CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS

Produced by Svend Rom

THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 6

THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 2

by Hippolyte A. Taine

Contents:

BOOK FIFTH. The Church.

Chapter I. Moral Institutions

Chapter Ii.

Chapter Iii

Book Sixth. Public Instruction.

Chapter I.

Chapter Ii.

Chapter Iii. Evolution Between 1814 And 1890.

*****

After Taine's death in March 1893, his nephew André

Chevrillon arranged his last manuscripts on the Church

and Education for publication and wrote the following

introduction which also tells us much about Taine and

his works

*****

PREFACE By André Chevrillon.

"To treat of the Church, the School, and the Family, describe the modern

milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society like our

own encounters in this milieu, such was the program of the last[5101]

section of the "Origins of Contemporary France." The preceding volume is

a continuation of the first part of this program; after the commune and

the department, after local societies, the author was to study moral

and intellectual bodies in France as organized by Napoleon. This study

completed, this last step taken, he was about to reach the summit. He

was about to view France as a whole, to comprehend it no longer

through a detail of its organs, in a state of formation, but its actual

existence; no longer isolated, but plunged, along with other occidental

nations, into the modern milieu, experiencing with them the effects of

one general cause which changed the physical and intellectual condition

of men; which dissolved sentiments formerly grouping them together, more

or less capable at length of adapting themselves to new circumstances

and of organizing according to a new type suited to the coming age that

now opens before us.

Only a part of this last volume was written, that which relates to the

Church and to public instruction. Death intervened and suddenly arrested

the pen. M. Taine, at this moment, was about completing his analysis of

subordinate societies in France.--For those who have followed him thus

far it is already clear that the great defect of the French community

is the fragmentation of the individuals, who isolated, dwindling, and

prostrate at the feet of the all-powerful State, who, due to remote

historical causes, and yet more so by modern legislation, have been made

incapable of "spontaneously grouping around a common interest."

Very probably--and of this we may judge by two sketches of a plan,

undoubtedly provisional, but the ideas of which were long settled in his

mind--M. Taine would have first described this legislation and defined

its principles and general characteristics. He meant to show it more

and more systematic, deliberately hostile to collective enterprise,

considering secondary bodies not as "distinct, special organs,"

endowed with a life of their own, "maintained and stimulated by private

initiation," but as agents of the State "which fashions them after

a common pattern, imposes on them their form and prescribes their

work."--This done, this defect pointed out, the author was to enumerate

the consequences flowing from it, the social body entirely changed, "not

only in its proportions but in its innermost texture," every tendency

weakened by which individuals form groups that are to last longer than

themselves, each man reduced to his own self, the egoistic instinct

enhanced while the social instinct wastes away for want of nourishment,

his daily imagination solely concerned with life-long aims,

incapacitated for politics as he is "lacking spheres of action in which

he may train himself according to his experiences and faculties", his

mind weakening in idleness and boredom or in a thirst for pleasure and

personal success,--in short, an organic impoverishment of all faculties

of cohesion, leading to the destruction of the natural centers of

grouping and, consequently, to political instability.[5102]

One association of special import remains, the most spontaneous, the

deepest rooted, so old that all others derive from it, so essential

that in any attack upon it we see even the substance of the social body

decaying and diminishing. On the nature of the Family; on its profound

physiological origins; on its necessary role in the prolongation and

"perpetuation of the individual" by affording him "the sole remedy for

death"; on its primitive constitution among men of our own race; on its

historic organization and development "around the family home"; on the

necessity of its subsistence and continuance in order to insure the

duration of this home; on its other needs, M. Taine, with his knowledge

of man and of his history, had given a good deal of thought to

fundamental ideas analogous to those which he has consecrated to the

classic spirit, to the origin of honor and conscience, to the essence

of local society, so many stones, as it were, shaped by him from time

to time and deeply implanted as the foundations of his criticism of

institutions. Having set forth the proper character and permanent wants

of the Family he was able to study the legislation affecting it, and,

first, "the Jacobin laws on marriage, divorce, paternal authority and on

the compulsory public education of children; next, the Napoleonic laws,

those which still govern us, the Civil Code" with that portion of it

in which the equality and leveling spirit is preserved, along with "its

tendency to regard property as a means of enjoyment" instead of the

starting-point and support of "an enduring institution."--Having exposed

the system, M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding

institutions, and to describe the French family as it now exists. He had

first studied the "tendency to marriage"; he had considered the motives

which, in general, weaken or fortify it, and appreciated those now

absent and now active in France. According to him, "the healthy ideal of

every young man is to found a family, a house of infinite duration, to

create and to rule." Why in modern France does he give his thoughts to

"pleasure and of excelling in his career"? Why does he regard marriage

"without enthusiasm, as a last measure, as a 'settling-down,' and not as

a beginning, the commencement of a veritable career, subordinating

all others to it and regarding these, pecuniary and professional, as

auxiliary and as means?"--After the tendency to marriage, "the tendency

to paternity." How does the shrunken family come to live only for

itself? In what way, in default of other interests,--homestead, domain,

workshop, lasting local undertakings,--how does the heart, now deprived

of its food by the lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection

for visible progeny?[5103] In a country where there are few

openings, where careers are overcrowded, what are the effects of this

paid idolatry[5104], and, to sum up in one phrase, in what way does the

French system of to-day tend to develop the most fatal of results, the

decline in the birth rate?

Here the study of institutions on a grand scale terminated. Formerly,

M. Taine had contemplated a completion of his labors by a description

of contemporary France, the product of origins scrutinized by him and

of which he had traced the formation. Having disengaged his factors he

meant to combine them, to show them united and acting in concert, all

centering on the great actual facts which dominate the rest and which

determine the order and structure of modern society. As he had given a

picture of old France he aimed to portray France as it now is, with

its various groups,--village, small town and large city,--with its

categories of men, peasants, workmen, bourgeois, functionaries and

capitalists; with the forces that impel each class along, their

passions, their ideas, their desires. Besides the numerical statistics

of person he meant to have set forth the moral statistics of souls.

According to him, psychological conditions exist which render the social

activity of men possible or impossible. And, especially, "in a given

society, there is always a psychological state which provokes the state

of that society." It was his aim to seek out in the novel, in poetry, in

the arts since 1820, that is to say in all works that throw light on the

various and successive kinds of the reigning ideal--in philosophy, in

religion, in industry, in all branches of French action and thought--the

signs of the psychological tendencies of modern Frenchman in this or

that social condition. What would this book have been? M. Taine had

sketched it out so far back, he had abandoned it for so long a time and

never alluded to it, that nothing remains by which we can form any

idea of it. But, in this undertaking demanding so much science, so much

intuition, so much experience of accurate observation, of general views

and precise generalization--in this vast study requiring such profound

knowledge, not alone of France but of societies offering points of

comparison with her, we may be certain that the author of Notes

sur Paris, Notes sur l'Angleterre, of the Ancien Régime, the critic

accustomed to interpret civilizations, literature and works of art,

the thinker, in fine, who, to prepare himself for the greatest tasks he

undertook, traveled five times over France, studying its life with

the eyes of an artist, in the light of history and of psychology, ever

preceding his philosophic study with visual investigation, would have

been equal to the task.[5105]

Already for several years, M. Taine, aware that his time was short, had

narrowed the limits of the work he was engaged upon. But what his work

lost in breadth and in richness of detail it would have gained in

depth and in power. All his master ideas would have been found in it,

foreshortened and concentrated. Always seeking in this or that group of

them what he called his generators, intellectual and moral as well as

political, he would have described all those which explain the French

group. Unfortunately, here again the elements are wanting which allow

one to foreshadow what this final analysis and last construction might

have been. M. Taine did not write in anticipation. Long before taking

the pen in hand he had derived his most significant facts and formed

his plan. He carried them in his brain where they fell into order of

themselves. Ten lines of notes, a few memoranda of conversations--faint

reflections, to us around him, of the great inward light--are all that

enable one to attempt an indication of the few leading conceptions were

to complete "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine."

"Le Milieu Moderne", was to have been the title of the last book. The

question here is how to discover the great characteristics of the period

into which European societies entered and about were to live. Rising

to a higher point of view than that to which he had confined himself

in studying France, M. Taine regarded its metamorphosis as a case of

transformation as general as the passage of the Cité antique over to

the Roman Empire over to the feudal State. Now, as formerly, this

transformation is the effect of a "change in the intellectual and

physical condition of men"; that is to say, in other words, in the

environment that surrounds them. Such is the advent of a new geological

period, of a glacial period, for example, or, more precisely, "the very

slow and then accelerated upheaval of a continent, forcing the submarine

species which breathe by gills to transform themselves into species

which breathe by lungs." It is impossible to divine in what sense this

adaptation takes place if we do not comprehend the event, that is to

say if we do not perceive its starting-point and the innate force which

produces it. According to Taine, this force, in the present case, is the

progress the increasing authority of positive, verifiable science. What

a definition he would have given of science and its essence! What a

tableau of its progress, the man whose thought was matured at the moment

when the scientific spirit entered into history and literature; who

breathed it in his youth with the fervid and sacred enthusiasm of a poet

seeing the world grow brighter and intelligible to him, and who, at the

age of twenty-five, demanded of it a method and introduced this into

criticism and psychology in order to give these new life--the mechanical

equivalent of heat, natural selection, spectroscopic analysis,

the theory of the microbes, recent discoveries in physics and the

constitution of matter, research into historic origins, psychological

explanation of texts, extension of oriental researches, discoveries of

prehistoric conditions, comparative study of barbaric communities--every

grand idea of the century to which he has himself contributed, all those

by which science embraces a larger and larger portion of the universe,

he saw them containing the same essence; all combining to change the

conception of the world and substitute another, coherent and logical in

the best minds, but then confused and disfigured as it slowly descends

to the level of the crowd.--He would have described this decent, the

gradual diffusion, the growing power of the new Idea, the active ferment

which it contains after the manner of a dogma, beneficent or pernicious

according to the minds in which it lodges, capable of arming men and

of driving them on to pure destruction when not fully comprehended, and

capable of reorganizing them if they can grasp its veritable meaning.

Its first effects are simply destructive, for, through Darwinism,

through experimental psychology, through the physiology of the brain,

through biblical exegesis, through the comparative study of savage

communities and their moral systems, the new concepts at first shocks

the religious idea which it tends to replace; even, with the half-

cultivated and in the minds of novices, it tends to pure negation, to

hostility against existing religions. To every social gathering around

the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance in

the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual adaptation of

laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a rupture of the inward

equilibrium which maintains man passive and tranquil! The consequent

mental agitation will lead to agitation, impulsion, ambitions,

lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the sentiments which had

thus far maintained every species of society, the family, the commune,

the Church, free association and the State!--Now, along with the

immediate effects of science on the intellectual habits of men consider

the effects of its application to their material condition; at first,

their increased well-being, their power increased, then the rupture of

the ties that bind them to their birthplace, the concentration of masses

of workmen in the towns to which they are attracted by great and rapid

industrial development, the influx of new ideas, of every species of

information, the gradual decline of the old hereditary prejudices of

caste and parish which act automatically as instincts, and are useful

as instincts to the small groups in which the individual is born and

in which he lives. How could such a profound change in the condition of

humanity fail to undermine everywhere the order of things which group

men together? Why should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient

forms of society? For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists

in Europe a general form of society manifest through features in common;

a monarchy--hereditary royalty, dynastic but frequently limited, at

least in fact,--a privileged nobility performing military service as a

special function, a clergy organized as a Church, proprietary and

more or less privileged, local or special bodies also proprietary--

provinces, communes, universities, brotherhoods, corporations--laws and

customs which base the family on paternal authority, perpetuating it on

the natal soil and by social rank; in brief, institutions which modern

ideas disturb in every direction, the first effect of which is,

while developing the spirit of doubt and investigation, to break down

subordination to the king, to the gentleman, to the noble, and, in

general, to dissolve society founded on heredity. Such phenomena are

already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the

state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of every

special service and the descent of power into the hands of a numerical

majority.--What plan, then, governs these societies in the way of

reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type, what are

the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? On what lines must

the metamorphosis be effected in order to arrive at a viable creations?

