to flattery, he nevertheless testifies that it was commonly received before the Council of Constance in these words, most worthy of attention, De potestate ecclesiastica, consideration 12: « I am mistaken if, before the celebration of this most sacred Synod of Constance, that tradition had not so taken possession of the minds of very many — more the lettered than the learned — that its opposer would have been noted or condemned as a dogmatizer of heretical pravity. » He retracts the same in many places.

The novelty of the doctrine, therefore, is established. It was first marked out in a session of the assemblies of the clergy of Gaul held on November 26, 1681, by the Jansenist Coquelin, chancellor of the church and university of Paris, who was himself the promoter of the celebrated assembly of 1682.

3° Although the doctrine professed by Peter of Alliaco and John Gerson was admitted after the Council of Constance by many canonists and theologians in France, while the other nations rejected it, it would be falsely asserted that the Gallican Church had embraced it. The definition of the Council of Florence concerning the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, of the year 1439, by which the doctrine of the Council of Constance was utterly overturned, was everywhere accepted in the Latin Church, and prevailed altogether in the Gallican Church. For we read in the acts of the Assembly of the Clergy of Gaul held at Melun in the year 1579, title I, constitution, which concerns the profession of faith: « Those on whom this care has been laid, namely the bishops and their vicars, shall take care that in all synods, both diocesan and provincial, each and all, both clerics and laity, embrace and profess with open profession that faith which the holy Roman Church, the mistress, the pillar and firmament of the truth, professes and cultivates. For to her, on account of her principality, all Churches must needs come together. »

That this doctrine was held by the University of Paris is witnessed by Mauclerc, a Sorbonne doctor, who in his famous work de Monarchia, published in the year 1622, title I, wrote: « We ought to carry this before us in conscience as true and Catholic, and to attest it by firmly asserting it with constant mind and truly Christian spirit: that the Roman Pontiff cannot define anything in matters pertaining to faith, inasmuch as he is the supreme doctor of the universal Church, that is stained with any error. » In support of this opinion he invokes the authority of St. Thomas, teaching the same in many places, whose testimonies were adduced above. The Assembly of the Clergy of Gaul of the year 1625 had openly professed the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. Its acts were suppressed by the subsequent assembly, not in order to erase this profession, as some asserted, but because complaints against bishops raised there were referred to provincial synods alone, and there was danger lest this attribution be disapproved and condemned by the Apostolic See, whose rights such a decision curtailed².

In the letter sent in the year 1651 to Innocent X, by which five Jansenist propositions were referred to the judgment of the Holy See, eighty-five French bishops write: « To refer greater causes to the Apostolic See is the solemn custom of the Church, which the never-failing faith of Peter demands to be retained perpetually as her own right. Obeying this most equitable law, we have judged that we must write to Your Holiness about a matter of gravest moment concerning religion. »

After Innocent X had condemned the five propositions referred to him by his constitution Cum occasione, June 9, 1653, the bishops of France again wrote to him on July 15 of the same year in this manner: « That constitution at last reached us, so long desired, in which what must be thought concerning the five propositions is... plainly decided... It restored to its pristine luster the light of this (Catholic) doctrine, obscured by the disputations of that more recent author (Jansenius), according to the ancient rule of faith,... the decree set forth by Your Holiness at the request of many bishops of the Gauls... For indeed the Catholic Church of that ancient age... clearly perceived, not only from the promise made by Christ our Lord to Peter, but also from the acts of previous Popes, and from the anathemas hurled shortly before by Damasus against Apollinaris and Macedonius, not yet condemned by any synod, that judgments laid down by the Supreme Pontiffs for establishing the rule of faith, upon the consultation of bishops — whether they state their opinion in their acts and relations or omit it, as it pleases them — rest upon authority equally divine and supreme throughout the whole Church: to which all Christians are bound to render obedience also of mind itself by office. imbued with this opinion and faith, we also, etc. » Nothing more explicit could be declared. The prelates gathered at Paris on the same day directed letters to the remaining archbishops and bishops of France, in which they professed the same doctrine.

