1 The most noble nation of the French, besides many splendid achievements in peace and war, has deserved from the Catholic Church praise for special services, gratitude for which will never die, and the glory of which will never grow old. Having embraced Christianity at the initiative of its King, Clovis, it was rewarded by this most honourable testimony to its faith and piety, the title of eldest daughter of the Church. From that time, Venerable Brethren, often have your ancestors been the helpers of Providence itself in the performance of great and salutary works, and especially has their valour been illustrated in defending Catholicism throughout the world, in propagating the Christian Faith among barbarous nations, in delivering and protecting the more sacred places in Palestine, so that it is not without cause that the ancient phrase, Gesta Dei per Francos, has become proverbial. And thus it has been their happy lot, through faithful devotion to the Catholic cause, to become, as it were, associated with the glories of the Church, and to found many public and private institutions marked by a singular strength of religious faith, charity, and greatness of soul. And these virtues of your fathers the Roman Pontiffs, Our predecessors, have been accustomed greatly to commend, and, with the favour due to desert, have more than once heaped praises upon the French nation. Great indeed are the commendations which Innocent III. and Gregory IX., those great lights of the Church, awarded to your ancestors; the former, in his letter to the Archbishop of Reims, saying: "We love the Kingdom of France with a kind of special and pre-eminent love, inasmuch as it has always been obedient and devoted to Us and the Apostolic See, before all the other kingdoms of the world;" and the second, in a letter to St. Louis IX., declaring that in the Kingdom of France, "which could never be torn away from its devotion to God and the Church, ecclesiastical liberty has never perished, and Christian faith has never at any time lost its proper vigour; and that for the preservation of these blessings the Kings and subjects of the said kingdom have not hesitated for a moment to shed their blood and expose themselves to many dangers." And God, who is the Father of nature, from whom States receive on earth the reward of their virtues and good deeds, has conferred much prosperity on France, fame in war, the arts of peace, national glory, and imperial power. And if France, forgetful, as it were, of herself, and neglecting the office conferred on her by God, has sometimes chosen to assume a hostile attitude towards the Church, yet, by a special mercy of God, she has not for long, or as a whole nation, remained in these evil dispositions. And would that she had escaped altogether unhurt from those disasters to religion and the State which times not far distant from our own have brought forth! But when the human mind, filled with the poison of new opinions, had begun, in the pride of an untempered liberty, to reject the authority the Church, its downward course has been rapid and precipitate. For when the mortal poison of false doctrines had penetrated manners and customs themselves, society, to a great extent, came to fall away from Christianity. And in France the propagation of this plague was not a little promoted by certain philosophers in the last century, professors of a foolish wisdom, who set themselves to root up the foundations of Christian truth, and started a system of philosophy calculated the more vehemently to inflame the desires after unlimited licence which had been already enkindled. Nor was the help of these wanting whom an impotent hatred of religion binds together in unhallowed bonds, and daily renders more eager in the persecution of Catholics; and whether emulation in this evil work was greater in France than anywhere else, nobody, Venerable Brethren, can be a better judge than yourselves.
Source: Nobilissima Gallorum Gens (Vatican.va)