And, abandoning the general problem in order to return to contemporary

France, grown up and organized under our own eyes, how does the great

modern event affect it? How does "this common factor combine with

special factors, permanent and temporary," belong to our system? With

the French, whose hereditary spirit and character are easily defined,

in this society founded on Napoleonic institutions moved by our

"administrative mechanism," what are the peculiar tendencies of a

leveling democracy which seeks immediate establishment? Among the

maladies which are special with us--feeble birth-rate, political

instability, absence of local life, slow industrial and commercial

development, despondency and pessimism--can an aptitude for

transformation which we do not possess be distinguished in the sense

demanded by the new milieu? The knowledge we have of our origins, of

our psychology, of our present constitution, of our circumstances, what

hopes are warranted?

M. Taine could not have replied to all these questions. If, twenty years

ago, on the morrow after our disasters, just as we once more set about

a new organization, putting aside literature, art, and philosophy, noble

contemplation and pure speculation, abandoning works already projected,

he gave himself up to the technical study of law, political economy and

administrative history; if, for twenty years, he secluded himself and

devoted himself to his task--at what a cost of prolonged effort, with

what a strain his mental faculties, with what weariness and often with

what dissatisfaction!--if he shortened his life, it was to discharge

what he deemed a duty to that suffering France which he loved

with tender and silent passion, the duty of aiding in her cure by

establishing the general diagnosis which a philosopher-historian

was warranted in presenting after a profound study of its vital

constitution. The examination finished, he felt that he had a right to

offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty permitted him to foretell the

future or to dictate reforms. When his opinion was asked in relation to

any reform he generally declined giving it. "I am merely a consulting

physician," he would reply; "I do not possess sufficient details on that

particular question--I am not sufficiently familiar with circumstances

which vary from day to day." In effect, according to him, there is no

general principle from which one can deduce a series of reforms. On the

contrary, his first recommendation would have been not to try to find

simple solutions in political and social matters, but to proceed by

experiments, according to temperaments, and accepting the irregular

and the incomplete.--One becomes resigned to this course by a study

of history and by acquiring "the sense of surrounding facts and

developments." Here do we find the general remedy for the destructive

effects produced by the brusque progress of science, and she herself

furnishes this remedy, when, from the hasty and the theoretical, she

becomes experimental and builds on the observation of facts and their

relations. "Through psychological narration, through the analysis of

psychological conditions which have produced, maintained, or modified

this or that institution, we may find a partial solution to each

question of reform," gradually discovering laws and establishing the

general conditions that render possible or impossible any given project.

When constituted and then developed, reorganized, respected and applied

to human affairs, the sciences of humanity may become a new instrument

of power and civilization, and, just as the natural sciences have taught

us to derive profit from physical forces, they may teach us to benefit

by moral forces. M. Taine believed that the French were very well

qualified for this order of study: if any other people possess

superior mental faculties in respect of memory or a better knowledge

of philology, he thought we had in our favor a superiority of the

psychological sense.

Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general

hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies?

It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for

hasty decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an

organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the

following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[5106] in any event, no

sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is

to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short

term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using great

circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him--for

example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under the Third

Republic--leaving to political authorities the care "of adjusting means"

to the diversity and mobility of things, we may believe that M. Taine

would have confined himself to indicating in what sense we could, with

prudence, lay our course. To do this, it sufficed for him to sum up his

diagnosis and lay down the conditions of duration and progress. In a

matter of such vital import nobody can speak for him. Accordingly, if

the conclusion is not written, whoever knows how to read his thought may

divine it. The work, such as it is, is finished; it already contains his

ideas in full; the intelligent eye has only to follow them and to note

their consequences and combination.

André Chevrillon

Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893.

BOOK FIFTH. THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS

I. Napoleon's Objectives.

Centralization and moral institutions--Object of the State

in absorbing Churches.--Their influence on civil society.

After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local

societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral

societies[5107], and this second haul is more important than the first

one; for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical

bodies and habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which

exists between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no

longer on the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will;

the incentive within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can

he be fully mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the

main purpose of the conquering State is the possession of the Churches;

alongside as well as outside of itself, these are the great powers of

the nation; not only does their domain differ from its own but, again it

is vaster and lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony and the small

fragment of human history which the eyes of the flesh perceive, they

embrace and present to mental vision the whole world and its first

cause, the total ordinance of things, the infinite perspective of a past

eternity and that of an eternity to come. Underneath the corporeal and

intermittent actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they

govern the imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole

inward being, that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are

simply the incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when

they set limits to these, voluntarily, conscientiously, there is no

limit; in vain do they proclaim, if Christian, that their kingdom is not

of this world; nevertheless, it is, since they belong to it; masters

of dogma and of morals, they teach and command in it. In their

all-embracing conception of divine and human things, the State, like a

chapter in a book, has its place and their teachings in this chapter are

for it of capital importance. For, here do they write out its rights and

duties, the rights and duties of its subjects, a more or less perfect

plan of civil order. This plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards

which they incline the preferences of the faithful, issues at length,

spontaneously and invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from its

seed, to vegetate in temporal society, flower and fructify therein

and send its roots deeper down for the purpose of shattering or of

consolidating civil and political institutions. The influence of a

Church on the family and on education, on the use of wealth or of

authority, on the spirit of obedience or of revolt, on habits of

initiation or of inertia, of enjoyment or of abstention, of charity or

of egoism, on the entire current train of daily practice and of dominant

impulses, in every branch of private or public life, is immense, and

constitutes a distinct and permanent social force of the highest order.

Every political calculation is unsound if it is omitted or treated

as something of no consequence, and the head of a State is bound to

comprehend the nature of it if he would estimate its grandeur.

II. Napoleon's opinions and methods.

Napoleon's opinions on religion and religious belief.--His

motives in preferring established and positive religions.

--Difficulty in defining the limit between spiritual and

temporal authority.--Except in Catholic countries, both

united in one hand.--Impossible to effect this union in

France arbitrarily.--Napoleon's way of attaining this end by

another process.--His intention of overcoming spiritual

authority through temporal interests.

This is what Napoleon does. As usual with him, in order to see deeper

into others, he begins by examining himself:

"To say from whence I came, what I am, or where I am going, is above my

comprehension. I am the watch that runs, but unconscious of itself."

These questions, which we are unable to answer,

"drive us onward to religion; we rush forward to welcome her, for

that is our natural tendency. But knowledge comes and we stop short.

Instruction and history, you see, are the great enemies of religion,

disfigured by the imperfections of humanity.... I once had faith. But

when I came to know something, as soon as I began to reason, which

happened early, at the age of thirteen, my faith staggered and became

uncertain."[5108]

This double personal conviction is in the back-ground of his thinking,

when he drafted the Concordat:

"It will be said that I am a papist.[5109] I am nothing. In Egypt I was

a Moslem; here I shall be a Catholic, for the good of the people. I

do not believe in religions. The idea of a God!" (And then, pointing

upward:) "Who made all that?"

Imagination has already decorated this great name with its legends. Let

us content ourselves with those already existing; "the restlessness of

man" is such that he cannot do without them; in default of those already

made he would fashion others, haphazard, and still more strange. The

positive religions keep man from going astray; it is these which render

the supernatural definite and precise;[5110] "he had better catch

it there than pick it up at Mademoiselle Lenormand's, or with some

fortune-teller or a passing charlatan." An established religion

"is a kind of vaccination which, in satisfying our love of the

marvelous, protects us against quacks and sorcerers;[5111] the priests

are far better than the Cagliostros, Kants, and the rest of the German

mystics."

In sum illuminism and metaphysics,[5112] speculative inventions of the

brain or of a contagious overexcitement of the nervous system, all these

illusions of gullible men, are basically unhealthy, and, in general,

anti-social. Nevertheless, since they are part of human nature, let us

accept them like so many streams tumbling down a slope, but on condition

that they remain in their own beds and that they have many but no new

ones and never one bed alone for itself.

"I do not want a dominant religion, nor the establishment of new

ones. The Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran systems, established by the

Concordat, are sufficient."[5113]

Their direction and force are intelligible, and their irruptions can be

guarded against. Moreover, the present inclinations and configurations

of the human soil favor them; the child follows the road marked out by

the parent, and the man follows the road marked out when a child.

"Listen,[5114] last Sunday, here at Malmaison, while strolling alone in

the solitude enjoying the repose of nature, my ear suddenly caught the

sound of the church-bell at Rueil. I was moved, so strong is the force

of early habits and education! I said to myself, What an impression this

must make on simple, credulous people!"

Let us gratify them; let us give back these bells and the rest to the

Catholics. After all, the general effect of Christianity is beneficial.

"As far as I am concerned,[5115] I do not see in it the mystery of

the incarnation, but the mystery of social order, the association of

religion with paradise, an idea of equality which keeps the rich from

being massacred by the poor."

"Society[5116] could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an

inequality of fortunes without religion.[5117] A man dying of starvation

alongside of one who has abundance would not yield to this difference

unless he had some authority which assured him that God so orders it

that there must be both poor and rich in the world, but that in

the future, and throughout eternity, the portion of each will be

changed.[5118]"

Alongside of the repressive police exercised by the State there is a

preventive police exercised by the Church. The clergy, in its cassock,

is an additional spiritual gendarmerie, much more efficient than the

temporal gendarmerie in its stout boots, while the essential thing is to

make both keep step together in concert.

Between the two domains, between that which belongs to civil authority

and that which belongs to religious authority, is there any line of

separation?

"I look in vain[5119] where to place it; its existence is purely

chimerical. I see only clouds, obscurities, difficulties. The civil

government condemns a criminal to death; the priest gives him absolution

and offers him paradise."

In relation to this act, both powers operate publicly in an inverse

sense on the same individual, one with the guillotine and the other with

a pardon. As these authorities may clash with each other, let us

prevent conflicts and leave no undefined frontier; let us trace this out

beforehand; let us indicate what our part is and not allow the Church to

encroach on the State.--The Church rally wants all; it is the accessory

which she concedes to us, while she appropriates the principal to

herself.

"Mark the insolence of the priests[5120] who, in sharing authority with

what they call the temporal power, reserve to themselves all action on

the mind, the noblest part of man, and take it on themselves to reduce

my part merely to physical action. They retain the soul and fling me the

corpse!"

In antiquity, things were much better done, and are still better done

now in Moslem countries.

"In the Roman republic,[5121] the senate was the interpreter of heaven,

and this was the incentive of the force and strength of that government.

In Turkey, and throughout the Orient, the Koran serves as both a civil

and religious bible. Only in Christianity do we find the pontificate

distinct from the civil government."

And even this has occurred only in one branch of Christianity.

