WI: France fully embraces Gallicanism

[GameBawesome]

Gallicanism is the belief that popular civil authority should be represented by the head of state, over the Catholic Church and Pope.

It had a movement in France, but never took off, due to the Concordat of Bologna, which gave the French Monarch the right nominate appointments to benefices.

What if, with a. POD between the 1500s to 1700s, the French Monarchs embraced Gallicanism, and created a seperate Church of France, with the French Monarch as the head of the Church, separate form the Church in Rome.

How would most other Catholic nations, like the HRE and Spain, react to this development of a Gallican France?
How would deeply Catholic nobility, like the Guise, react?
How would the Huguenots react to this ?
How would this development effect the French Wars of Religion

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Gallicans didn't want a separate Church of France; they believed in the idea of a single Catholic Church, they just thought that the monarch should be in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the Church in his own kingdom.

So TBH I'm not sure that a Gallican France would have much of an impact, at least in the short term; in practice, the French kings IOTL wielded the kind of power which Gallicanism said he should have. Maybe if the POD is having the French king just declare that he has this power rather than having it ratified by the pope, this might cause some friction with Rome, but I don't think that the pope would or could do anything to stop him (Henry VIII of England was never technically excommunicated, despite behaving far more badly), so eventually it would be accepted as a fait accompli.