Febronianism

People often forget that Febronius was no obscure pamphleteer: he was a bishop in office, vicar general of one of the greatest dioceses in Germany, and one of the most industrious historians of his age. That is what made the book's success and scandal: the attack on Rome came from inside the episcopate.

A career in the Church and in scholarship

Born at Trier on 27 January 1701 into a noble family long attached to the court of the electors, son of Kaspar von Hontheim, receiver general of the Electorate, Johann Nikolaus received the tonsure as early as 1713, was educated by the Jesuits of Trier, studied at the universities of Trier, Louvain and Leyden, and became doctor of laws at Trier in 1724^[10]. After a stay at the German College in Rome, he was ordained priest in 1728, entered the chapter of St. Simeon in 1732, became professor of the Pandects at the University of Trier, then was sent to Coblenz in 1738 as official and president of the major seminary^[11].

It was at Coblenz that he gathered the immense documentation for his three works on the history of Trier: the Historia Trevirensis diplomatica et pragmatica (3 folio volumes, 1750) and the Prodromus historiae Trevirensis (2 volumes, 1757), mines of charters and references that made his reputation as a scholar^[12]. In May 1748, the elector-archbishop Francis George von Schönborn appointed him auxiliary bishop, consecrated at Mainz in February 1749 with the titular see in partibus of Myriophiri: as vicar general, he alone carried the spiritual administration of the diocese, with the office of pro-chancellor of the university, until 1778^[13]. He died on 2 September 1790 at Montquintin Castle, aged 89^[14].

The encounter with Van Espen

The decisive fact of his formation took place at Louvain: at Louvain, Hontheim came under the influence of Professor Zeger Bernard van Espen and his Gallican doctrine, the Jus ecclesiasticum universum (Louvain, 1700), which already subordinated the exercise of pontifical power to canons and national customs^[15]. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, it was “on the basis of the Gallican principles” drawn from Van Espen that Hontheim “advanced along the same lines” to a radicalism “far outstripping traditional Gallicanism”^[16]. At Coblenz, his experience of imperial negotiations, assisting the electoral ambassador at the elections of Charles VII and then of Francis I, showed him, from the princes' side, all that the influence of the Roman Curia cost the domestic affairs of the Empire^[17].

A title that states the programme

The full title declares the project: Justini Febronii Juris consulti de statu Ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani Pontificis liber singularis, ad reuniendos dissidentes in religione christianos compositus, “A singular book by Justinus Febronius, jurisconsult, on the state of the Church and the lawful power of the Roman Pontiff, composed to bring back to unity the dissidents in the Christian religion”^[18]. The ostensible purpose is ecumenical: by diminishing the power of the Holy See, the main obstacle to the return of the Protestants to the Church would, he believed, be lifted^[19]. The work appeared with the false imprint “Bouillon, chez Guillaume Evrard”: it really came off the presses of Esslinger at Frankfurt am Main^[20].

Publication and spread

Despite the ban, its success was “tremendous”, carried by the spirit of the age: a second edition, revised and enlarged, as early as 1765, reprints at Venice and Zurich, translations into German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese^[21]. Hontheim defended his system in three further volumes numbered II to IV (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1770; 1772; 1773-1774), under the name of Febronius and various other pseudonyms, then issued an abridgement, the Justinus Febronius abbreviatus et emendatus (Cologne and Frankfurt, 1777)^[22]. The author's identity was known at Rome almost at once, but no personal measure was taken against him at first^[23].

The De statu is built in nine chapters, each carrying a precise thesis. To follow this order is to take the system as its author intended it, and to see where each proposition contradicts the Catholic faith.

1. The keys given to the whole Church

According to Febronius (ch. i), the power of the keys was entrusted by Christ to the whole body of the Church, which holds it principaliter et radicaliter, principally and radically, but exercises it only through its prelates, mere administrators of this power. Among them, the pope comes first, while remaining subordinate to the Church taken as a whole^[24]. In other words: the pontiff receives nothing directly from Christ that the Church would not first possess without him. This denies the immediate primacy of jurisdiction later defined by Vatican I^[25].

2. A divine primacy, a human Roman see

Febronius acknowledges the divine institution of the primacy (ch. ii), but maintains that its attachment to the Roman see rests not on Christ's authority: it would come from Peter and the Church, so that the Church would have the power to transfer it to another see^[26]. The consequence is immense: Rome would be pope only by revocable ecclesiastical delegation. The Catholic Church teaches on the contrary that Peter's primacy passes to his successors on the see of Rome by Christ's own institution^[27].