Everywhere, except in Catholic countries,

"in England,[5122] in Russia, in the northern monarchies, in one part of

Germany, the legal union of the two powers, the religious control in

the hands of the sovereign, 'is an accomplished fact.' One cannot govern

without it; otherwise, the repose, dignity, and independence of a nation

are disturbed at every moment."

It is a pity that "the difficulty[5123] cannot be overcome as with

Henry VIII. in England. The head of the French government would then, by

legislative statute, be the supreme head of the French Church."

Unfortunately, this is repugnant to France. Napoleon often tries to

bring it about, but is satisfied that in this matter "he would never

obtain national cooperation"; once embarked," fully engaged in the

enterprise, "the nation would have abandoned him." Unable to take this

road, he takes another, which leads to the same result. As he himself

afterwards states, this result "was, for a long time and always, the

object of his wishes and mediations.... It is not his aim[5124] to

change the faith of his people; he respects spiritual objects and wants

to rule them without meddling with them; his aim is to make these square

with his views, with his policy, but only through the influence of

temporal concerns." That spiritual authority should remain intact; that

it should operate on its own speculative domain, that it to say, on

dogmas, and on its practical domain, namely, on the sacraments and on

worship; that is should be sovereign on this limited territory, Napoleon

admits, for such is the fact. We have only to open our eyes to see

it; right or wrong, spiritual authority on this distinct domain is

recognized sovereign, obeyed, effective through the persistent, verified

loyalty of believers. It cannot be done away with by supposing it

non-existent; on the contrary, a competent statesman will maintain it in

order to make use of it and apply it to civil purposes. Like an engineer

who comes across a prolific spring near his factory, he will not try to

dry it up, nor let the water be dispersed and lost; he has no idea

of letting it remain inactive; on the contrary, he collects it, digs

channels for it, directs and economizes the flow, and renders the water

serviceable in his workshops. In the Catholic Church, the authority to

be won and utilized is that of the clergy over believers and that of the

sovereign pontiff over the clergy.

"You will see," exclaimed Bonaparte, while negotiating the Concordat,

"how I will turn the priests to account, and, first of all, the

Pope!"[5125]

III. Dealing with the Pope.

Services which he obliges the Pope to render.--Resignation

or dismissal of the old bishops.--End of the constitutional

Church.--Right of appointing bishops and of sanctioning

curés given to the First Consul.

"Had no Pope existed," he says again,[5126] "it would have been

necessary to create him for the occasion, in the same way that the Roman

consuls appointed a dictator for difficult circumstances." Only such a

dictator could effect the coup d'état which the First Consul needed,

in order to constitute the head of the new government a patron of

the Catholic Church, to bring independent or refractory priests under

subjection, to sever the canonical cord which bound the French clergy to

its exiled superiors and to the old order of things, "to break the

last thread by which the Bourbons still communicated with the country."

"Fifty émigré[5127] bishops in the pay of England now lead the French

clergy. Their influence must be got rid of, and to do this the authority

of the Pope is essential; he can dismiss or make them resign." Should

any of them prove obstinate and unwilling to descend from their thrones,

their refusal brings them into discredit, and they are "designated[5128]

as rebels who prefer the things of this world, their terrestrial

interests to the interests of heaven and the cause of God." The great

body of the clergy along with their flocks will abandon them; they will

soon be forgotten, like old sprouts transplanted whose roots have been

cut off; they will die abroad, one by one, while the successor, who is

now in office, will find no difficulty in rallying the obedient around

him, for, being Catholic, his parishioners are so many sheep, docile,

taken with externals, impressionable, and ready to follow the pastoral

croisier, provided it bears the ancient trademark, consists of the same

material, is of the same form, conferred from on high and sent from

Rome. The bishops having once been consecrated by the Pope, nobody save

a Gregory or some antiquarian canonist will dispute their jurisdiction.

The ecclesiastical ground is thus cleared through the interposition of

the Pope. The three groups of authorities thereon which contend with

each other for the possession of consciences[5129]--the refugee bishops

in England, the apostolic vicars, and the constitutional clergy--

disappear, and now the cleared ground can be built on. "The Catholic

religion being declared[5130] that of the majority of the French people,

its services must now be regulated. The First Consul nominates fifty

bishops whom the Pope consecrates. These appoint the curés, and the

state pays their salaries. The latter may be sworn, while the priests

who do not submit are sent out of the country. Those who preach against

the government are handed over to their superiors for punishment. The

Pope confirms the sale of clerical possessions; he consecrates the

Republic." The faithful no longer regard it askance. They feel that

they are not only tolerated, but protected by it, and they are

grateful.[5131] The people recover their churches, their curés, the

forms of worship to which they are almost instinctively accustomed, the

ceremonial which, to their imagination, belongs to every important act

of their lives, the solemn rites of marriage, baptism, burial, and

other sacramental offices.--Henceforth mass is said every Sunday in each

village, and the peasants enjoy their processions on Corpus-Christi

day, when their crops are blessed. A great public want is satisfied.

Discontent subsides, ill-will dies out, the government has fewer

enemies; its enemies, again, lose their best weapon, and, at the same

time, it acquires an admirable one, the right of appointing bishops and

of sanctioning the curés. By virtue of the Concordat and by order of the

Pope, not only, in 1801, do all former spiritual authorities cease

to exist, but again, after 1801, all new titularies, with the Pope's

assent, chosen, accepted, managed, disciplined,[5132] and paid by

the First Consul, are, in fact, his creatures, and become his

functionaries.

IV. The Pope, Napoleon's employee.

Other services expected of the Pope.--Coronation of Napoleon

at Notre-Dame.--Napoleonic theory of the Empire and the Holy

See.--The Pope a feudatory and subject of the Emperor.

--The pope installed as a functionary at Paris, and

arch-chancellor on spiritual matters.--Effect of this for Italy.

Over and above this positive and real service obtained from the

sovereign pontiff, he awaits others yet more important and undefined,

and principally his future coronation in Notre Dame. Already, during the

negotiations for the Concordat, La Fayette had observed to him with a

smile:[5133] "You want the holy oil dropped on your head"; to which he

made no contradictory answer. On the contrary, he replied, and probably

too with a smile: "We shall see! We shall see!" Thus does he think

ahead, and his ideas extend beyond that which a man belonging to the

ancient régime could imagine or divine, even to the reconstruction of

the empire of the west as this existed in the year 800. "I am not Louis

XIV.'s successor," he soon declares,[5134] "but of Charlemagne.... I am

Charlemagne, because, like Charlemagne, I unite the French crown to

that of the Lombards, and my empire borders on the Orient." In this

conception, which a remote history furnishes to his boundless ambition,

the terrible antiquitarian finds the gigantic and suitable framework,

the potent, specious terms, and all the verbal reasons he requires.

Under Napoleon, the successor of Charlemagne, the Pope can be only a

vassal: "Your Holiness is the sovereign of Rome, but I am its emperor,"

the legitimate suzerain. "Provided with "fiefs and counties" by this

suzerain, the Pope owes him political fealty and military aid; failing

in this, the endowment, which is conditional, lapses and his confiscated

estates return to the imperial domain to which they have never ceased to

belong.[5135] Through this reasoning and this threat, through the rudest

and most adroit moral and physical pressure, the most insidious and most

persevering, through spoliation, begun, continued and completed by the

abduction, captivity and sequestration of the Holy Father himself, he

undertakes the subjection of the spiritual power: not only must the

Pope be like any other individual in the empire,[5136] subject by his

residence to territorial laws, and hence to the government and the

gendarmerie, but again he must come within the administrative lines;

he will no longer enjoy the right of refusing canonical investiture to

bishops appointed by the emperor,[5137] "he will, on his coronation,

swear not to take any measures against the four propositions of the

Gallican Church,"[5138] he will become a grand functionary, a sort of

arch-chancellor like Cambacérès and Lebrun, the arch chancellor of the

Catholic cult.--Undoubtedly, he resists and is obstinate, but he is not

immortal, and if he does not yield, his successor will: it suffices to

choose one that is manageable, and to this end things work in the next

conclave.

"With my influence and our forces in Italy," Napoleon says

afterwards,[5139] "I did not despair, sooner or later, by one means

or another, of obtaining for myself the control of the Pope, and,

thenceforward, what an influence, what a lever on the opinion of the

rest of the world!"

"Had I returned victorious from Moscow, I intended to exalt the Pope

beyond measure, to surround him with pomp and deference. I would have

brought him to no longer regretting his temporality; I would have made

him an idol. He would have lived alongside of me. Paris would have

become the capital of Christendom, and I would have governed the

religious world the same as the political world.... I would have had

my religious as well as legislative sessions; my councils would have

represented Christianity; the Popes would have been merely their

presidents. I would have opened and closed these assemblies,

sanctioned and published their decrees, as was done by Constantine and

Charlemagne." In 1809, the restoration of the great Carlovingian and

Roman edifice had begun; its physical foundations were laid. By virtue

of a decree,[5140] "the expenses of the Sacred College and of the

Propaganda were declared imperial." The Pope, like the new dukes and

marshals, was endowed with a landed income on "property in different

parts of the empire, two millions of rural revenue free of all taxation.

"Necessarily" the Pope must have two palaces, one at Paris and the other

at Rome. He is already nearly fully installed in Paris, his person being

all that was lacking. On arriving from Fontainebleau, two hours off, he

would find everything belonging to his office; "the papers[5141] of the

missions and the archives of Rome were already there." "The Hôtel Dieu

was entirely given up to the departments of the court of Rome. The

district around Notre Dame and the Ile Saint-Louis was to be the

headquarters of Christendom!" Rome, the second center of Christendom,

and the second residence of the Pope, is declared[5142] "an imperial and

free city, the second city of the empire"; a prince of the empire, or

other grand dignitary, is to reside there and "hold the court of the

emperor." "After their coronation in the cathedral of Notre Dame at

Paris, the emperors" will go to Italy before the tenth year of their

reign, and be "crowned in the church of St. Peter at Rome." The heir to

the imperial throne "will bear the title and receive the honors of

the King of Rome." Observe the substantial features of this chimerical

construction. Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race,

instinct, imagination, and souvenirs, considers in his plan the future

of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we

find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France.

"Napoleon wanted to create the Italian kingdom over again,[5143]

combining Piedmont, Tuscany, etc., in one united independent nation,

bounded by the Alps and the sea.... This was to be the immortal trophy

erected in his honor.... He awaited impatiently the birth of a second

son that he might take him to Rome, crown him King of Italy and proclaim

the independence of the great peninsula under the regency of Prince

Eugene." Since Theodoric and the Lombard kings, it is the Pope who,

in preserving his temporal sovereignty and spiritual omnipotence, has

maintained the sub-divisions of Italy; let this obstacle be removed and

Italy will once more become a nation. Napoleon prepares the way,

and constitutes it beforehand by restoring the Pope to his primitive

condition, by withdrawing from him his temporal sovereignty and limiting

his spiritual omnipotence, by reducing him to the position of managing

director of Catholic consciences and head minister of the principal cult

authorized in the empire.

V. State domination of all religion.

Services which Napoleon desires or expects from the French

clergy.--His Roman idea of civil power.--Development of this

conception by the jurists.--Every religious association must

be authorized.--Legal statutes which fix the doctrine and

discipline of the four authorized Churches.--Legal

organization of the Catholic Church.--Its doctrine and

discipline to be that of the old Gallican Church.--New

situation of the French Church and new rôle of civil power.

--It sets aside its ancient obligations.--It retains and

augments its regalian rights.--The Church of France before

1789 and after 1802.--Increased preponderance and complete

dominion of the civil power.

