why is france called the first daughter of the church?

Question

i often read about it in books.

Answer 1

I tried to find this info for you, without much luck. I found this lame article that mentions it being the first daughter, but it isn't very explanatory. I did find other sources that mention Clovis being really close to the church... Here is the lame article:

In many ways it was the relation of the church to individual political powers rather than the leadership of the popes that determined the course of church history. Not only the shrinking authority of the church as a consequence of the Reformation but also the expanding ambition of the state as a consequence of the growth of nationalism put ecclesiastical and secular governments on a collision course throughout Europe. France, “the first daughter of the church,” was the national state whose development during the 17th and 18th centuries most strikingly dramatized the collision, so much so that Gallicanism, as the nationalistic ecclesiastical movement was called in France, is still the label put on the efforts of any national church to achieve autonomy.
Usually the autonomy from Rome implied subjection to the French crown, particularly during the reign of Louis XIV, who sought to extend still further the so-called prerogatives of France when Rome resisted. A conclave of bishops and deputies met on March 19, 1682, in Paris and adopted the Four Gallican Articles, which had been drafted by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a French bishop and historian. These asserted that: (1) In temporal matters rulers are independent of the authority of the church. (2) In spiritual matters the authority of the pope is subject to the authority of a general council, as had been declared at the Council of Constance. (3) The historic rights and usages of the French church cannot be countermanded even by Rome. (4) In matters of faith the judgment of the pope is not irreformable but must be ratified by a general council. The next move was up to the papacy: Innocent XI and Alexander VIII rejected Louis's candidates for bishoprics in France, and only in 1693, when Innocent XII was pope, was this all but schismatic conflict resolved. Gallicanism was in part an expression of the distinctive traditions of French Catholicism and in part a result of the personal power of Louis XIV, the Sun King. But it was also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, a systematic statement of the inevitable opposition between the papacy and a series of rulers from Henry VIII (1491–1547) of England to Joseph II (1741–90) of Austria, who, though remaining basically Catholic in their piety and belief, wanted no papal interference in their royal business but insisted on the right of royal interference in the business of the church.

Answer 2

France was stunned when Pope John Paul II named Jewish-born Jean-Marie Lustiger as archbishop of Paris. "You are the fruit of the Holy Father's prayer," the pontiff's secretary told him. Could it be that the cardinal-electors will now stun the world by choosing Lustiger as next pope, the first Jew to occupy St. Peter's See since Peter himself?

Lustiger, both whose parents died in Auschwitz, has always insisted that, though he had converted to Christianity at age 14, he was and remained a Jew: "I was born a Jew and so I am. For me, the vocation of Israel is to bring light to the goyim. That's my hope, and I believe Christianity is the means for achieving it."

There is a remarkable conversion dialectic in Lustiger's life. He had himself baptized because he was so impressed with the Catholic faith of his foster parents, who brought him up after his real parents had been deported from Paris in 1940. In return, Lustiger has made it his mission to convert -- or, rather, re-evangelize -- France and by extension Europe in an unorthodox way.

While a parish priest, Lustiger wrote a memorandum to archbishop of Paris, Cardinal François Marty. In it he proposed a revolutionary strategy for bringing Christianity back to France, once called the First Daughter of the Church. He insisted the church must abandon any pretense of power and convert culture instead.

As George Weigel, the pope's biographer, commented on this plan: "This meant taking the gospel straight to the molders and shapers of French high culture, the thoroughly secularized French intelligentsia. The hardest cases should be put first and France should be reconverted from the head down."