ABSTRACT
Even though it wrongly suggests the existence of a uniform doctrine, “Gallicanism” is a useful term of reference for a series of distinctively French attitudes toward ecclesiastical power, and the principles on which they were based. Its unifying principle was a resistance on both political and ecclesiastical grounds to maximalist interpretations of pontifical primacy, as exemplified by ultramontanism*. However, the bedrock of Gallicanism was primarily political: it represented the concept of what would come to be called the “separation of powers,” the total division of the spiritual from the temporal.