In carrying out this plan, he will use the French clergy in mastering

the Pope, as the Pope has been made use of in mastering the French

clergy. To this end, before completing the Concordat and decreeing the

Organic Articles, he orders for himself a small library, consisting of

books on ecclesiastical law. The Latin works of Bossuet are translated

for him, and he has drawn up an exposition of the Gallican parliamentary

doctrine. The first thing is to go down to the roots of the subject,

which he does with extraordinary facility, and then, recasting and

shaping all theories to suit himself, he arrives at an original,

individual conception, at once coherent, precise, and practical; one

which covers the Cæsar and which he applies alike to all churches,

Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and even Jewish, to every religious

community now existing and in time to come. His master-idea is that

of the Roman legists and of ancient imperial jurisprudence; here, as

elsewhere, the modern Cæsar goes back beyond his Christian predecessors

to Constantine, and farther still, to Trajan and Augustus.[5144] So long

as belief remains silent and solitary, confined within the limits of

individual conscience, it is free, and the State has nothing to do with

it. But let it transgress these limits, address the public, bring people

together in crowds for a common purpose, manifest itself openly, it is

subject to control; forms of worship, ceremonies, preaching, instruction

and propaganda, the donations it calls forth, the assemblies it

convenes, the organization and maintenance of the bodies it engenders,

all the positive applications of the inward reverie, are temporal works.

In this sense, they form a province of the public domain, and come

within the competency of the government, of the administration and

of the courts. The State has a right to interdict, to tolerate, or

to authorize them, and always to give them proper direction. Sole and

universal proprietor of the outward realm in which single consciences

may communicate with each other, it intervenes, step by step, either to

trace or to bar the way; the road they follow passes over its ground and

belongs to it; its watch, accordingly, over their proceedings is, and

should be, daily; and it maintains this watch for its own advantage,

for the advantage of civil and political interests, in such a way that

concern for the other world may be serviceable and not prejudicial to

matters which belong to this one. In short, and as a summary, the First

Consul says, in a private conversation:

"The people want a religion, and this religion should be in the hands of

the government!"[5145]

On this theme, his jurists, old parliamentarians or conventionalists,

his ministers and counselors, Gallicans or Jacobins, his spokesmen in

the legislative assembly or the tribunate, all imbued with Roman law

or with the Contrat Social are capital megaphones for proclaiming the

omnipotence of the State in polished sentences. "The unity of public

power and its universality," says Portalis,[5146] "are a

necessary consequence of its independence." "Public power must be

self-sufficient; it is nothing if not all..." Public power cannot

tolerate rivals; it cannot allow other powers to establish themselves

alongside of it without its consent, perhaps to sap and weaken it. "The

authority of a State might become precarious if men on its territory

exercise great influence over minds and consciences, unless these men

belong to it, at least in some relation." It is careless "if it remains

unfamiliar or indifferent to the form and the constitution of the

government which proposes to govern souls," if it admits that the limits

within which the faith and obedience of believers "can be made or

altered without its support, if it has not, in its legally recognized

and avowed superiors, guarantees of the fidelity of inferiors." Such was

the rule in France for the Catholic cult previous to 1789, and such is

to be the rule, after 1801, for all authorized cults. If the State

authorizes them, it is "to direct such important institutions with a

view to the greatest public utility." Solely because it is favorable to

"their doctrine and their discipline" it means to maintain these intact

and prevent "their ministers from corrupting the doctrine entrusted to

their teaching, or from arbitrarily throwing off the yoke of discipline,

to the great prejudice of individuals and the State."[5147] Hence, in

the legal statute by which a Church is incorporated and realizes what

she is, it states in precise terms what it exacts or permits her to be;

henceforward she shall be this or that and so remain; her dogmas and her

canons, her hierarchy and her internal regime, her territorial

subdivisions and circumscriptions, her regular or casual sources of

income, her teachings and her liturgy are definite things and fixed

limitations. No ecclesiastical assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or

Israelite, shall formulate or publish any doctrinal or disciplinary

decision without the government's approbation.[5148] No ecclesiastical

assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or Israelite, shall be held without the

approval of the government. All sacerdotal authorities, bishops and

curés, pastors and ministers of both Protestant confessions,

consistorial inspectors and presidents of the Augsbourg Confession,

notables of each Israelite circumscription, members of each Israelite

consistory, members of the central Israelite consistory, rabbis and

grand-rabbis, shall be appointed or accepted by the government and paid

by it through an executory" decision of its prefects. All the professors

of Protestant or Catholic seminaries shall be appointed and paid by the

government. Whatever the seminary, whether Protestant or Catholic, its

establishment, its regulations, its internal management, the object and

spirit of its studies, shall be submitted to the approval of the

government. In each cult, a distinct, formulated, official doctrine

shall govern the teaching, preaching, and public or special instruction

of every kind; this, for the Israelite cult, is" the doctrine expressed

by the decisions of the grand Sanhedrin";[5149] for the two Protestant

cults, the doctrine of the Confession of Augsbourg, taught in the two

seminaries of the East, and the doctrine of the Reformed Church taught

in the Genevan seminary;[5150] for the Catholic cult, the maxims of the

Gallican Church, the declaration, in 1682, of the assembly of the

clergy[5151] and the four famous propositions depriving the Pope of any

authority over sovereigns in temporal matters, subordinating the Pope to

ecumenical councils in ecclesiastical and spiritual concerns, and which,

in the government of the French Church, limit the authority of the Pope

to ancient usages or canons inherited by that Church and accepted by the

State.

In this way, the ascendancy of the State, in ecclesiastical matters,

increases beyond all measure and remains without any counterpoise.

Instead of one Church, it maintains four, while the principal one, the

Catholic, comprising 33 million followers, and more dependent than under

the old monarchy, loses the privileges which once limited or compensated

it for its subjection.--Formerly the prince was its temporal head, on

condition that he should be its exterior arm, that it should have the

monopoly of education and the censorship of books, that he should use

his strong arm against heretics, schismatics and free-thinkers. Of all

these obligations which kings accepted, the new sovereign frees himself,

and yet, with the Holy See, he holds on to the same prerogatives and,

with the Church, the same rights as his predecessors. He is just as

minutely dictatorial as formerly with regard to the details of

worship. Sometimes he fixes the fees and perquisites of the priests

for administering the sacraments: "This charge is a purely civil and

temporal operation, since it resolves itself into a levy of so many

pence on the citizen. Bishops and priests should not be allowed to

decide here.[5152] The government alone must remain the arbiter

between the priest who receives and the person who pays." Sometimes,

he intervenes in the publication of plenary indulgence: "It is

essential[5153] that indulgences should not be awarded for causes which

might be contrary to public order or to the welfare of the country; the

political magistrate is equally interested in knowing what the authority

is that grants indulgences; if its title to act is legal, to what

persons indulgences are granted, what persons are entrusted with their

distribution, and what persons are to fix the term and duration of

extraordinary prayers."--Thus bound and held by the State, the Church is

simply one of its appendices, for its own free roots by which, in this

close embrace, it still vegetates and keeps erect have all been cut off

short; torn from the soil and grafted on the State, they derive their

sap and their roots from the civil powers. Before 1789, the clergy

formed a distinct order in temporal society and, above all others, a

body possessing property and exempt from taxes, a tax-payer apart which,

represented in periodical assemblies, negotiated every five years

with the King himself, granted him subsidies and, in exchange for this

"disinterested gift," secured for itself concessions or confirmations of

immunities, prerogatives and favors. Today, it is merely a collection

of ordinary individuals and subjects, even less than that--an

administrative staff similar to that of the university, of the

magistrature, of the treasury, and of the woods and forests, even more

closely watched and bridled, with more detailed precautions and stricter

interdictions. Before 1789, the curés and other second-class officials

were, for the most part, selected and installed without the prince's

intervention, sometimes by the bishop of the diocese or a neighboring

abbé, sometimes by independent collators, by the titular himself,[5154]

by a lay patron or a chapter, by a commune, by an indultaire, by the

pope, while the salary of each titular, large or small, was his private

property, the annual product of a piece of land or of some indebtedness

attached to his office and which he administered. Nowadays, every

incumbent, from the cardinal-archbishop down to a canon, cantonal curé,

and director or teacher in a seminary, is appointed or accepted by the

civil power to which he swears fidelity. His salary, set down in the

budget, is simply that of a public employee, so many francs and centimes

for which he comes monthly to the office of the treasury paymaster,

along with others of his colleagues who are employed by the State in

non-Catholic cults, together with others, his quasi-colleagues,

whom the State employs in the university, in the magistrature, in the

gendarmerie, and in the police.[5155] Such, in all branches of social

life, is the universal and final effect of the Revolution. In the

Church, as elsewhere, it has extended the interference and preponderance

of the State, not inadvertently but intentionally, not accidentally

but on principle.[5156] "The Constituent" (Assembly), says Siméon,

"had rightly recognized that, religion being one of the oldest and most

powerful means of government, it was necessary to bring it more than

it had been under the control of the government." Hence, the civil

constitution of the clergy; "its only mistake was not to reconcile

itself with the Pope." At present, thanks to the agreement between Pope

and government (Napoleon, First Consul), the new régime completes

the work of the ancient régime and, in the Church as elsewhere, the

domination of the centralizing State is complete.

VI. Napoleon Executes the Concordat.

Reasons for suppressing the regular clergy.--Authorized

religious associations.--The authorization revocable.

These are the grand lines of the new ecclesiastical establishment, and

the general connections by which the Catholic Church, like an apartment

in a building, finds itself included in and incorporated with the State.

It need not disconnect itself under the pretext of making itself more

complete; there it is, built and finished; it cannot add to or go beyond

this; no collateral and supplementary constructions are requisite which,

through their independence, would derange the architectural whole, no

monastic congregations, no body of regular clergy; the secular clergy

suffices. "Never[5157] has it been contested that the public power had

the right to dissolve arbitrary institutions which do not insist on the

essence of religion and which are judged suspicious or troublesome to

the State." As a principle, all religious communities should be judged

in this way; for they are spontaneous bodies; they form their own

organization, and without the aid of the State, through the free will

of their members; they live apart, according to the proper and peculiar

statute which they adopt, outside of lay society, alongside of the

established Church, under distinct chiefs chosen by themselves,

sometimes under foreign ones, all more or less independent, all, through

interest and by instinct, gathered around the Holy See, which, against

diocesan authority and episcopal jurisdiction, serves them as protector.

Formerly, the monks[5158] formed the Pope's militia; they recognized

no other sovereign, and thus were they more to be feared by governments

than the secular clergy. The latter, without them, "would never have

caused embarrassment;" henceforth there will be no other body.[5159] "I

want bishops, curés, vicars, and that's all! Religious communities have

been allowed to re-establish themselves against my instructions;--I am

informed that, at Beauvais, the Jesuits have formed establishments under

the name of the Fathers of Faith. It should not be allowed"--and he

prohibits it by decree.[5160] He dissolves "all associations formed

under the pretext of religion and unauthorized." He decides that, in

future, "no aggregation or association of men or of women shall be

formed under pretext of religion unless formally authorized;" he enjoins

the prosecuting attorneys of his courts "to prosecute even by extra

proceedings all persons of both sexes who directly or indirectly

violate this decree." He reserves to himself, however, the faculty

of authorizing communities by which he can profit, and, in fact, he

authorizes several of these as instruments which society needs, or

which are useful to the State, especially nursing or teaching sisters

of charity,[5161] the brethren of Christian schools,[5162] and, first

in rank, the Lazarists and the Fathers of foreign missions.[5163] "These

monks," he says,[5164] will be of great service in Asia, in Africa, and

in America. I will send them to procure information on the state of the

country. Their robe protects them, while it is a cover to political

and commercial designs.... I will allow them a capital to start with

of 15,000 francs rental.... They cost little, are respected by savages,

and, having no official character, can not compromise the government."

