The War Upon Religion Part 11

Article 12. Bishops shall be permitted to add to their names the t.i.tle of Citizen or that of Monsieur. All other qualifications are interdicted.

Article 16. No one may be nominated to bishopric who has not attained the age of thirty years, or who is not of French origin.

Article 18. The priest nominated by the First Consul shall make haste to obtain inst.i.tution from the Pope.

He cannot exercise any function before the bull containing such inst.i.tution has received the seal of the Government, and before he has taken personally the oath prescribed by the convention made between the French Government and the Holy See. This oath shall be taken before the First Consul: a formal attestation of the same shall be drawn up by the Secretary of State.

Article 19. The bishops shall name and install the pastors; nevertheless they shall not publish their nomination nor give canonical inst.i.tution until that nomination has been approved by the First Consul.

Article 23. The bishops shall be charged with the organization of their seminaries, and the regulation of that organization shall be submitted to the approbation of the First Consul.

Article 24. Those who shall be chosen to teach in the seminaries shall subscribe to the declaration made by the clergy of France in 1682 and published by an edict of the same year; they will be obliged to teach the doctrine therein contained; and the bishops shall address a formal attestation of such submission to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.

The bishops will ordain no persons whose names have not been submitted to the Government and approved by it.

Article 27. Pastors may not enter upon their functions before they have taken in the hands of the prefect the oath prescribed by the convention made between the Government and the Holy See. A formal attestation of this act shall be drawn up by the secretary general of the prefecture, and they shall receive a copy of the same.

Article 32. No foreigner can be employed in the functions of the ecclesiastical ministry without the permission of the Government.

Article 39. There shall be but one liturgy and one catechism for all the Catholic churches of France.

Article 40. No pastor may order extraordinary public prayers in his parish without the special permission of the bishop.

Article 41. No feast, with the exception of Sunday, may be established without the permission of the Government.

Article 45. No religious ceremony shall be held outside the edifices consecrated to Catholic worship in such cities as contain temples destined for a different worship.

Article 53. They shall not in their powers make any publication foreign to religious worship, unless they be authorized to do so by the Government.

Article 54. They shall not bestow the nuptial blessing except on such as can prove in good and due form that they have already contracted their marriage before a civil official.

Article 56. In all ecclesiastical and religious doc.u.ments it will be required to observe the equinoctial calendar established by the laws of the Republic; the days shall be designated by the names they hold in that calendar.

Article 64. The salary of an archbishop shall be 15,000 francs.

Article 65. The salary of bishops shall be 10,000 francs.

Article 66. Pastors shall be distributed into two cla.s.ses.

The salary of pastors of the first cla.s.s shall be 1,500 francs; that of pastors of the second cla.s.s shall be 1,000 francs.

Article 67. The pensions which they receive, in execution of the laws of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, shall be counted as a part of their salary. The councils general of the large communes can, out of their landed property or from the taxes, accord an augmentation of salary if the circ.u.mstances require it.

Article 68. Curates and a.s.sistants shall be chosen from ecclesiastics pensioned in execution of the laws of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The sum of these pensions and the product of offerings made to them shall const.i.tute their salary.

Article 69. The bishops shall draw up a list of rules relative to the offerings which ministers of worship are authorized to receive for the administration of the sacraments. These rules drawn up by the bishops may not be put in force without having been approved by the Government.

Article 70. Every ecclesiastic who receives a pension from the State shall be deprived of such pension if he refuses to perform the functions which shall be confided to him.

Article 71. The councils general of the department are authorized to provide a suitable residence for the archbishops and bishops.

Article 72. The presbyteries and the gardens thereto pertaining shall, if they are not alienated, be turned over to the pastors or to the a.s.sistants in charge of the same missions. In default of such presbyteries the councils general are authorized to provide them with a suitable residence and garden.

Article 73. The foundations which have for their object the maintenance of ministers and the exercise of worship can only consist of rentals const.i.tuted in the State; they shall be accepted by the diocesan bishop, and cannot be executed except with the authorization of the Government.

Article 74. The immovable property, other than edifices destined for residence and the gardens pertaining, cannot be affected to ecclesiastical t.i.tles, nor possessed by ministers of worship by reason of their functions.

Article 75. The edifices formerly destined for Catholic worship, actually in the hands of the nation, shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops by a written order of the prefect of the department. A copy of this order shall be addressed to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.

