#bergeron

Agreement between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII on 15 July 1801 in Paris.

Rome seems to have made immense sacrifices. The first advantage won by the First Consul was to seal, by the very act of signing an agreement, the recognition of the French Republic by the Holy See, and hence the rupture of the traditional alliance between Rome and the legitimate monarchies. It was a disastrous blow to French royalism in exile, for it freed the faithful in the interior from scruples about the regime of the Year VIII.

The second advantage was to confirm a church of salaried public servants, amenable to the State and having mainly sociological functions. Here we see a continuation of the Gallican tradition, but also of the thought of philosophes who had urged both the submission of the clergy to the State and its integration within it. The refusal to reestablish the religious orders meant also the rejection of any ecclesiastical life that might escape the authority of the bishops. Even the cathedral chapters were reduced to decorative functions.

Thirdly, no question was raised about the sale of the former Church properties, a matter of great importance for strengthening the prestige of Bonaparte in the eyes of the property-owning segments of French society.

Pius VII, for his part, failed to obtain the recognition of Catholicism as the state religion. He agreed to use his authority for what Consalvi called “the massacre of a whole episcopate,” by requiring the resignation of all French bishops, both constitutional and refractory, since Napoleon judged such a step to be indispensable for effacing all traces of the revolutionary schism. It is right to see in this operation an encouragement to ultramontanism, for it affirmed the powers of the Pope over the French Church. But it also encouraged a tendency in the French episcopate, that is, a whole ecclesiological movement for appeal to an ecumenical council in matters of discipline.

Among the numerous provisions of the Articles we may point out those that legalized all forms of worship in France, and those that strictly subordinated the lower clergy to the bishops (“prefects in violet robes”): only a fifth of the parish priests received the title of curé, and with it secure tenure; all others became simple desservants of succursales, that is assistant pastors.

This is what the Church got out of the deal:

What then did the Pope gain in this Concordat, “more likely to raise difficulties than to solve them” (Bernard Plongeron). Maintenance of the unity of the Roman Church, which a consolidation of the schism in France might have ruined forever; recognition of canonical investiture, which allowed the Pope to overcome the zelanti among the cardinals who opposed the Concordat but favored a reinforcement of spiritual authority; and resumption of regular pastoral life in France, where the new administrative and social status of the priest encouraged a growing number of ordinations, which reached several hundred by the end of the Empire.

Pius VII in any case remained attached to the results accomplished, a fact that deprived the small “shadow church” opposed to the Concordat of the possibility of resistance. His continuing attitude was shown later in his willingness to come to Paris for the Emperor’s coronation.

Source: Louis Bergeron, L'Episode napoléonien. Aspects, intérieurs: 1799-1815

i haven't stopped thinking about the joy that was the bruins nhl outdoors and it turned into this

Tagged by: @ypurisetsuki thank you!! 💕

rules: describe yourself using ten pictures you already have. don’t search or download new ones, tag ten people.