3. Back to the first eight centuries

The pope's power should therefore be brought back to the essential rights inherent in the primacy as the Holy See exercised it during the first eight centuries: a centre to which the Churches must remain united, informed of everything so as to watch over unity, charged with enforcing the canons, empowered to promulgate laws in the Church's name and to send legates, a power “of administration and unification” rather than a power of jurisdiction^[28]. Since the 9th century above all, under the influence of the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, the Church's constitution is said to have undergone a “complete transformation” through the extension of papal authority beyond its bounds (ch. iii)^[29]. The pseudo-historical argument, that everything came from a 9th-century forgery, is the ancestor of many modern objections against the papacy.

4. Roman reservations, a violation of justice

By a “violation of justice”, cases once decided by provincial synods and metropolitans are said to have been gradually reserved to the Holy See (ch. iv): condemnation of heresies, confirmation of episcopal elections, appointment of coadjutors with right of succession, transfer and deposition of bishops, creation of dioceses, erection of metropolises and primacies^[30]. The whole central government of the Church is thus presented as a usurpation.

5. Infallibility expressly denied

The pope's infallibility is expressly denied (ch. v): alone, without a council or the assent of the whole episcopate, the pope can make no decision of faith binding on all; in disciplinary matters, he can publish no decree touching all the faithful; the decrees of a general council themselves oblige only after acceptance by each Church; and laws once promulgated cannot be altered at the pope's pleasure^[31]. Each diocese would thus hold a veto over the universal.

6. The council above the pope

The last court of appeal in the Church would be the ecumenical council (ch. vi), whose rights exclude the monarchical constitution of the Church: the pope is subordinate to it, with neither the exclusive right to convene it nor that of presiding over it, and conciliar decrees need no ratification from him^[32]. Councils would be of absolute necessity, for even the assent of a majority of bishops to a pontifical decree, given individually outside a council, would not constitute a definitive and irrevocable decision. Hence the legitimacy of appealing from the pope to the general council, the old conciliarist thesis of Constance and Basle, recycled^[33].

7. Bishops holding directly from Christ

By the divine institution of the episcopate (ch. vii), all bishops have equal rights and do not receive their power of jurisdiction from the Holy See; the pope cannot exercise ordinary episcopal functions in any diocese other than Rome^[34]. Pontifical reservations over benefices, annates and the exemption of religious orders would therefore be contrary to primitive law and should be abolished.

8 and 9. Restoring primitive discipline, through the princes

Having shown, as he believes, that existing law deforms the original constitution through the False Decretals, Febronius demands the universal restoration of primitive discipline (ch. viii) and names the means (ch. ix): enlightening the people, holding a fully free general council, convening national synods, but above all concerted action by the Catholic sovereigns with the cooperation of the bishops: using the Regium Placet (the royal exequatur without which no Roman act applies) to resist decrees, openly refusing obedience within just measure, and resorting to the appel comme d'abus (appeal against abuse) before the secular authority^[35].

“The last measures reveal the real trend of Febronian principles [...] to render the Churches of the different countries less dependent on the Holy See, in order to facilitate the establishment of national Churches [...] and reduce the bishops to [...] merely servile creatures of the civil power.” : F. Lauchert, “Febronianism”, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909^[36]

Febronianism invents almost nothing: it systematises. Its materials come from four deposits which the article Doctrinal Gallicanism and the article Radical Conciliarism set out in detail; they are summarised here only to place the borrowings.

Hontheim's tour de force was to pour these French and medieval materials into a massive, learned, seemingly moderate Latin treatise, which made it far more dangerous than a pamphlet: bishops could recognise themselves in it without believing themselves schismatical.

Recall the subtitle: the book is “composed to bring back to unity the dissidents”. The calculation is simple: if the papacy ceased to be monarchical, Lutherans and Calvinists would return. History recorded a stinging denial: the Protestants themselves refuted Febronius, not to defend the pope, but to signify that a diminished papacy was by no means enough to bring them back to unity. Karl Friedrich Bahrdt published as early as 1763 his Dissertatio on whether, pontifical power abolished, the dissidents would be reconciled, Johann Friedrich Bahrdt drove the point home in 1767 (De Romana Ecclesia irreconciliabili), and Hofmann examined in 1768 the rule of interpretation borrowed from Vincent of Lérins^[42].

The apologetic lesson endures: the quarrel of the Reformation cannot be reduced to the form of ecclesiastical government. Stripping the pope of his jurisdiction touches neither justification, nor the sacraments, nor the authority of Scripture and Tradition, the true points of rupture, set out in Lutheranism and Calvinism. Febronianism bought reconciliation at a high price, the demolition of the Church's constitution, for goods the buyers themselves declared worthless.

On the Catholic side, the answer was massive and swift. Besides the Judicium academicum of the University of Cologne (1765), the three great refutations, Ballerini, Zaccaria and Mamachi, remain classics of the theology of the primacy.