_PRESAGES OF PEACE._

The Concordat signed and ratified Catholic France settled down to the enjoyment of comparative peace and security. It was, however, only the security which follows the ravages of disease, the peace of convalescence, full of weariness, languor and exhaustion. The fifty bishops installed by the new decrees could not help a feeling of discouragement as they viewed the situation. The Church, it is true, was brought back to a position of honor and importance in the nation; but it was, at the same time, weighed down by the heavy burdens of Gallicanism and Caesarism; the former severing the ties that bound it to the head and centre of Christianity, the Holy Father; the latter making it subservient to the whims and fancies of a ruler, human at most and liable through the schemes of politics to be hostile and intolerant. The former was suited to the imperialistic ambitions of Bonaparte, who had already begun to dream of the glories of the old regime; the latter was couched in the fraudulent laws of the Organic Articles; the former was to lose its force before the lapse of half a century; the latter was to last as long as the Concordat itself.

Thus it was that the outlook at the beginning of the century was little favorable to the just execution of the Concordat. With all correspondence with Rome interdicted save under civil surveillance, deprived of the right of a.s.semblage, and bound by slavish ties to a State official who alone could administer, reward, punish, teach, or cause to teach, according to his own pleasure, all true liberty seemed to have vanished as completely as during the dark times of the Revolution. With churches, schools and colleges under the direction of politicians, the right of ecclesiastical censure denied, and the number of aspirants to the priesthood limited, the religious society of France had become little more than an annex to the State, inferior in importance and subordinate to it in all things. The religious congregations were dispersed, the missionaries were forbidden to exercise their zeal, and for the thirty millions of Catholics in the country there were only eight thousand priests of whom fully two thousand bore the taint of the const.i.tutional oath.

The bishops themselves were for the most part victims of the revolutionary tempest. Some of them had come forth from prison or from the foot of the scaffold whereon they had seen their fathers, brothers and friends brutally butchered by frenzied mobs. Others had come back from an exile wherein they had guarded religiously the dear image of the French Church and the hope of her speedy restoration. "But it was the Church they had seen flourishing under the shadow of a kingly sceptre, the Gallican Church with its gaudy livery and its royal servitude decorated with the names of privilege and liberty. Accustomed to receive favors from the hand of power, it was easy for them to transfer their adulatory homage from the thrones of Louis XIV. and Louis XVI. to the boots and spurs of him who, after all, had just opened to them the gates of their country and filled his native land with glory."

_CORONATION OF NAPOLEON._

It is not wonderful, therefore, that the will of the Conqueror should remain uppermost in all church affairs during the course of the Consulate, when only a few courageous and n.o.ble souls dared to stand forth in the defence of ecclesiastical rights and liberties. The Consulate was termed the _Lune-de-miel_, the honeymoon, in this new union of Church and State; but its joys, such as they were, were to feel ere long the bitterness entailed by the unreasoning and imperious exactions of an overbearing consort.

The soldier who had risen to the command of armies had been honored with the t.i.tle of First Consul; his head, yet uncrowned, was restless till it should feel upon it the emblem of royalty. It was his ambition to be called, and to be like Charlemagne, an emperor; he desired that the consecrating oils in the great ceremony should be conferred by no less a personage than the Holy Father himself, and he wished that the Pope should perform this ceremony at Paris. The venerable Pontiff, when apprised of this new demand of Bonaparte, was at a loss how to respond.

He looked for counsel to his most prudent friends, and above all to the great Giver of light, and then weighing in the balance the great harm he knew must come from a formal refusal, and the immense benefits he felt must accrue to the Church from so slight a sacrifice, he determined, leaving the issue to Divine Providence, to gratify this wish of the General. He did not do so, however, before renewing his protest against the obnoxious Organic Articles, and obtaining from Bonaparte a promise of their speedy revokal.