Moreover, "religious zeal leads them to undertake work and to face

perils which are beyond the strength of a civil agent."--Of course, as

they are "secret diplomatic agents," the government must keep them

in hand and direct them. Consequently, "their superior must no longer

reside in Rome, but at Paris." The same precaution is taken with

reference to other congregations, which, in teaching or in charity,

become regular auxiliaries of the lay power. "The general-superior of

the Sisters of Charity will live in Paris[5165]; the entire body will

then be in the hands of the government." As to the brethren of the

Christian schools, Napoleon absorbs these in his university.[5166] "They

must be licensed by the grand-master,[5167] who will certify to their

internal regulations, accept their oaths, prescribe a special costume,

and superintend their schools." Observe the exigencies of the government

at this point, its measures for controlling the religious orders

authorized by it. Abbé Hanon,[5168] the common superior of the Sisters

of Saint-Vincent de Paul, having refused to place Madame Lætitia

(Napoleon's mother) at the head of the council of the order, is carried

off at night and shut up at Fenestrelles,[5169] while the Sisters,

who, following the instructions of their founder, refuse to recognize a

superior appointed by the civil power, are treated in the same manner as

formerly the nuns of Port-Royal.[5170]

"It is time to put an end to this scandal of the Sisters of Charity in

rebellion against their superiors. It is my intention to suppress all

the houses which, in twenty-four hours after the notice you give them,

do not return to subordination. You will replace the houses suppressed,

not by Sisters of the same order, but by those of another order of

charity. The Sisters at Paris will lose their influence, which will be a

good thing."

Whatever the communities may be, the authorization by which they

organize is merely a favor, and every favor granted may be withdrawn.

"I will have no more missions of any kind.[5171] I established

missionaries in Paris and gave them a house: I cancel it all. I am

content with religion at home; I do not care to spread it abroad... . I

make you responsible if (in a month from this) on the first of October

there are any missions or congregations still existing in France."--

Thus does the regular clergy live, under a revocable title, by

toleration, despotically, suspended by a thread which, perhaps to-

morrow, may be cut at the masters pleasure.

VII. System to which the regular clergy is subject.

System to which the regular clergy is subject.--Restoration

and application of Gallican doctrines.--Gallicanism and

submission of the new ecclesiastical staff.--Measures taken

to insure the obedience of the existing clergy and that of

the clergy in the future.--Seminaries.--Small number of

these allowed.--Conditions granted to them.--Proceedings

against suspicious teachers and undisciplined pupils.

The secular clergy remains, better protected, it seems, and by a less

precarious statute, for this statute is an international and diplomatic

act, a solemn and bilateral treaty which binds the French government,

not only to itself but to another government, to an independent

sovereign and the recognized head of the whole Catholic

Church.--Consequently, it is of prime importance to rebuild and raise

higher the barriers which, in ancient France, separated the secular

clergy from the Pope, the customs and regulations which constituted

the Gallican Church a province apart in the Church universal, the

ecclesiastic franchises and servitudes which restricted the Pope's

jurisdiction in order that the jurisdiction of the king might be

extended. All these servitudes to the advantage of the lay sovereign,

and all these franchises to the prejudice of the ecclesiastic sovereign,

are maintained and increased by the new statute. By virtue of the

Concordat and by consent of the Pope, the First Consul acquires the

same rights and privileges in relation to the Holy See as the old

government,"[5172] that is to say the same exclusive right to nominate

future French cardinals and to have as many as before in the sacred

college, the same right to exclude in the sacred conclave, the same

faculty of being the unique dispenser in France of high ecclesiastical

places and the prerogative of appointing all the bishops and archbishops

on French territory. And better still, by virtue of the Organic Articles

and in spite of the Pope's remonstrances, he interposes, as with the

former kings, his authority, his Council of State and his tribunals

between the Holy See and the faithful. "No bull, brief, rescript,

decree... of the court of Rome, even when bearing only on individuals,

shall be received, published, printed or otherwise executed without

permission of the government. No person, bearing the title of apostolic

nuncio, legate, vicar or commissioner, ... shall, without the same

authorization, exercise on the French soil or elsewhere any function

in relation to the interests of the Gallican Church.... All cases of

complaint by ecclesiastical superiors and other persons shall be brought

before the Council of State."[5173] Every minister of a cult[5174] who

shall have carried on a correspondence with a foreign court on religious

matters or questions without having previously informed the Minister of

Worship and obtained his sanction shall, for this act alone, be subject

to a penalty of from one hundred to five hundred francs and imprisonment

during a term of from one month to two years. Every communication from

high to low and from low to high between the French Church and its Roman

head, cut off at will, intervention by a veto or by approval of all

acts of pontifical authority, to be the legal and recognized head of

the national clergy,[5175] to become for this clergy an assistant,

collateral, and lay Pope--such was the pretension of the old government,

and such, in effect, is the sense, the juridical bearing, of the

Gallican maxims.[5176] Napoleon pro-claims them anew, while the edict

of 1682, by which Louis XIV. applied them with precision, rigor and

minuteness, "is declared the general law of the empire."[5177]

There are no opponents to this doctrine, or this use of it, in France.

Napoleon counts on not encountering any, and especially among his

prelates. Gallican before 1789, the whole clergy were more or less so

through education and tradition, through interest and through pride;

now, the survivors of this clergy are those who provide the new

ecclesiastical staff, and, of the two distinct groups from which it

is recruited, neither is predisposed by its antecedents to become

ultramontane. Some among these, who have emigrated, partisans of the

ancient régime, find no difficulty in thus returning to old habits and

doctrines, the authoritative protectorate of the State over the Church,

the interference of the Emperor substituted for that of the King, and

Napoleon, in this as in other respects, the legitimate, or legitimated,

successor of the Bourbons. The others, who have sworn to the civil

constitution of the clergy, the schismatics, the impenitent and, in

spite of the Pope, reintegrated by the First Consul in the Church,[5178]

are ill-disposed towards the Pope, their principal adversary, and

well-disposed towards the First Consul, their unique patron. Hence,

"the heads[5179] of the Catholic clergy, that is to say, the bishops and

grand-vicars,... are attached to the government;" they are "enlightened"

people, and can be made to listen to reason.

"But we have three or four thousand curés or vicars, the progeny of

ignorance and dangerous through their fanaticism and their passions."

If these and their superiors show any undisciplined tendencies, the

curb must be tightly drawn. Fournier, a priest, having reflected on the

government from his pulpit in Saint-Roch, is arrested by the police,

put in Bicêtre as mad,[5180] and the First Consul replies to the Paris

clergy who claim his release "in a well-drawn-up petition,":

"I wanted[5181] to prove to you, when I put my cap on the wrong side

out, that priests must obey the civil power."

Now and then, a rude stroke of this sort sets an example and keeps the

intractable on the right path who would otherwise be tempted to leave

it. At Bayonne, concerning a clerical epistle in which an ill-sounding

phrase occurs, "the grand-vicar who drew it up is sent to Pignerol for

ten years, and I think that the bishop is exiled."[5182]

At Séez, when constitutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is

compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbé Langlois, his principal

counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station

to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with

straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for

nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred

to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the

reign.

Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond

the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will

answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that

there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as formerly existed in the

departments of Calvados, Morbihan and many others;... the formation of

young priests must not be left to ignorance and fanaticism."--"Catholic

schools need the surveillance of the government."--There is to be one of

these in each metropolitan district, and "this special school must be

in the hands of the authorities."--"The directors and teachers shall

be appointed by the First Consul"; men will be placed there who are

"cultivated, devoted to the government and friendly to toleration; they

will not confine themselves to teaching theology, but will add to this

a sort of philosophy and correct worldliness."--A future curé, a priest

who controls laymen and belongs to his century, must not be a monk

belonging to the other world, but a man of this world, able to adapt

himself to it, do his duty in it with propriety and discretion, accept

the legal establishment of which he is a part, not damn his Protestant

neighbors, Jews or freethinkers too openly, be a useful member of

temporal society and a loyal subject of the civil power; let him be

a Catholic and pious, but within just limits; he shall not be an

ultramontanist or a bigot.--Precautions are taken to this effect. No

seminarist may become subdeacon without the consent of the government,

and the list of ordinations each year, sent to him at Paris by the

bishop, is returned, cut down to the strictly necessary.[5184] From the

very beginning, and in express terms,[5185] Napoleon has reserved all

curacies and vicarages for "ecclesiastics pensioned by virtue of the

laws of the Constituent Assembly." Not only, through this confusion

between pension and salary, does he lighten a pecuniary burden, but

he greatly prefers old priests to young ones; many of them have been

constitutionnels, and all are imbued with Gallicanism; it is he who has

brought them back from exile or saved them from oppression, and they

are grateful for it; having suffered long and patiently, they are weary,

they must have grown wiser, and they will be manageable. Moreover,

he has precise information about each one; their past conduct is a

guarantee of their future conduct; he never chooses one of them with his

eyes shut. On the contrary, the candidates for ordination are strangers,

the government which accepts them knows nothing about them except that,

at the age when the fever of growth or of the imagination takes a fixed

form, they have been subject for five years to a theological education

and to a cloistral life. The chances are that, with them, the

feverishness of youth will end in the heat of conviction and in the

prejudices of inexperience; in this event, the government which exempts

them from the conscription to admit them in the Church exchanges a good

military recruit for a bad ecclesiastical recruit; in place of a servant

it creates an opponent. Hence, during the fifteen years of his reign,

Napoleon authorizes only six thousand new ordinations,[5186] in all

four hundred per annum, one hundred for each diocese or six or seven per

annum. Meanwhile, by his university decrees, he lets lay daylight into

clerical enclosures[5187] and shuts the door of all ecclesiastical

dignities to suspicious priests.[5188] For more security, in every

diocese in which "the principles of the bishop" do not give him full

satisfaction, he prohibits all ordination, nomination, promotion, or

favor whatever. "I have stricken off[5189] all demands relating to the

bishoprics of Saint-Brieuc, Bordeaux, Ghent, Tournay, Troyes and the

Maritime Alps.... My intention is that you do not, for these dioceses,

propose to me any exemption of service for conscripts, no nominations

for scholarships, for curacies, or for canonries. You will send in a

report on the dioceses which it would be well to strike with this ban."

Towards the end, the Gallicism of Bossuet no longer suffices for him; he

allowed it to be taught at Saint-Sulpice, and M. Emery, director of this

institution, was the priest in France whom he esteemed the most and

most willingly consulted; but a pupil's imprudent letter had been just

intercepted, and, accordingly, the spirit of that association is a

bad one. An order of expulsion of the director is issued and the

installation in his place of a new one "day after to-morrow," as well as

new administrators of whom none shall be Sulpician.[5190] "Take measures

to have this congregation dissolved. I will have no Sulpicians in the

seminary of Paris.[5191] Let me know the seminaries that are served

by Sulpicians in order that they too may be sent away from these

seminaries."[5192]--And let the seminarists who have been badly taught

by their masters take heed not to practice in their own behalf the

false doctrines which the State proscribes; especially, let them

never undertake, as they do in Belgium, to disobey the civil power in

deference to the Pope and their bishop. At Tournay,[5193] all those over

eighteen years of age are sent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young

or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the

rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or

sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a

country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics

and contagion.--There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbé

d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope,

Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:

"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being

taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"

So behind all his institutions one discovers the military sanction, the

arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike;

involuntarily, the eyes anticipates the flash of the blade, and the

flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.

