On Friday, July 15, 1870, in the tension-filled final days of the First Vatican Council, the council minority sent a delegation to Pope Pius IX to plead for the insertion into the draft of the Pastor Aeternus of even one phrase mentioning the role of the episcopate in formulating an important statement of the faith.¹ If this were done, they said, then nearly all those who had voted non placet in the preliminary vote on July 13 (who numbered 88 of the total of 601 voting) could vote placet, and there could be a near-unanimous final vote.² But all such...

The study of the primary sources in the background of the First Vatican Council’s proclamation of papal infallibility is as illuminating as the need for it is evident. For example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, surveying some people in the history of the Church who had expressed even slight reservations about the absolute supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, says that the Gallicans wanted “to qualify every papal decision, be it by an appeal to a council or by a stipulation that the directives must be accepted by the whole Church (bishops and flock) to be valid.”¹ He does not cite any...

Honoré Tournely rose from humble beginnings to become one of the outstanding theologians of his day.¹ As a young boy in Provence he tended pigs for his farmer parents, but a priest uncle arranged for him to pursue studies in Paris, where he proved to be an excellent student. He earned his doctorate in theology at the Sorbonne in 1686, taught theology at the University of Douai from 1688 to 1692, and in the latter year was invited back to the Sorbonne, where he was professor of theology from 1692 to 1716. A leader of those opposed to Jansenism, Tournely...

A major comprehensive reply to Bossuet was offered in 1739 by Giuseppe-Agostino Orsi, O.P., a learned and prolific theologian and author of books on a number of theological subjects. Orsi, a native of Florence, had studied literature at a Jesuit school there, as well as law in Pisa, before joining the Dominicans at the convent of San Marco in Florence in 1709. He became known for his extensive knowledge of Church and doctrinal history and was assigned to be a professor at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome in 1732. Three successive popes gave him very important honors. Clement XII...

Pietro Ballerini, a priest of the diocese of Verona, produced many works of erudition, particularly in collaboration with his brother Girolamo.¹ Their father was a professor of surgery at the University of Verona. Very little is recorded of their youth other than they attended a local Jesuit school and then the diocesan seminary. Pietro, the older of the two by several years, was ordained priest for the diocese in 1722. He began teaching Christian doctrine and literature and this stimulated interests that led to his first book, which he intended to introduce students to St. Augustine, Il metodo di S....

Louis Bailly and Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier were admired in their own time as dedicated apologists for the Roman Catholic Church. Both defended papal primacy against the criticisms of Protestant and secular writers, but both also earnestly maintained the mainstream Gallicanism of the Declaration of 1682. Their books were for many years among the most widely used in French and other seminaries and in the small libraries of parish priests.

A native of Bligny, Côtes-d’Or, Louis Bailly was a doctor of theology who taught dogmatic theology at the seminary of Dijon for twenty-five years, from 1763 until the Revolution. He spent the...

One of the few greatly admired bishops of France in his time, César-Guillaume La Luzerne had a distinguished career in the Church before the Revolution, was for a while a leader in the Revolution before going into exile, and wrote several books on religious and political topics, including a closely reasoned defense of the Gallican Declaration.¹ A gifted member of a noble family of Normandy, La Luzerne became agent-general of the Clergy of France in 1765 only three years after ordination and was made bishop of Langres by Louis XV in 1770.2 When the Revolution began, La Luzerne, though devoted...

Born of an aristocratic family in Ferrara, Alfonso Muzzarelli attended a Jesuit school in Prato and entered the Society of Jesus in Bologna in 1768.¹ His professors there included several fine scholars, such as Giambattista Roberti in literature and Ferdinando Calini in Church history. When the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV, he continued studies for the priesthood and was ordained for the diocese of Ferrara in 1775. For many years he was occupied in education, both in his own further studies and in teaching, and soon began writing the books and articles for which he...

A native of Chieri, near Turin, Giovanni Perrone studied in the major seminary of Turin and earned his doctorate in theology there.¹ He joined the Society of Jesus soon after it was restored in 1814 by Pius VII, and when Leo XII returned the Collegio Romano (today the Gregorian University) to the society in 1824 he was assigned to its faculty. On November 2, 1824, he was given the chair of dogmatic theology, and spent the remainder of his life there, except for a term as rector of the Jesuit school in Ferrara (1830–1834) and three years of exile...

It is clear that the Gallican and papalist ecclesiologies, as we find them expressed in the authors studied here, entail radically different views of the consensus of the Church, as what is naturally included in the former is naturally excluded from the latter. The basic difference can be stated briefly. In the papalist view the successor of Peter really is a benevolent and paternal absolute monarch in ruling and teaching, and there is no need for the involvement of the faithful of any rank in this task. In the Gallican view the primatial authority, recognized as genuine and essential, is...