In compliance with these resolves, the Holy Father set out from Rome on November 2, 1804, and after a journey of nearly a month's duration, through provinces once hostile, but now enthusiastic in their greetings, he reached Fontainebleau on Sunday, November 25th. Here he was met by Bonaparte who displayed at first an apparent desire to shower every honor upon his ill.u.s.trious guest. Yet even this short stay near Paris was marked by the same evidences of fickleness and selfishness on the part of the First Consul, as were shown in his every relation with the Holy See. At one time it would seem as if nothing were too good for the aged Pontiff, and the Consul, to demonstrate this conviction, would display the most utter obsequiousness to his spiritual superior; an hour afterwards the Holy Father was made to feel most keenly the sense of humiliating dependence upon his tormentor. Yet the spirit of the martyr bore up bravely through storm and sunshine. He met the delegation sent to him from the French Senate with a calm undisturbed serenity that drew expressions of admiration from men hostile to the very name of religion; he forebore any words of reproach against the unwarranted demands of Bonaparte. There were, however, some things upon which he insisted strongly, and without which he would refuse, even on the eve of the great day, to be present at the coronation. There were among the French bishops men who had signed the Civil Const.i.tution during the Revolution in defiance of ecclesiastical warnings to the contrary. Still unrepentant, they hoped under the protection of Bonaparte to continue in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction without yielding proper submission to the Holy See. To compel them to this latter course was the determined policy of Pius VII. though the const.i.tutional bishops found a ready ally in the First Consul himself. The latter at first endeavored to gloss over the objections of the Pope, hoping that in the excitement of the day the coronation ceremony might take place before any action would be taken in regard to the obnoxious bishops. But Pius VII. was far too vigilant to become a victim to this deception. The aged Pontiff demanded the act of submission as a necessary condition before the great ceremony should proceed, and Bonaparte, tacitly acknowledging his defeat, yielded. The const.i.tutional bishops at his command repaired to the presence of the Holy Father and complied fully with his wishes.

On the evening of December 1st, the Holy Father learned for the first time that the new Emperor had never contracted an ecclesiastically legal marriage with Josephine, his reputed wife. Despite the fact that all preparations for the great ceremony had been completed, the Pope sent word to Napoleon that he should refuse to take part in the coronation on the morrow unless the Emperor and Josephine should contract their marriage vows that very night in the presence of a duly authorized priest of the Church. Again the Emperor, fretful and impatient as he was, yielded to the demands of the Pope, and the marriage ceremony was performed at midnight in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of Cardinal Fesch, uncle to Napoleon. The following day, December 2nd, the Conqueror of Europe, the great Dictator of France, realized the dream of his lifetime. The solemn ceremony of his consecration and coronation as Emperor of the French took place in the great cathedral of Notre Dame in the midst of all the splendor which the united resources of Church and State could afford. The ceremony began shortly after ten o'clock, when Napoleon, proceeding with Josephine to the foot of the altar, in the presence of the Holy Father made the solemn promise that he would maintain peace in the Church of G.o.d. The two candidates for royalty knelt upon cushions and received from His Holiness the oils and imperial consecration. Napoleon then ascended the altar, and taking the crown into his own hands placed it upon his head, after which he took up the smaller crown of the Empress and bearing it to Josephine crowned her.

She received the diadem kneeling. The ceremony was concluded with the _Te Deum_.

Pius VII. returned to Rome after what was to him a humiliating and exacting journey. Indeed he could congratulate himself that he had at all escaped perpetual exile at Paris. Before he had left that city, the new Emperor, flushed with his recent glories, conceived the plan of retaining the Pope at Paris. The latter, however, had prepared himself for the demand and could answer courageously, that if they were to use force they would have at Paris only a poor monk called Barnabas Chiaramonti. Before he had left Rome he had arranged that in such an emergency a new Pope would be immediately elected.

_THE AFFAIR OF JEROME._

Even at the entrance of the Eternal City, new complications met to annoy and confuse him, which, however, he settled with his usual diplomatic firmness and condescension. The affair of Prince Jerome was just then attracting attention. The latter, a lad of nineteen, and brother of the Emperor, had married while in America, December 24, 1803, a certain Miss Patterson, a descendant of one of Maryland's best families. The ceremony was performed by Archbishop Carroll, and was valid in the eyes of the Church. Upon his returning to France with his young bride he was met by the anger of his imperial brother, who as soon as possible wrote to Pope Pius VII.: "I have several times spoken to Your Holiness about a brother, nineteen years old, whom I sent on a frigate to America, and who after a month's stay, married in Baltimore--although a minor--a Protestant daughter of an American merchant. He has just returned; he feels the extent of his fault. I have sent back Miss Patterson, his alleged wife, to America. According to our laws the marriage is null. A Spanish priest so far forgot his duty as to give the nuptial blessing."