VIII. Administrative Control.

Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.--Motives for

subordinating the lesser clergy.--The displacement of

assistant priests.--Increase of episcopal authority.--Hold

of Napoleon over the bishops.

Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church,

as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a

naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he

has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains

invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society,

especially such a sovereign as he is,--nominally Catholic, scarcely

Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,--will

never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become

and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable

to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike

incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to

utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by

an administrative bureau (régie), but by a protectorate, in which all

indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the

necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the

governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their

suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black,

celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and

in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of curés and vicars, and the

other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.

Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use

it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and

the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will

govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has

the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops

than forty thousand vicars and curés; in this particular we need

not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either

antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the

second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before

1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal

despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by

theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the

appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea

before the officialité, the permanent tie by which the titular curé,

once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed

himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal

Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of

curés," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and

the number of assistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at

will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day

to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any

court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable curés are the four

thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering

thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the

discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and

displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod,

he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from

the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease

near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried

in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and

still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of

five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by

the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viaticum, even temporary,

excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without respect, demeaned, a

vagabond in the great lay world whose ways are unknown to him and whose

careers are closed to him. Henceforth, and forever, bread is taken out

of his mouth; if he has it to-day, it is lacking on the morrow. Now,

every three months, the list of succursalists at five hundred francs

drawn up by the bishop, must be countersigned by the prefect. In his

upper cabinet, near the mantelpiece on which the visiting-cards of

every considerable personage in the department are displayed, facing the

emperor's bust, the two delegates of the emperor, his two responsible

and judicial managers, the two superintended overseers of the

conscription, confer together on the ecclesiastical staff of the

department. In this as in other matters, they are and feel themselves

kept in check from on high, curbed and forced, willingly or not, to

come to some agreement. Compulsory collaborators by institution, each

an auxiliary of the other in the maintenance of public order, they

read over article by article the list of appointments of their common

subordinates; should any name have bad notes, should any succursalist

be marked as noisy, undesirable, or suspect, should there be any

unfavorable report by the mayor, gendarmerie or upper police, the

prefect, about to sign, lays down his pen, quotes his instructions and

demands of the bishop against the delinquent some repressive measure,

either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior

parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom

the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect

this act of complacency.

Some months after the publication of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle

Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the

church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and

the curé, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the

church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats

at the curé; an actor makes a speech to appease the tumult, and finally

the coffin is borne off to the church of Les Filles-Saint-Thomas, where

the assistant priest, "familiar with the moral of the gospel," performs

the funeral service. Incidents of this kind disturb the tranquility

of the streets and denote a relaxation of administrative discipline.

Consequently the government, doctor in theology and canon law,

intervenes and calls the ecclesiastical superior to account. The first

Consul, in an article in the Moniteur, haughtily gives the clergy their

instructions and explains the course that will be pursued against them

by his prelates. "The Archbishop of Paris orders the curé of Saint-Roch

into retirement for three months, in order that he may bear in mind the

injunction of Jesus Christ to pray for one's enemies, and, made sensible

of his duties by meditation, may become aware that these superstitious

customs..., which degrade religion by their absurdities, have been done

away with by the Concordat and the law of Germinal 18." From now on

all priests and curés are prudent, circumspect, obedient, and

reserved,[5198] because their spiritual superiors are so as well,

and could not be otherwise. Each prelate, posted in his diocese, is

maintained there in isolation; a watch is kept on his correspondence; he

may communicate with the Pope only through the Minister of Worship;

he has no right to act in concert with his colleagues; all the general

assemblies of the clergy, all metropolitan councils, all annual synods

are suppressed. The Church of France has ceased to exist as one corps,

while its members, carefully detached from each other and from their

Roman head, are no longer united, but juxtaposed. Confined to a

circumscription, like the prefect, the bishop himself is simply an

ecclesiastical prefect, a little less uncertain of his tenure of office;

undoubtedly, his removal will not be effected by order, but he can be

forced to send in his resignation. Thus, in his case, as well as for the

prefect, his first care will be not to excite displeasure, and the next

one, to please. To stand well at court, with the minister and with the

sovereign, is a positive command, not only on personal grounds, but for

the sake of Catholic interests. To obtain scholarships for the pupils of

his seminary,[5199] to appoint the teachers and the director that

suits him, to insure the acceptance of his canons, cantonal curés, and

candidates for the priesthood, to exempt his sub-deacons from military

service, to establish and to defray the expenses of the chapels of his

diocese, to provide parishes with the indispensable priest, with regular

services and the sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be

enjoyed without an affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important

still, devotion. Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has

selected him, it is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is

about, open to human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience;

in the eyes of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality

attached to his system and person.[51100] Moreover, with his candidates,

he has always taken into consideration the hold they give him through

their weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and

expenditure, their love of money, titles and precedence, their ambition,

desire for promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places

for protégés and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages

and finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or

four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[51101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who

he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content to

be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher and

higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly assert, in praise of the new

order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these or those

prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or been made

senators.[51102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret services,

pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in ready money.

In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation and remorse,

nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and French, 66 prelates

out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They yield to seductions

and threats; they accept or submit, even in spiritual matters, to his

positive ascendancy.[51103]

Moreover, among these dignitaries, nearly all of whom are blameless, or,

at least, who behave well and are generally honorable, Napoleon[51104]

finds a few whose servility is perfect, unscrupulous individuals ready

for anything that an absolute prince could desire, like Bishops Bernier

and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other

the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in

the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury,

archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt,

archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before

the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral

letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his Savona prison as on his

throne at Rome. After 1806,[51106] Napoleon, that he may control men

of greater suppleness, prefers to take his prelates from old noble

families--the frequenters of Versailles, who regard the episcopate as

a gift bestowed by the prince and not by the Pope, a lay favor reserved

for younger sons, a present made by the sovereign to those around his

person, on the understood condition that the partisan courtier who is

promoted shall remain a courtier of the master. Henceforth nearly

all his episcopal recruits are derived from "members of the old noble

stock." "Only these," says Napoleon, "know how to serve well."

IX. The Imperial Catechism

Political use of the episcopacy.--The imperial catechism.

--Pastoral letters.

From the first year the effect arrived at is better than could be

expected. "Look at the clergy,"[51107] said the First Consul to

Roederer; "every day shows that in spite of themselves their devotion to

the government is increasing, and much beyond their anticipation. Have

you seen the pastoral declaration of Boisgelin, archbishop of Tours?...

He says that the actual government is the legitimate government, that

God disposes of thrones and kings as he pleases and that he adopts the

chiefs whom the people prefer. Your yourself could not have said that

better." But notwithstanding that this is said in the pastoral letter,

it is again said in the catechism. No ecclesiastical publication is more

important: all Catholic children are to learn this by heart, for the

phrases they recite will be firmly fixed in their memories. Bossuet's

catechism is good enough, but it may be improved,--there is nothing

that time, reflection, emulation, and administrative zeal cannot render

perfect! Bossuet teaches children "to respect all superiors, pastors,

kings, magistrates, and the rest." "But these generalities," says

Portalis,[51108] "no longer suffice. They do not give the proper

tendency to the subject's submission. The object is to center the

popular conscience on the person of Your Majesty." Accordingly, let us

be precise, make appointments and secure support.

The imperial catechism, a great deal more explicit than the royal

catechism, adds significant development to the old one, along with extra

motives:

"We specially owe to our Emperor, Napoleon the First, love, respect,

obedience, fidelity, military service, and tributes ordained for the

preservation of the empire and his throne... For God has raised him up

for us in times of peril that he might restore public worship and the

holy religion of our fathers and be its protector."

Every boy and girl in each parish recite this to the vicar or curé after

vespers in their tiny voices as a commandment of God and of the Church,

as a supplementary article of the creed. Meanwhile the officiating

priest in the pulpit gravely comments on this article, already clear

enough, at every morning or evening service;[51109] by order, he

preaches in behalf of the conscription and declares that it is a sin to

try to escape from it, to be refractory; by order, again, he reads the

army bulletins giving accounts of the latest victories; always by order,

he reads the last pastoral letter of his bishop, a document authorized,

inspired and corrected by the police. Not only are the bishops obliged

to submit their pastoral letters and public instructions to the

censorship; not only by way of precaution, are they forbidden to print

anything except on the prefecture presses, but again, for still greater

security, the bureau of public worship is constantly advising them what

they must say. First and foremost, they must laud the Emperor. But in

what terms, and with what epithets, without indiscretion or mistake, in

order not to meddle with politics, not to appear as a party managed from

above, not to pass for megaphones, is not explained, and is therefore

a difficult matter. "You must praise the Emperor more in your pastoral

letters," said Réal, prefect of police, to a new bishop. "Tell me in

what measure." "I do not know," was the reply. Since the measure cannot

be prescribed, it must be ample enough. There is no difficulty as

regards other articles.--On every occasion the Paris offices take

care to furnish each bishop with a ready-made draft of his forthcoming

pastoral letter--the canvas on which the customary flowers of

ecclesiastical amplification are to be embroidered. It differs according

to time and place. In La Vendée and in the west, the prelates are to

stigmatize "the odious machinations of perfidious Albion," and explain

to the faithful the persecutions to which the English subject the Irish

Catholics. When Russia is the enemy, the pastoral letter must dwell

on her being schismatic; also on the Russian misunderstanding of the

supremacy of the Pope. Inasmuch as bishops are functionaries of

the empire, their utterances and their acts belong to the Emperor.

Consequently he makes use of them against all enemies, against each

rival, rebel or adversary, against the Bourbons, against the English and

the Russians, and, finally, against the Pope.

X. The Council of 1811.--The Concordat of 1813.

Similar to the Russian expedition, this is the great and last throw

of the dice, the decisive and most important of his ecclesiastical

undertakings, as the other is in political and military affairs. Just

as, under his leadership, he forces by constraint and, under his lead, a

coalition of the political and military powers of his Europe against

the Czar,--Austria, Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland,

Switzerland, the kingdom of Italy, Naples, and even Spain,--so does he

by constraint and under his lead coalesce all the spiritual authorities

of his empire against the Pope. He summons a council, consisting of

eighty-four bishops that are available in Italy and in France. He takes

it upon himself to drill them, and he makes them march. To state what

influences he uses would require a volume[51110]--theological and

canonical arguments, appeals to Gallican souvenirs and Jansenist

rancors, eloquence and sophisms, preparatory maneuvers, secret

intrigues, public acting, private solicitations, steady intimidation,

successful pressures, thirteen cardinals exiled and deprived of their

insignia, two other cardinals confined in Vincennes, nineteen Italian

bishops conveyed to France under escort, without bread or clothes. Fifty

priests of Parma, fifty of Plaisance, besides one hundred other Italian

priests, sent away or confined in Corsica. All congregations

of men in France--Saint-Lazare, Mission, Christian Doctrine,

Saint-Sulpice--dissolved and suppressed. Three bishops of the

council seized in bed at daylight, put into a cell and kept in close

confinement, forced to resign and to promise in writing not to carry on

correspondence with their dioceses; arrest of their adherents in their

dioceses; the Ghent seminarists turned into soldiers, and, with knapsack

on their backs, leaving for the army; professors at Ghent, the canons of

Tournay, and other Belgian priests shut up in the citadels of Bouillon,

Ham and Pierre-Chatel.[51111] Near the end, the council suddenly

dissolved because scruples arise, because it does not yield at once to

the pressure brought to bear on it, because its mass constitutes its

firmness, because men standing close together, side by side, stand all

the longer. "Our wine in the cask is not good," said Cardinal Maury;

"you will find that it will be better in bottles." Accordingly, to make

it ready for bottling, it must be filtered and clarified, so as to get

rid of the bad elements which disturb it and cause fermentation. Many

Opponents are in prison, many have retired from their dioceses, while

the rest are brought to Paris and cunningly worked upon, each member

in turn, apart and confined, téte-à-téte with the Minister of Worship,

until all, one by one, are brought to sign the formula of adhesion.