These works establish, with documents in hand, that jurisdictional primacy and infallibility are not medieval excrescences but data of the apostolic constitution, the demonstration Vatican I would take up in definitional form a century later^[50].

Rome struck fast and on two levels. The book was formally condemned on 27 February 1764 by Clement XIII; then, by a brief of 21 May 1764, the pope required the German episcopate to suppress the work: ten prelates, among them the Elector of Trier himself, complied^[51]. The author, though known at Rome almost at once, was at first the object of no personal measure^[52]: it was the doctrine that was aimed at, not yet the man.

The ban did not stop its spread: Catholic courts of France, the Austrian Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, Venice, Austria and Tuscany eagerly welcomed ideas in perfect accord with the absolutist tendencies of sovereigns^[53]. The pious Maria Theresa herself refused to ban Febronius in the hereditary states; her son Joseph II would apply its principles with unrelenting rigour^[54]. This is the mechanism Lauchert diagnosed: everywhere the ideas were tried, they proceeded along these lines, less Rome, more prince^[55].

The first personal measures came from Pius VI, who pressed Clement Wenceslas of Saxony, Elector of Trier, to bring Hontheim to withdraw his book, with pressure of another age: the elector threatened to deprive of their offices not only Hontheim, but all his relatives^[56]. After long efforts, tergiversations and correspondence, Hontheim signed a retraction in general terms, judged unsatisfactory at Rome; a corrected and revised version was needed, transmitted by the elector on 15 November 1778, for Pius VI to communicate it to the cardinals in consistory on Christmas Day 1778^[57].

That this retraction was insincere, what followed shows: Hontheim published at Frankfurt in 1781 a Justini Febronii commentarius in suam retractationem, a commentary on his own retraction meant to justify his position before the public, including a German edition at Augsburg the same year^[58]. The man yielded under threat; the system stayed whole in his head. Meanwhile, the Febronius had produced its pernicious effects, which the retraction did not check^[59].

The first practical attempt at application took place in Germany at the congress of Coblenz in 1769: the three ecclesiastical electors, Mainz, Trier and Cologne, had drawn up by their delegates, under Hontheim's direction, a list of thirty grievances against the Roman Curia, in line with the principles of the Febronius (Gravamina trium Archiepiscoporum Electorum Moguntinensis, Trevirensis et Coloniensis contra Curiam Apostolicam, presented to the emperor in 1769, printed in 1783 in Le Bret's Magazin)^[60]. The pattern was set: prince-bishops now carried the Febronian programme before the emperor.

It was in Austria, under Joseph II, that Febronian principles received their “large scale” application: a national Church built on the book's plan^[61]. The court canonists compiled the new code of Church-State relations, first the manuals imposed on Austrian universities: Paul-Joseph von Riegger's Institutiones juris ecclesiastici (4 volumes, Vienna, 1768-1772, many times reprinted), Pehem's Praelectiones, and, more trenchantly, Johann Valentin Eybel's Introductio in jus ecclesiasticum Catholicorum (4 volumes, Vienna, 1777), placed on the Index in 1784^[62].

Eybel went as far as the pamphlet: his Quid est papa? (“What is the pope?”) radicalised Febronianism for the imperial religious policy. Pius VI answered with the brief Super soliditate of 28 November 1786, which condemned Eybel's introduction to ecclesiastical law by name^[63]. The detail of the Josephist system, state general seminaries, parish redistricting, suppression of contemplatives, patent of toleration, belongs to the article Josephism: the reader is referred there^[64]. Joseph's brother Leopold pursued the same policy in his Grand Duchy of Tuscany, down to the Synod of Pistoia^[65].

Still more significant is the second assembly: at the Congress of Ems in 1786, the three ecclesiastical electors and the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, imitating Coblenz and following the principles of the Febronius, attempted to reorder the relations of the Church in Germany with Rome to secure greater independence for it^[66].

Four archbishops against the nuncios

The congress crowned several years of conflict between the archbishops and the apostolic nuncios, judged guilty of unjustifiable interferences in the German dioceses^[67]. The four signatories were Frederick Charles von Erthal (Mainz), Clement Wenceslas of Saxony (Trier, the same man who had pressured Hontheim), Maximilian Francis of Austria (Cologne) and Hieronymus von Colloredo (Salzburg)^[68]. Hontheim, an old man of 85, took no active part in the drafting: but the Punctuation was entirely inspired by his principles^[69].

The twenty-three articles

The Punctuation of Ems, settled on 25 August 1786 in twenty-three articles, ratified then published by the archbishops in November, may be summarised thus: bishops hold, by virtue of their God-given powers, full authority in their dioceses in dispensations, patronage and similar matters; bulls, briefs and decrees of the Roman Congregations oblige in each diocese only once sanctioned by the bishop; the nunciatures, as exercised until then, must cease; appeals to Rome are restricted; annates and chancery taxes are reduced; monastic exemptions are curtailed^[70]. It is Febronius chapter IX turned into a diplomatic act: the Placet and the appel comme d'abus erected into the Empire's common law.