Napoleon then proceeds to request the Pope to declare the marriage invalid, giving as his princ.i.p.al reasons: That the lady was a Protestant; that Jerome was yet a minor according to French law; that the Gallican Church of France held it invalid, and that the marriage was clandestine and null according to the Council of Trent. To all these objections the Holy Father answered that the marriage was entirely valid, that it was not subject to the Council of Trent, the decrees of which had not been published in America, and that it was not in his power to annul the same unless stronger reasons were brought forward to warrant such action. To this determination the Pope adhered unflinchingly, despite the threats and revengeful actions of Napoleon.

Even later, in 1807, when Jerome was married to a princess of Wurtemburg, the Holy Father, far from consenting, renewed his declaration as to the validity of the first marriage.

Napoleon, now at the summit of his political and military career, looked forward to still other conquests. He had crowned himself Emperor of the French at Paris; he received another crown at Milan, making him king of Italy. Then came Austerlitz and Jena and Eylau to humiliate Austria and Prussia and Russia. He became a king-maker by placing his brothers upon the thrones of Naples, Holland and Westphalia. The battle of Wagram, 1809, brought Austria to the feet of the Emperor, who demanded in marriage the hand of the Austrian Emperor's daughter, the Princess Maria Louisa. Josephine, her claims long vanished, was divorced from Napoleon upon the plea of State necessity. An emperor to be an emperor indeed, must be able to look upon the children who shall carry his great name to posterity. The marriage of Josephine and Napoleon had been fruitless in this regard; reasons of State, therefore, demanded, according to Napoleon, that a dissolution should take place, and that a new empress be called to the throne. This reasoning of Napoleon was accepted by Europe; only the Holy Father withheld his approbation and a.s.sent.

Josephine was divorced and the Emperor remarried to Maria Louisa. It was on this occasion that the terms were coined in the ecclesiastical world "the red and the black cardinals," at the great ceremony which was performed by Cardinal Fesch in the Tuileries, April 2, 1810. Of the twenty-nine cardinals then in Paris, thirteen, including Consalvi, refused to honor the occasion with their presence. This mark of disapprobation was punished by the Emperor who besides depriving them of their salaries forbade them to wear the colors or insignia of their cardinalatial rank. Hence their designation as the black cardinals.

These two divorces betray sufficiently the shallow honor of Napoleon in dealing with the Church, a quality which other events of this period brought more into evidence.

The vainglorious a.s.sumptions of the Emperor knew no bounds. Petted and flattered where he was not feared, he often smiled as he heard himself compared with Alexander, Caesar, or Charlemagne. He designed as a means of greater glory the complete solidification of his empire under his own supreme control. Only one obstacle lay in the way of his colossal ambition. He chafed at the thought that there was yet in Italy one little state which would hold out against his pretensions; and then, hurried on by the l.u.s.t of power, and blinded by prosperity, this pretended successor of Charlemagne proceeded against the Pope. Again the aged Pontiff remonstrated. He reminded Napoleon of his former injustice in the matter of the Organic Articles; he reproached him for the injurious dispositions of the Civil Code which he had introduced into France, especially the law granting divorce, the tendency of which laws was to render the discipline of the Church almost null; and now in the face of this new danger, the projected subjugation of the States of the Church, he reminded the Emperor of the judgments that the Almighty must send upon those who disregard His Divine ordinances. The words of the Pope, instead of moderating the intentions of Napoleon, served only to fill him with violent anger. He determined thenceforth to cast aside all promptings of conscience and to take immediate steps for the complete subjugation of Rome. Benevento and Ponte Corvo at once fell into his hands; his troops took possession of Ancona and all cities on the Adriatic coast; Rome itself was invaded; the Papal militia was incorporated with the French; the Pope was deprived of every official necessary for the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and surrounded by a guard in his own palace of the Quirinal.

_EXCOMMUNICATION OF NAPOLEON._

For these outrages the Holy Father addressed Napoleon: "By the bowels of the mercy of our G.o.d we exhort, we pray, we conjure you, Emperor and King Napoleon, to change your designs, to clothe yourself again with those sentiments which you manifested at the beginning of your reign.