An important question in the relations between the Papacy and England that called for attention under Paul V, was the issue that arose with James I of England after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. An order had been issued by King James in July, 1606, for a fresh oath of allegiance to be taken by English Catholics. The Pope forbade the Catholics to take this oath because it included the statement that the claim of the Pope to have the right to depose kings and princes and to absolve their subjects from allegiance was godless, infamous, and heretical. The several statements brought into print on behalf of King James in defence of the wording of the oath, were themselves condemned by the Inquisition. The treatises of the English Catholics, William and John Barclay and Thomas Preston (“Roger Widdrington”), in reply to the defence by Bellarmin of the papal contentions, were promptly placed upon the Index in connection with a long series of later monographs on the same subject. The oath of allegiance was, under Urban VIII in 1626, and later under Innocent X and Alexander VII, again declared to be invalid. Towards the end of the 18th century, an oath of allegiance substantially identical was, however, approved by six theological faculties in England and by the Apostolic vicar in England and this decision was accepted without protest by Rome. In the oath of allegiance (which is not to be confused with the oath of supremacy, the latter not being required from his Catholic subjects) James required the Catholics to acknowledge that he was the rightful King of England, that the pope had no authority to dispossess him or to incite a foreign prince to war against him or to pardon his subjects for disobedience to British law. They were further called upon to swear that, irrespective of any papal decrees of deposition or any threat of excommunication, they would remain loyal to the King, and further they were to declare as godless and as damnable the theory that the pope could release any subject from obedience to his rightful sovereign. Finally, they were called upon to declare the belief that neither the pope nor any other authority could release them from this oath. In 1608, James wrote a defence of the oath, which was printed in a Latin version prepared by Henry Savile. In 1609, this treatise was prohibited by Paul V under the penalty of excommunicatio latae, etc. A further prohibition was issued by the Inquisition some months later. A treatise by William Barclay, a Scotch Catholic, printed in 1609 (after the death of the author), presents the arguments against the authority, either direct or indirect, of the pope in secular matters. This was duly condemned in Rome in 1610 and in Paris in 1612. It formed the text for the famous treatise by Bellarmin, Tractatus de potestate summi Pont. in rebus temporalibus. The treatise written by the Benedictine, Thomas Preston, under the nom-de-plume of Roger Widdrington, Apologia Card. Bellarmini pro jure principium adv. suas ipsius rationes pro auctoritate papali, etc., printed in London in 1611, was prohibited in Rome in 1613 in a general decree. In 1614, the Index of the Congregation issued a special decree prohibiting this work together with a second treatise of the same author. Later, were placed on the Index a further group of essays by Widdrington. Sarpi published in April, 1614, an analysis of the two earlier books of Widdrington, giving high praise to the scholarly authority of the author’s conclusions. These had an immediate bearing upon the contention of the Venetian Republic to control, without interference from the pope, its own civil affairs. In 1680, sixty divines of the Sorbonne rendered a judgment to the effect that the Catholics in England could with a safe conscience swear loyalty to King James and accept the oath of allegiance. A monograph making record of this judgment, printed in London, in 1681, under the title of English Loyalty Vindicated by the Divines, or a Declaration of Three-score Persons of the Sorbonne for the Oath of Allegiance, was, in 1682, prohibited by the Inquisition. A monograph that secured a wide circulation, being printed in fact thirty-five times in fifteen years, under the title of An Abuse Misrepresented and Represented, escaped formal condemnation, although it took strong ground in behalf of the English contention. In 1760, the theological faculties of Paris, Louvain, Douay, Valladolid, Salamanca, and Alcala united in a declaration to the effect that the pope possessed in England no authority over civil affairs and had no power to release the subjects of the English king from the oath of allegiance, and that no Catholic was under obligation to accept instructions from the authorities of the Church that would interfere with this allegiance. In 1853, Professors Russell, Patrick Murray, and others of the Catholic College of Maynooth declared, in connection with a Parliamentary investigation, that, according to their own opinion and to the purport of their teachings to their students, the pope possessed neither direct nor indirect authority in the United Kingdom in secular matters. They stated further that the contrary doctrine was now considered as practically obsolete.
6. The Gallicans and Liberal Catholics, 1845–1870.—The contest of the Congregation of the Index against theological Gallicanism began in 1851 under Pius IX. Certain books of instruction utilised in the seminaries of France were, for the purpose of maintaining them in use against the criticisms of the Ultramontane press, revised with the elimination of material that could be classed as Gallican. Among the works belonging to this period which were condemned on the ground of their Gallican or Liberal Catholic views may be noted the following:
Dupin, André M. J. J., Manuel du Droit Publique-ecclésiastique Français, printed in 1844, prohibited 1845. This manual presents in eighty-three articles the “Liberties” of the Gallican Church, the declaration of the clergy made in 1682 on the limits of ecclesiastical power, and the text of the Concordat.
Bailly, Louis, Canon of Dijon, Theologia Dogmatica et Moralis, ad usum Seminariorum, completed in eight volumes in 1789, reprinted with the revision by Receveur in 1842, prohibited in 1852 with a d.c.
Lequeux, J. F. M., Manuale Compendium Juris Canonici ad usum Seminariorum, printed in 1839, prohibited in 1851. The work had been denounced by five of the French bishops. A decree of the Congregation issued in 1852 states that the author had “submitted himself.”
Guettée, l’Abbé, L’Histoire de l’Église de France, volumes i to vii, printed in Paris, 1847, condemned in 1852. The work had secured the specific approval of no less than forty-two of the French bishops.
Thions, C., Adresse au Pape Pie IX sur la Nécessité d’une Réforme Religieuse, printed in 1848, prohibited in 1852.
Montalembert, Les Intérêts Catholiques au XIXme Siècle, published in 1852, received very sharp criticisms from the Ultramontane journals and from a number of the bishops, but escaped the Index. In fact no work of this author was formally condemned in Rome.
A number of the dioceses of France had, on the authority of a Bull of Pius V, issued in 1568, retained their individual mass books and breviaries. In 1848, Pius IX issues a Bull recalling the permission given three centuries earlier by his predecessor and directing the use in all the dioceses of the Roman liturgy. One or two of the long series of writings which the Bull brought out were placed upon the Index. From 1852 on, there came into print a number of controversial writings concerning the use in the schools of the heathen classics. No one of these was placed upon the Index, but Pius IX, in an encyclical issued in March, 1853, emphasises the importance of a very careful selection of the heathen texts to be so utilised and the necessity, in the case of certain authors, of providing expurgated texts.
Bellarmin, in his treatise De Summo Pontifice, condemned pure monarchy in the name of a limited monarchy. By the former he appears to have understood a government (hardly to be conceived as practicable) in which the king would have ruled entirely by himself, while under the second he was describing a restricting body made up of delegates who, having been drawn from the ranks of the people, were invested by the prince with an absolute authority and were made responsible to him alone. He denied for the pope the right to exercise a direct control over the states of the world, but claimed for the Papacy the privilege of interfering at will.