When Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France in November 1799, he looked back on nearly a decade of various types of atheism (some murderous, others coercive) and put “peace at home” at the top of his agenda. His first political act of substance was a concordat with the Holy See, though the process took two years, running from late 1800-early 1801 (negotiation), to summer 1801 (accord), to Easter Sunday 1802 (addition of the so-called “organic” articles and promulgation).
As Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis, the consular director of religion, noted in a speech in 1802: “The whole of France calls religion to the aid of morality and society.” The fundamental idea was to make religion (notably Catholicism, but not only) a public matter and no longer private, and to organise religion under the aegis of the state, with paid priests, bishops appointed by the government and instituted by Rome.
The Church was to be the indispensable provider of morality, and civic loyalty was to be placed under strict state control. (Napoleon was later to note how conscription had never gone so well as when priests were endorsing it from the pulpit.) The political theorist Louis-Matthieu Molé remarked with surprise during a debate on the Concordat that this was the first time that religion had been discussed in government because of its practical advantages rather than because it was true.
The concordat project dovetailed with Napoleon’s pacification of the deeply religious parts of France still at civil war (inter alia, the Vendée and the south-west). But it also coincided, probably to Bonaparte’s advantage, with the election of a reforming pope, Pius VII, in March 1800 (in Venice, because French troops were occupying Rome). This, combined with the necessary Italian victory at Marengo in June 1800, smoothed over some of the diplomatic and political difficulties that might have scuppered preliminaries.
These preliminaries were already significantly complicated by the presence of two important but hostile figures in the project, namely, foreign minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (an ex-bishop) and police chief Joseph Fouché (a religiously educated ex-Jacobin). This situation was further aggravated by the fragmentary nature of the Catholic Church in the wake of the French Revolution, with réfractaires (closely linked to émigrés and royalists) at loggerheads with supporters of the Église constitutionnelle, who had accommodated themselves to the Revolutionary era.
The first negotiation involved Pius’s calls for Catholicism to be declared the “religion of France”. This was rejected. The formula adopted was “religion of the majority of France”. And Protestants (and indeed Jews) were set up in parity and placed under French government management and jurisdiction, much to their delight.
There was much disagreement between negotiators over the limits within which the Catholic religion could legitimately operate. A formula allowing for “public tranquillity” was finally hammered out just before the accord in the summer of 1801. The Pope agreed to redraw diocesan boundaries, making 10 new metropolitan circumscriptions and 50 bishoprics. This compromise over bishops is why commentators are now comparing the Vatican’s imminent deal with China with the Concordat.
As for general house cleaning, Pius demanded, in an unparalleled move, the resignation of all bishops then in office, allowing the First Consul to appoint, and the Pope to institute, occupants for the newly vacant sees. The 82 Ancien Régime bishops and further 59 constitutional bishops in office were also asked to resign. Bishops then had to swear an (it is to be assumed reassuring) Ancien Régime oath to the First Consul, who by now had become a proto-monarch. Indeed, Napoleon was to claim (in article 15 of the Concordat) the same rights and privileges that kings of France had enjoyed with the Pope before the Revolution.
Article 13 of the Concordat was particularly important. It declared that religious property sold after the Revolution would not be returned, though compensation was to be provided in certain cases. Divorce, another “gain” of the Revolution upheld by the Emperor in 1804, would remain legal (though Napoleon and others were to debate the issue).
Once the accord had been signed in France in July 1801, the news displeased the zelanti in the Roman Curia, who were angry that the atheistic and conquering state had dictated terms. That being said, one hardliner did change sides because the Concordat ratified the Pope’s right to “hire and fire” in France, a significant defeat for supporters of Gallicanism and an underlining of Ultramontane influence. Pius did finally add his signature to the Concordat.
In France, too, acceptance of the deal was not a foregone conclusion. People and institutions began to object. At a sitting of the Council of State in October 1801 voices were raised in opposition to state pay for the clergy, and the anti-religion policies of the Revolution were restated. Bonaparte tried to stem the tide by creating a directorate for religions and appointing the moderate Portalis at its head.
In March 1802, as opposition mounted, Bonaparte capitalised on the signing of the Peace of Amiens to purge “republican” elements from the institutions and ensure acceptance of the document. He did, however, also allow the addition to the Concordat of the notorious “organic” articles, designed to appease those still wavering.
These articles, pushed through by Talleyrand and Fouché without papal negotiation, reintroduced elements of Gallicanism to the “agreement”, notably making state laws applicable to internal Church matters. Only bishops and priests would be paid, and a single liturgy and catechism would be imposed on France (the imperial catechism came after the establishment of the Empire).
Though Pius protested, the articles would remain attached to the agreement. Indeed, Pius clearly considered the matter unfinished business, coming as he did to Paris in 1804 to consecrate and crown Napoleon but also to renegotiate. But it was in vain.
The subsequent crisis of episcopal investiture (Pius refused to invest Napoleon’s episcopal nominations), the invasion of Rome and the Papal States, the kidnapping of the Holy Father, the excommunication of Napoleon (anonymously), and the placing of the Pope under house arrest at Fontainebleau for nearly four years finally revealed the width of the gap in Napoleonic-papal relations and the contradictions inherent in the extra-territorial arrangement.
While the Concordat was much appreciated by the population in general in France (though certain sectors of society, notably the more republican elements in the army, grumbled), its effects were geographically specific. In country areas, where the Revolution had barely penetrated, the effect was one of normalisation. In Paris and parts of the south, where the Revolution had exhibited all its savagery, the Concordat represented a complete rebuilding of the Church.
Napoleon was to remain true to the spirit of the document in France. On the one hand, he behaved like a monarch, demanding military and civilian honours for the Blessed Sacrament and for ministers at the altar. The cult of St Genevieve, foundress of the city, was re-attributed to Paris in 1806, as if the Revolution had never happened.
Priests’ lives were immeasurably improved, with clerks in holy orders being exempt from military service. Some 24,000 parishes (rising to 30,000 in 1807) were directly funded by the state. Seminaries were permitted to be installed in state buildings, and donations and bequests for their upkeepwere facilitated. Faculties of theology were re-established.
In short, the Concordat brought the Church both the juridical and social status and the necessary financial resources for the re-evangelisation of France, all of which the Revolution had either limited or destroyed. Reacting to the infamous separation of church and state in France in 1905, Metz and Strasbourg, when reunited to France after World War I, made special request to keep the pre-1905 concordatary structure, and it still survives there today.
Peter Hicks is head of international affairs at the Fondation Napoléon in Paris and a visiting professor at Bath University
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