Febronianism was a powerful movement within the
Roman Catholic Church in
Germany, in the latter part of the 18th century, directed towards the nationalizing of Catholicism, the restriction of the power of the
papacy in favor of that of the episcopate, and the reunion of the dissident churches with Catholic Christendom. It was thus, in its main tendencies, the equivalent of what in France is known as
Gallicanism. Friedrich Lauchert describes Febronianism, in the
Catholic Encyclopedia, as a politico-ecclesiastical system with an ostensible purpose to facilitate the reconciliation of the
Protestant bodies with the Catholic Church by diminishing the power of the
Holy See.