On the strength of this, the council, purged and prepared, is summoned

afresh to give its vote sitting or standing, in one unique session;

through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the

decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is passed as

ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted,

forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of

itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to

the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it

finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.

Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fashion, and

with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has

prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an

alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar,

which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are

made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling

and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an

independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate

and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition

against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical

territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all

disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the

victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the

final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every

kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of

the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces

and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied

claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command;

the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and

occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the

Quirinal taken by a nocturnal assault, the Pope seized and carried off

by post to Savona and there confined as a prisoner of state almost in

cellular seclusion,[51114] subject to the entreaties and manoeuvres of

an adroit prefect who works upon him, of the physician who is a paid

spy, of the servile bishops who are sent thither, alone with his

con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject

to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures,

to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no

longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and

even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115]

Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally,

after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely

conducted at night, secretly and incognito, over the entire road, with

no repose or pity though ill, except stopping once in a snow-storm at

the hospice on Mount Cenis, where he comes near dying; put back after

twenty-four hours in his carriage, bent double by suffering and in

constant pain; jolting over the pavement of the grand highway until

almost dead and landed at Fontainebleau, where Napoleon wishes to have

him ready at hand to work upon. "Indeed," he himself says, "he is

a lamb, an excellent, worthy man whom I esteem and am very fond

of."[51116]

An improvised tête-a-tête may probably prove effective with this gentle,

candid and tender spirit. Pius VII., who had never known ill-will,

might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by

caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the

prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius.

Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to

circumstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors,

stentorian and mild, tragic and comic by turns, the most eloquent of

sophists and the most irresistible of fascinators, as soon as he meets

a man face to face, he wins him, conquers him, and obtains the

mastery.[51117] In effect, after seeing the Pope for six days, Napoleon

obtains by persuasion what he could not obtain afar by constraint. Pius

VII. signs the new Concordat in good faith, himself unaware that, on

regaining his freedom and surrounded by his cardinals, who inform him

on the political situation, he will emerge from his bewilderment, be

attacked by his conscience, and, through his office, publicly accuse

himself, humbly repent, and in two months withdraw his signature.

Such, after 1812 and 1813, is the duration of Napoleon's triumphs

and the ephemeral result of his greatest military and ecclesiastical

achievements--Moskow, Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden, the Council of 1811

and the Concordat of 1813. Whatever the vastness of his genius may be,

however strong his will, however successful his attacks, his success

against nations and churches never is, and never can be, other than

temporary. Great historical and moral forces elude his grasp. In vain

does he strike, for their downfall gives them new life, and they rise

beneath the blow. With Catholic institutions,[51118] as with other

powers, not only do his efforts remain sterile, but what he accomplishes

remains inverse to the end he has in view. He aims to subjugate the

Pope, and he led the Pope on to omnipotence He aims at the maintenance

and strength of the Gallican spirit among the French clergy, and yet

brings them under the rule of the ultramontane spirit.[51119] With

extraordinary energy and tenacity, with all his power, which was

enormous, through the systematic and constant application of diverse and

extreme measures, he labored for fifteen years to rend the ties of the

Catholic hierarchy, take it to pieces, and, in sum, the final result of

all is to tie them faster and hasten its completion.

*****

[Footnote 5101: Se preface to "The Modern Régime," Vol. I.]

[Footnote 5102: On some of the ideas above indicated see "The Modern

Régime," Vol. I. p.120.]

[Footnote 5103: An allusion to Malthusianism, practiced by many heads

of families in France. M. Taine would probably have shown this practice

contrary to national welfare.--Tr.]

[Footnote 5104: Idolizing of children. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5105: Cf. "Les carnets de voyage."]

[Footnote 5106: On this idea see Volume I of "The Modern Régime," page

332, to the end of the chapter. (Ed. Laff. II. pp. 592 to 605).]

[Footnote 5107: Today this would probably be the media especially

television.]

[Footnote 5108: Memorial, IV.,259 (June 7 and 8, 1816); V., 323 (Aug.

17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5109: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X.]

[Footnote 5110: Idem, IV.,259, (June 7 and 8, 1816).--Pelet de la

Lozere, "Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état," p 223, (March 4,

1806).]

[Footnote 5111: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de

1801," by Portalis (published by Fréderick Portalis), p.10.--In his

speech on the organization of cults (Germinal 15, year X), Portalis,

although a good Catholic, adopts the same idea, because he is a legist

and one of the ancient Régime. "Religions, even false, have this

advantage, that they are an obstacle to the introduction of arbitrary

doctrines. Individuals have a center of faith; governments have no fear

of dogmas once known and which do not change. Superstition, so to say,

is regulated, circumscribed and kept within bounds which it cannot, or

dare not, go outside of."]

[Footnote 5112: Thibaudeau, p. 151 (Prairial 21, year X). "The First

Consul combated at length the different systems of the philosophy on

cults, natural religions, deism, etc. All that according to him, was

mere ideology."]

[Footnote 5113: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5114: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5115: Pelet de la Lozère, p, 223 (March 4, 1806).]

[Footnote 5116: Roederer, "Oevres complètes," III., 334 (Aug. 18,

1800).]

[Footnote 5117: What impression could this have made on Lenin? Could he

not have felt: "Perhaps Napoleon's logic was good at that time but now

with electricity, the steam engine and modern industrialism it will be

possible to do without the efficiency of capitalism and hence with its

inequalities and egoism? If so then we can recreate the equality

dreamt of by Babeuf, Robespierre, Saint Just and the other ancient

revolutionaries!!"]

[Footnote 5118: Ref.: "Where some people are very wealthy and others

have nothing, the result will either be extreme democracy or absolute

oligarchy, and despotism will come from either of these excesses."

Aristotle. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5119: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205 (February 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5120: Ibid., p. 201.]

[Footnote 5121: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 206, (Feb. 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5122: Mémorial, V., 323 (Aug. 17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5123: Pelet de la Lozère, p 201.]

[Footnote 5124: Mémorial, V., 353 (Aug. 17, 1816). Notes on "Les Quatre

Concordants," by M. de Pradt (Correspondence of Napoleon I., xxx.,

p.557).]

[Footnote 5125: Bourrienne, "Mémoires," V., 232.]

[Footnote 5126: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt

(Correspondence of Napoleon I., XXX., 638 and 639).]

[Footnote 5127: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5128: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt

(correspondence, XXX., 638).]

[Footnote 5129: Count Boulay de La Meurthe, "Négotiations du concordat."

(Extract from the correspondant, "1882, on the religious state of

France in November, 1800, and particularly on, the condition of the

constitutional church, the latter being very poor, disunited, with no

credit and no future.) The writer estimates the number of active priests

at 8000, of which 2000 are constitutionnels and 6000 orthodox."]

[Footnote 5130: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5131: Thibaudeau, p. 154 (words of the First consul) "What

makes the government liked is its respect for worship.... The priests

must be connected with the government."]

[Footnote 5132: Ibid., p.154: "Is it not better to organize worship and

discipline the priests rather than let things go on as they are?"]

[Footnote 5133: La Fayette, "Mémoires, II.", 200. ("Mes rapports avec le

Premier consul.")]

[Footnote 5134: D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et la Premier Empire,"

II.. 78 and 101. Napoleon's letters to Cardinal Fesch, Jan. 7, 1806;

to the Pope, Feb.22, 1806 and to cardinal Fesch, of the same date. "His

Holiness will have the same consideration for me in temporal matters

as I have for him in spiritual matters.... My enemies will be his

enemies."--"Tell people (in Rome) that I am Charlemagne, the sword of

the church, their emperor; that I must be treated the same; that they

should not know that there was a Russian empire.... If the Pope does

not accept my conditions, I shall reduce him to the condition he was in

before Charlemagne."]

[Footnote 5135: Decree, May 17, 1809. "Whereas, when Charlemagne,

emperor of the French, and out august predecessor, donated several

counties to the bishops of Rome, he gave them only under the title of

fiefs and for the welfare of his own states, and as by the said donation

Rome did not thereby cease to form part of his empire,... the states of

the Pope are now reunited to the French empire."]

[Footnote 5136: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810, title II., article

XII. "Any foreign sovereignty is incompatible with the exercise of any

spiritual sovereignty within the empire."]

[Footnote 5137: D'Haussonville, ibid., IV.,344. (Decree of the National

Council, Aug. 5, 1811.--Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813,

article 14.--Decree on the execution of this Concordat, March 23, 1813,

art. 4.)]

[Footnote 5138: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810, articles 13 and 14.]

[Footnote 5139: Mémorial, Aug.17, 1816.]

[Footnote 5140: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5141: Notes by Napoleon on the "Les Quatre Concordats de M. de

Pradt" (correspondence, XXX., 550). Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon," V.,

214. (Along with the Vatican archives, there were brought to Paris the

tiara and other insignia or ornaments of Pontifical dignity.)]

[Footnote 5142: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5143: Notes by Napoleon on "Les Quatre Concordats"

(Correspondence, XXX., 548).]

[Footnote 5144: Cf. Roman laws on the Collegia illicita, the first

source of which is the Roman conception of religion, the political and

practical use of augurs, auspices and sacred fowls.--It is interesting

to trace the long life and survivorship of this important idea from

antiquity down to the present day; it reappears in the Concordat and

in the Organic Articles of 1801, and still later in the late decrees

dissolving unauthorized communities and closing the convents of men.--

French jurists, and in particular Napoleon's jurists, are profoundly

imbued with the Roman idea. Portalis, in his exposition of the motives

for establishing metropolitan seminaries (March 14, 1804), supports the

decree with Roman law. "The Roman laws," he says, "place every thing

concerning the cult in the class of matters which belong essentially to

public rights."]

[Footnote 5145: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5146: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de

1801," by Portalis, p.87 (on the Organic Articles), p.29 (on the

organization of cults). "The ministers of religion must not pretend to

share in or limit public power.... Religious affairs have always been

classed by the different national codes among matters belonging to the

upper police department of the State... The political magistrate may and

should intervene in everything which concerns the outward administration

of sacred matters.... In France, the government has always presided,

in a more or less direct way, over the direction of ecclesiastical

affairs."]

[Footnote 5147: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 31.--Ibid.,

p.143: "To sum up: The Church possesses only a purely spiritual

authority; the sovereigns, in their capacity of political magistrates,

regulate temporal and mixed questions with entire independence, and, as

protectors, they have even the right to see to the execution of

canons and to repress, even in spiritual matters, the infractions of

pontiffs."]