The failure

The Punctuation obtained no practical result^[71]. The suffragan bishops themselves protested against a text that stripped them for the benefit of their metropolitans, the electors divided over the course to take, Rome refused to receive the text, and Joseph II exploited the affair for his sole profit. Pius VI, the same year, condemned Eybel by Super soliditate: the message was clear, the Ems road led nowhere^[72]. The French Revolution finished scattering the signatories: Gallicanism, Lauchert notes for France, saw its spread “abruptly halted by the Revolution, which removed its principal support by overturning the thrones”, a verdict that holds for its German variant, deprived of its prince-bishops^[73].

The same year 1786 saw the programme's other application: at the diocesan Synod of Pistoia (18-28 September 1786), Bishop Scipione de' Ricci, supported by Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, had 57 decrees adopted combining Gallican, Jansenist and regalist theses^[74]. But where Ems remained a diplomatic protest, Pistoia touched dogma, and Rome answered with the century's most developed magisterial act against episcopalism: the bull Auctorem fidei of 28 August 1794, which condemned 85 propositions one by one, each qualified (heretical, erroneous, schismatical...)^[75].

“The doctrine of the synod which asserts that power was given by God to the Church to be communicated to the pastors who are its ministers for the salvation of souls, understood in the sense that the power of ministry and ecclesiastical government derives from the body of the Church, is heretical.” : Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, 28 August 1794, condemned proposition II^[76]

It is the direct condemnation of Febronianism's mother thesis (ch. i: the keys to the whole Church principaliter et radicaliter). The detail of the synod and the bull belongs to the articles Gallicanism (15th-19th Century) and Doctrinal Gallicanism: the reader is referred there^[77][78].

All four share the same slope: weakening the bond with Rome in the name of a more “primitive” Church, and handing the keys to the powers, king, princes, opinion or emperor. All four end before the same tribunal: the definition of the primacy.

Let us sum up the trial in four points, the four definitions the magisterium opposes to it.

1. The pope receives his jurisdiction from Christ, not from the Church. Vatican I defines that the Roman Pontiff holds over the whole Church a power of jurisdiction “ordinary, supreme, full, immediate and universal” (chs. 1-3, DH 3050-3073), and that his ex cathedra definitions are irreformable “of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church”^[79]. This is the exact negation of Febronius chapters i, ii and v.

“The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.” : Vatican I, Pastor aeternus, ch. 4, 18 July 1870^[80]

2. The council is not above the pope. Vatican II teaches that the college of bishops has authority only “with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head” (simul cum capite suo Romano Pontifice et numquam sine hoc capite)^[81]. A council against the pope or without the pope is not an ecumenical council: it has no authority to judge Peter.

3. The bishop receives his mission within hierarchical communion. The Catechism (880-887) and the law in force (CIC cann. 331-341) hold together the two ends Febronius separates: bishops are true pastors of their Churches, but the pope is “the perpetual and visible” principle of their unity, and the college never acts without its head^[82][83]. Refusing submission to the Supreme Pontiff is schism in the sense of can. 751^[84].

4. Appealing to the prince against the pastor is never a right. The Regium Placet and the appel comme d'abus make the State judge of the Church: the inversion of the order willed by Christ, who entrusted the keys to Peter and the apostles, not to emperors. Vatican II recalls it for modern regimes as for old ones: the political community is not the arbiter of religious questions^[85].

Febronianism died its protectors' death: the Revolution swept away Germany's ecclesiastical principalities, and most German bishops, who had never followed Ems, rallied to Rome in the face of persecution^[86]. In the 19th century, Ultramontanism, Joseph de Maistre (Du Pape, Lyons, 1819), Lamennais and L'Avenir, Dom Guéranger, finished depriving episcopalism of its supporters^[87], and Vatican I struck it the definitive doctrinal blow.

It would be reborn only in disguise: when Pius X condemned Modernism by Pascendi dominici gregis (8 September 1907), he found there the same claim, a Church governed from below, an authority reduced to the collective conscience, of which Febronianism had been, a century and a half earlier, the German and princely version^[88]. The article Modernism sets out its contemporary form; Quietism and Condemned Catholic Liberalism show the other faces of the same temptation: a religion without visible divine government.

• The full French narrative: Gallicanism (15th-19th Century)
• The doctrine of the Four Articles: Doctrinal Gallicanism
• The medieval matrix: Radical Conciliarism
• The Jansenist ally: Jansenism
• The Austrian application: Josephism
• The modern heirs: Modernism, Condemned Catholic Liberalism
• The 16th-century ruptures: Lutheranism, Calvinism, Quietism