anticlericalism

Hostility to the influence of the clergy in affairs outside the sphere of the church. Identifiable from the 12th century onwards, it became increasingly common in France in the 16th century and especially after the French Revolution of 1789.

More recently apparent in most western European states, anticlericalism takes many forms; for example, opposition to the clergy as reactionary and against the principles of liberalism and the Enlightenment, also opposition to clerics as representatives of religion or as landowners, tax-gatherers, or state servants.