Folio 373

Alexander VIII, 1689-1691

printed p. 341 · pdf p. 373

Condemned and prohibited as rash, scandalous, evil-sounding, injurious, close to heresy, smacking of heresy, erroneous, schismatic, and heretical respectively.

Articles (Erroneous) of the Gallican Clergy (about the Power of the Roman Pontiff)1

[Declared void in Constit., "Inter multiplices," Aug. 4, 1690]

1322. 1. To blessed Peter and his successors the vicars of Christ, and to the Church herself power over spiritual things and over those pertaining to eternal salvation has been given by God, but not power over civil and temporal affairs, since the Lord said: "My Kingdom is not of this world" [John 18:36], and again: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" [Luke 20:25], and hence the statement of the Apostle: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God" [Rom. 13:1 f.]. Therefore, by the command of God, kings and princes cannot be subject to ecclesiastical power in temporal affairs, nor can they be deposed by the authority of the keys of the Church, either directly or indirectly; nor can their subjects be released from loyalty and obedience and be freed from fulfilling their oath of allegiance; and this opinion, which is necessary for public tranquillity, and which is no less useful to the Church than to the Empire, must by every means be retained as being in harmony with the Word of God, the tradition of the Fathers, and the examples of the saints.2

Augustinus, is again prohibited. This Bull the Baians and the Jansenists said was surreptitious, on the ground that it was published by a Pontiff ignorant of the truth, although on the other hand the Pontiff says in it: After mature and diligent reading of the same book, which has the title Augustinus, it has been found that in the same book many proscribed propositions of Baius are contained. (Cf. Viva on this proposition. Tournely, De gratia q .3; Historia Iansenismi, Epoch. I, sec. "The book of Jansenism is announced to Urban VIII and is prohibited by him").

  1. CL I 831 f. and BR(T) 20, 69 a; MBR 10, 217 b; RskRP II 222.—Disapproved, as Pius VI Constit., "Auctorem fidei" [see n. 1599] reports, by Innocent XI by a letter in the form of a Brief, April 11, 1682, and by Alexander III in Constitution, "Inter multiplices" (August 4, 1690). Finally, when resumed by the synod of Pistorium, Pius VI by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" (Aug. 28, 1794) publicly condemned them. These four articles of the declaration, of which the three last concern a dogmatic matter, many of the authors, in a given letter to Innocent XII in the year 1693, retracted.—But these articles of the Gallic clergy do not belong to the year 1682, but with changed form, the six articles of the Sorbonne belong to the year 1663 (Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l'assemblée du clergé de France de 1682, ed. 2 [Paris, 1870], p. 17). ↩

  2. How the law for deposing princes, etc., is to be understood, cf. v. gr. Archiv. für kathol. Kirchenrecht XXVI (1871), p. lxxx. ↩