In their letters to Alexander, of September 2, 1656, the French bishops again open their mind concerning the aforesaid constitution of Innocent X in these words: « We have received it (the Brief) with the same alacrity of mind indeed, with which the Fathers of the African council embraced the letter of Zosimus sought from them by themselves, by which with a peremptory decree he cast down the errors of Pelagius and Celestius, which they were secretly spreading... The cause was ended by apostolic rescripts: would that the error too might end! if I may conceive our wishes in the words of Augustine. » After the same Alexander VII had ordered the Formula to be subscribed, the bishops of the Gauls wrote to him in the year 1660, among other things: « And because in it (the Apostolic mount) the Lord teaches, we establish there, according to the words of Tertullian, an end of seeking, a station for believing, a completion of finding... But in you, as in the successor of Peter, our strength, that of us all, is made firm. » In the encyclical letter of the assembly of the clergy of Gaul of October 2, 1663, are reported the words of Avitus of Vienne written to Pope Hormisdas, that not only his own church but all the churches of the Gauls most firmly wished to follow him in everything that pleased him to decide concerning faith, and it is added that the faith of the bishops is invincible, and their authority infallible by reason of their unbreakable union with the center of religion, that is, with the see of Peter, in things that regard both dogma and discipline.

Having deliberately passed over the testimonies of many distinguished writers, partly for brevity, partly because they express only the opinion of private men, we have related only the acts and declarations from which the true doctrine of the Clergy of Gaul concerning the primacy of the Roman Pontiff is recognized, both before and after the Council of Constance, down to the time contiguous with the celebrated Declaration of 1682. Many indeed adhered to the opinion of Peter of Alliaco and John Gerson, which the Jansenists embraced most fervently, whose greatest interest it was to undermine the authority of the Apostolic See; but, the heretics removed — whose vote brands this doctrine with a mark of falsity — the dissent of certain men, fewer in number, though elsewhere notable for virtue and learning, nowise harms the moral unanimity of the Gallican Church, which thereafter could be obscured, but not destroyed.

4° Now it must be shown that the Declaration of 1682 was not freely drawn up by the Clergy of Gaul as expressing their own doctrine, but that the secular power extorted it and imposed it by force, in order to wear out the Roman Pontiff contending for the defense of the rights of the Church and to throw him off course from what he had undertaken.

Under Louis XIV reigning, the question of the regale was keenly agitated in France.

The Second General Council of Lyons had sanctioned the regale, by force of which, when an episcopal see fell vacant, the king attributed its revenues to himself and conferred benefices directly, as able to be observed in those dioceses in which it flourished by title of foundation or by ancient custom, and had forbidden, under the gravest penalties, that it be extended to other dioceses.

Notwithstanding this prohibition, his counselors persuading the king to it, two royal declarations were promulgated in the years 1673 and 1675, by which all the dioceses of the Gauls, not excepting those which were immune from this servitude, were subjected to the regale, this false principle being invoked, that this right belonged essentially to royal power, and that churches enjoyed their temporal goods only from its grant and good pleasure. Innocent XI, in his letters expedited to the king in the form of a brief, condemned this manifest usurpation three times most freely. In order to protect the prerogative which they attributed to the king by title of his own right, the ministers, officials, and parliament, with Louis XIV assenting to them, judged that the spiritual authority of the Pope must be weakened.

Although at that time still, that is, at the beginning of the year 1663, the doctors of the Paris faculty adhered, few excepted, to the Roman doctrine of papal infallibility, when this infallibility had shortly before been openly defended in the college of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus called Clermont, the parliament raging against the faculty, the syndic attempted to still the persecution by drawing up, with the minister Le Tellier, a declaration containing the doctrine of the articles of the year 1682. It will help to insert here the text of this composition, known to few:

« Declarations of the sacred Faculty of theology of Paris made before the king concerning certain propositions which some have wished to attribute to the said Faculty: I. That it is not the doctrine of the Faculty that the supreme Pontiff has any authority over the temporalities of the most Christian king. Nay rather, the Faculty has always opposed even those who wished that authority to be merely indirect. — II. That it is the doctrine of the same Faculty that the most Christian king recognizes no superior whatever in temporal things nor has any except God, and that this is his ancient doctrine, from which he will never depart. — III. That the doctrine of the Faculty is that subjects owe faith and obedience to the most Christian king in such a way that they can by no pretext be dispensed from them. — IV. That the doctrine of the Faculty is not to approve, nor ever to have approved, any propositions contrary to the authority of the most Christian king or to the genuine liberties of the Gallican Church and the canons received in the kingdom, for example, that the supreme Pontiff can depose bishops contrary to those same canons. — V. That the doctrine of the Faculty is not that the supreme Pontiff is above an ecumenical council. — VI. That it is not the doctrine or dogma of the Faculty that the supreme Pontiff, with no consent of the Church intervening, is infallible. »

Let the reader observe that the negative form was deliberately employed in the articles of greater moment, so that it would be affirmed only that the Faculty did not teach those things which displeased the civil authority more, abstaining from pronouncing a definitive sentence on these points, lest the same Faculty seem formally to depart from its former and constant doctrine. The ambiguity appears especially in the sixth article, where it is said that the Faculty does not teach that the Pope is infallible with no consent of the Church intervening. Certainly this can be interpreted catholically, if the Church be understood, which is itself infallible passively, that is, in believing, necessarily to consent in every definition concerning faith and morals to the Roman Pontiff teaching ex cathedra what she herself has always believed and professed. Therefore the assembly of 1682, in order not equivocally to deny the Pope's prerogative of personal infallibility, decreed expressly that « his judgment is not irreformable unless the consent

of the Church has intervened, » that is, unless his definition, once promulgated, has been confirmed by the express or tacit consent of the Church. This is observed by Fr. Rapin, in the account of the discussion from which the six aforesaid articles arose, in which we read that the syndic of the Faculty exclaimed that affairs would go wholly to ruin if infallibility were overthrown root and branch. Between the royal deputies and the Sorbonne doctors there was contention, on the one hand that pontifical authority be pressed down more and more, on the other that it be saved as far as circumstances allowed.

Although the six aforementioned propositions were suspected by the royal minister Colbert on account of their negative form, the parliament of Paris determined that they were to be held firm and that in the schools the contrary doctrine was to be rejected, which was sanctioned by a royal edict, under extraordinary penalties, on August 4, 1663. Nevertheless deliberation had never been had upon these articles by the Faculty, nor were they handed to the king by its mandate. Therefore many doctors protested against them, and the syndic himself who, compelled by the royal minister, had been present at the meeting in which they were drawn up and had even lent the chiefest hand to their composition. It is established moreover that the Faculty never deliberated on these, and that they were mendaciously designated by the archbishop of Paris appointed Harduin de Péréfixe and by some doctors only, and offered to the king in the name of the whole Faculty, to whom it would be impious to attribute them as extorted by force and fear.

Not abandoning the struggle begun against the authority of the Holy See, with the parliament urging the matter, the royal officials tried to break the resistance of the Faculty and the clergy. Obedient to their command, in the year 1664 the Faculty struck with its censures the book of James Vernant and the little work of Amadeus Guimene, in which it was openly taught that the Roman Pontiff is infallible and superior to councils, and that his authority, as monarchic, extends itself to the universal Church. In the following year, by the brief beginning Cum ad aures, Alexander VII condemned these censures « as presumptuous, rash, and scandalous. » The parliament boldly condemned and suppressed the pontifical brief, decreeing that the censures rejected in it should be inserted in its registers. But that the doctrine imposed by the civil power might prevail more surely in the Faculty, it had been sanctioned by mandate of the royal minister that only two doctors from each religious order were to be admitted to the deliberations of the Faculty. Now the number of regular doctors in this Faculty was one hundred seventy-three, and all of these, except only two or three, adhered most firmly to papal infallibility and the other Roman doctrinal heads. Obeying the same tyrannical commands, the assembly of the Clergy of Gaul, in the ordinary assemblies of the year 1663, deliberated on the same affair. Several attacked the decree of Alexander VII. It does not appear, however, that any conclusion was adopted. Thus gradually the royal power, that it might press down the authority of the Roman Pontiff more and more, paved the way for the infamous Declaration of 1682 per fas et nefas.

