El rey o el papa. La crisis de lealtades del alto clero español a través de la controversia de 1799 en la Rota de la Nunciatura

Abstract

This paper examines the crisis in the long-term relationship model between the Spanish upper clergy, the Crown and the Papacy. Throughout the ancien régime, the high-ranking secular clergy divided its loyalty between two sovereign powers without any major problem. But this double loyalty underwent a crisis in the second half of the eighteenth century, aggravated by the French Revolution and the international political context. The controversy that arose between the members of the Spanish Rota tribunal concerning the royal decree of 1799, which ordered bishops and some royal courts to assume functions reserved to the Holy See, shows on a micro level the factors that led people to choose one loyalty over another.