From many and certain documents³ it is established that the general assemblies of this year were convoked by mandate of the king, that in them the doctrine concerning papal power, or rather against this power, which he had decreed to be accepted and held by all in his kingdom, might be confirmed more expressly. In the letters of convocation it was openly announced that the affairs to be treated in this assembly pertained chiefly to the spiritual order. That resistance might be broken the more easily, should anyone perhaps wish to disregard the royal will, it was established that not six deputies, as used to be done before, but only two were to be elected in each ecclesiastical province; those to be deputized were designated by name by the minister Colbert himself, and since in several places some not pleasing to the same minister had been co-opted, he commanded that others more compliant be substituted for them. Moreover, for greater caution, it was declared by the king that the deputies of the second order, that is, those not adorned with episcopal dignity, would not use in the next ensuing assemblies the decisive voice which they had formerly enjoyed.

Thus the elections completed, and the liberty of the electors utterly destroyed, of the one hundred thirty bishops of the Gallican Church only thirty-four were present at these assemblies, with thirty-eight deputies of the second order, and no sane man will contend that such an assembly, even if freely constituted, had the authority of judging and defining doctrine, which belongs only to regularly assembled councils.

From the deliberations of this assembly arose the four articles of the celebrated and ill-starred Declaration, the most illustrious Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, first resisting, then moderating the adversaries more obstinate for pontifical authority, finally composing these articles himself, lest the assembly, with excessive eagerness to please the king, should undermine the power of the Roman Pontiff beyond all measure. Who will ever grieve enough that so great a man was not so constant as to overthrow invincibly a doctrine then certainly erroneous, but today to be reckoned among heretical dogmas?

Scarcely had the Declaration been subscribed by the deputies when the parliament ordered it to be inserted in the register of the Faculty of Paris, without allowing the doctors to examine it and deliberate on its acceptance. Since several protested against this tyrannical command, they were punished with exile, the royal procurator obtained the inscription with menacing words, and the Faculty was forbidden to be convoked any longer to its usual sessions, because, as the same procurator confessed, the doctors who had subscribed the Declaration seemed likely to change their opinion immediately and gladly, if this were permitted to them. At length, on March 23, 1682, a royal edict came forth, whereby it was ordered that the Declaration be held firm and observed by all.

It was said above that Louis XIV, at the instance of Innocent XII, testified that no one was bound to observe the edict given on this matter. Nevertheless, although from the year 1682 very many had always defended papal infallibility, gradually, with the secular power favoring and even pressing, the contrary error prevailed, which was held as a pagan doctrine, as if the opinion opposed to the doctrine of the Holy

See and of the universal Church were to be judged true, for this very reason, that the civil authority, usurping the magisterium which belongs divinely and exclusively to the spiritual authority, decreed it to be taught and held by all.

What Louis XIV had not feared to attempt, blinded by his power and the servility of his jurists, Napoleon dared to repeat, first consul of the French Republic, when in the Organic Articles, added by himself alone against right and law to the concordat concluded with Pius VII, he ordered, art. 24, that all professors of theology co-opted in the seminaries were bound to subscribe to the aforementioned Declaration and to teach it.

Notwithstanding this law reproved repeatedly by the Holy See, the genuine doctrine began to prevail, certain distinguished writers vindicating the rights of the Roman Pontiff, among whom Joseph de Maistre stands out, who in his books written in French, De Papa and De l'Église gallicane, asserted and demonstrated invincibly the Roman primacy and notably papal infallibility. But when the doctrine of the Declaration had been slain by the Vatican synod and condemned under anathema, few were found in France who adhered to it, and the whole Gallican Church, exulting, acclaimed the definitions of the sacred council and embraced them as sanctioning the ancestral faith.

From the foregoing it follows that the primacy of the Roman Pontiff was understood catholically by the Gallican Church from the most ancient times. If indeed for one hundred years, with only some added, the doctrine of the Council of Constance, imposed by force by the secular power for political reasons, seemed to prevail, it never obtained unanimity, and when this illustrious Church began to breathe freely again, the bonds by which she was pressed having been gradually loosened, she immediately returned to the tradition of her fathers.]