[Footnote 5148: Articles Organiques. 1st. Catholic cult, articles 3, 4,

23, 24, 35, 39, 44, 62. 2nd. Protestant cults, articles 4, 5, 11, 14,

22, 26, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43.--Israelite cult, decree of

March 17, 1808, articles 4, 8, 9, 16, 23. Decree of execution, samedate,

articles 2 to 7.]

[Footnote 5149: Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 12, 21.]

[Footnote 5150: Articles Organiques (Protestant cults), 12 and 13.]

[Footnote 5151: Articles Organiques (Catholic cult), 24. Teachers

selected for the seminaries "will subscribe the declaration made by

the clergy of France in 1682; they will submit to teaching the doctrine

therein set forth."]

[Footnote 5152: "Dsicours, rapports, etc," by Portalis, p. 101.]

[Footnote 5153: Ibid, p. 378.]

[Footnote 5154: Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs des bénéfices

ecclésiastiques" (in the "Correspondant," Sep.10, 1889, p.883). A

benefice was then a sort of patrimony which the titulary, old or ill,

often handed over to one of his relatives. "A canonist of the eighteenth

century says that the resignation carried with it one third of the

income."]

[Footnote 5155: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie

Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 415.: "The nomination of Cardinal Maury

as arch-bishop of Paris was published on the same day that I had been

appointed prefect of police. The new arch-bishop had made too much noise

in the past for him not to have become known to me. He was as happy with

his appointment as I was unhappy with mine. I met him in the chateau

Fontainebleau and I have ever since been haunted by the noisy expression

of his happiness. He constantly repeated this sentence: "The Emperor has

just satisfied the two greatest requirements of his capital. With a good

police and a good clergy he can always be sure of public order, since an

arch-bishop is also a prefect of the police."]

[Footnote 5156: Report of Siméon to the tribunat on presenting to it the

Concordat and Organic Articles, Germinal 17, year X.--Henceforth

"the ministers of all cults will be subject to the influence of the

government which appoints or confirms them, to which they are bound

by the most sacred promises, and which holds them in its dependence by

their salaries."]

[Footnote 5157: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 40.--Emile

Ollivier, "Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," P.193. (Reply by

Portalis to the protests of the Holy See, Sep. 22, 1803.) Before 1789

Portalis writes: "The spectacle presented by the monks was not very

edifying.. .. The legislature having decided that religious vows could

not be taken up to twenty-one years of age,... this measure keeps

novices away; the monastic orders, sapped by the state of morals and by

time, could obtain no recruits; they languished in a state of inertia

and of disfavor which was worse than annihilation.... The era for

monastic institutions had passed."]

[Footnote 5158: Pelet de la Lozère, p.146. (Words of Napoleon, March 11,

1806.)]

[Footnote 5159: Pelet de la Lozère, p.207 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5160: Decree of Messidor 3, year XII (June 22, 1804).--Letter

of Napoleon to the King of Naples, April 14, 1807, on the suppression

of convents at Naples: "You know that I don't like monks, as I have

uprooted them everywhere." To his sister Elisa, May 17, 1806: "Keep on

and suppress the convents."]

[Footnote 5161: "État des congrégations, communantés et associations

religieuses," drawn up in execution of article 12 of the law of Dec. 12,

1876 (Imprimerie nationale, 1878): 1st. congregations of women with a

general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from Prairial 28, year

XI, to January 13, 1813, total, 42; 2nd. communities of women without a

general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from April 9, 1806, to

Sept. 28, 1813, total, 205.]

[Footnote 5162: Ibid., Brethren of the Christian Schools, namely, of

Saint Yon, authorized March 17, 1808.]

[Footnote 5163: Ibid., congregation of the Mission of Saint-Lazare,

authorized Prairial 17, year XI.--Congregation of the Seminary of

Foreign Missions, authorized Germinal 2, year XIII.]

[Footnote 5164: Pelet de la Lozère, p.208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5165: Pelet de la Lozère, P.209]

[Footnote 5166: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 109.]

[Footnote 5167: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes

après la Révolution," p. 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First

consul, Frimaire to, year XII.) "Henceforth," says Portalis, "the

superior-general at Rome abandons all inspection of the Christian

Brothers. In France, it is understood that the Brothers will have a

superior general resident at Lyons."]

[Footnote 5168: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148.]

[Footnote 5169: Fortress in the Italian Alps. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5170: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148. Letter of Napoleon to

the Minister of Worship, March 3, 1811 (omitted in the published

correspondence).]

[Footnote 5171: Ibid., IV.,p.133. (Letter by Napoleon, Sep. 2, 1809,

omitted in the "Correspondence.")]

[Footnote 5172: Concordat, articles 4, 5, 16.]

[Footnote 5173: Articles Organiques, I., pp. 2, 6.]

[Footnote 5174: Code pénal, decree of Feb. 16-20, 1810, article 207.]

[Footnote 5175: Napoleon's own expressions: "I may regard myself as the

head of the Catholic ministry, since the Pope has crowned me." (Pelet

de la Lozère, p. 210, July 17, 1806.)--Note the word crowned (sacré).

Napoleon, as well as former kings, considers himself as clothed with

ecclesiastical dignity.]

[Footnote 5176: On the sense and bearing of Gallican maxims cf. the

whole of the answer by Portalis to Cardinal Caprara. (Émile Ollivier,

"Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," p.150.)]

[Footnote 5177: Decree of Feb.25, 1810. (The edict of Louis XIV. is

attached to it.) Prohibition to teach or write "anything opposed to

the doctrine contained" in the declaration of the French clergy. "Every

professor of theology must sign and submit to teaching the doctrine

therein set forth."--In establishments where there are several

professors "one of them will be annually directed to teach the said

doctrine."--In colleges where there is but one professor "he will be

obliged to teach it one of three consecutive years."--The professors are

required to hand in to the competent authority "their minutes dictated

to the pupils."--None of them can be "licensed, whether in theology or

in canon law, nor graduated as doctor, without having maintained the

said doctrine in one of his theses."]

[Footnote 5178: Cf., for details, d'Haussonville, I., p.200 et seq.]

[Footnote 5179: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205. (Words of Napoleon, Feb. 4,

1804.)]

[Footnote 5180: A procedure used by Stalin and copied by all his

satellite states. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5181: Thibaudeau, p.157 (Messidor 2, year X).]

[Footnote 5182: Roederer, III., pp. 535, 567.]

[Footnote 5183: Pelet de la Lozère, p.203. (Napoleon's words, Feb. 4,

1804.)--Law of March 14, 1804.]

[Footnote 5184: Cf. "Letters of Mgr. Claude Simon, bishop of Grenoble,

April 18, 1809, and October 6, 1811."]

[Footnote 5185: Articles Organiques, p.68.]

[Footnote 5186: Bercastel and Henrion, "Histoire générale de l'Église,"

XIII., p.32. (Speech by M. Roux-Laborie, deputy in 1816.)--At the

present day, the ordinations oscillate between 1200 and 1700 per annum.]

[Footnote 5187: Decree of November 15, 1811, articles 28, 29, 32. "On

and after July 1, 1812, all secondary ecclesiastical schools (small

seminaries) which may not be situated in towns possessing a lycée or

college shall be closed. No secondary ecclesiastical school shall be

placed in the country. In all places where there are ecclesiastical

schools the pupils of these schools shall pursue their studies in the

lycée or college classes."]

[Footnote 5188: "Correspondence of Napoleon (notes for the Minister

of Worship), July 30, 1806." In order to be curé of the first class,

chanoin, vicar-general or bishop one must henceforth be bachelor,

licencié, doctor in the university grades, "which the university may

refuse in case the candidate shall be known to entertain ultramontane

ideas or ideas dangerous to authority."]

[Footnote 5189: D'Haussonville, V., p.144 et seq. (Letter of Napoleon to

the Minister of Worship, Oct.22, 1811, omitted in the "correspondence.")

The letter ends with these words: "This mode of working must be kept

secret."]

[Footnote 5190: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, II., p. 374.

The order of expulsion (June 13, 1810) ends with these words: "Immediate

possession is to be taken of the house which might belong to some

domain and which, at least in this case, could be considered as public

property, since it might belong to a congregation. If it is found to be

private property belonging to M. Emery or to any other person, the

rents might first be paid and then afterwards it might be required, save

indemnity, as useful for the public service." This shows in full the

administrative and fiscal spirit of the French State, its heavy hand

being always ready to fall imperiously on every private individual and

on all private property.]

[Footnote 5191: Letter of Napoleon, Oct. 8, 1811.]

[Footnote 5192: Ibid. Nov. 22, 1811.]

[Footnote 5193: D'Haussonville, V., p.282. (Letter of Napoleon, Aug.

14, 1813, omitted in the correspondence.)--"Mémoires" du Chancelier

Pasquier, II." pp. 88-91.]

[Footnote 5194: Roederer, III., p.430 (Germinal 19, year X): "The legate

was received today in the consular palace; in making his speech, he

trembled like a leaf."]

[Footnote 5195: Pelet de la Lozère, p.206 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5196: Decrees of May 31, 1804, Dec.26, 1804, and Sep.30. 1807,

with the list of succursals by departments.--Besides the succursalists

paid by the State, there were vicars not less dependent on the bishop

and maintained by allowances from the communes or by private donations.

(Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p.32, speech by M. Roux-Laborie in the

chamber of Deputies, 1816.) "In his re-composition of the Church of

France the usurper established 12,000 vicars dependent on alms, and it

will not surprise you that, instead of 12,000, there were only 5000

who were courageous enough to die of starvation or implore public

charity.... Thus are 4000 country churches without worship or

minister."]

[Footnote 5197: Thibaudeau, p. 166, and article of Brumaire 30, in the

Moniteur.]

[Footnote 5198: Roederer, III., p. 479 et seq. (Report on the

Senatorerie of Caen.) The priests everywhere feel that they are watched

and set aside. "Most of those I encounter exclaim, Poor curé, an

unfortunate curé. The functionaries are devoted to the Emperor as

their sole support against the nobles, whom they dread, and against the

priests, whom they slightly esteem.... The military, the judges, the

administrators when alluding to the priests or to religion merely smile;

the priests, on the other hand, express very little confidence in the

functionaries."]

[Footnote 5199: Decree of Sept. 30, 1804 (with allotment of 800

scholarships and 1600 demi-scholarships to each diocesan seminary).

These will be allowed us on being presented by the bishops.]

[Footnote 51100: D'Haussonville, II., p. 227.]

[Footnote 51101: Idem. IV. Order of arrest of M. d'Avian, archbishop of

Bordeaux, as one of the opponents of the Council (July 11, 1811). Savary

himself, Minister of Justice, raises objections. "Sire, do nothing with

M. d'Avian. He is a saint and we shall have everybody against us."]

[Footnote 51102: Idem., IV. p. 58. Address of the ecclesiastical

commission enumerating the favors granted to religion, "the legion

of Honor, conferred on many prelates, the titles of baron and count

assigned to bishops and archbishops of the Empire, the admission of

several of these to the legislative assembly and senate."]

[Footnote 51103: D'Haussonville, IV.,p. 366. (Last session of the

national council, August 5, 1811.)]

[Footnote 51104: Reading this, as Lenin must have done, could he help

but dream of the day, when he could become head of a state, head of a

foreign service, of a secret police force and hence be able to subvert

the entire world including the religious organizations, the political

parties, diplomatic services not to speak of international organizations

in New York or Brussels. (SR.)]

[Footnote 51105: Idem., I., pp. 203-205.]

[Footnote 51106: Idem., p. 228. Cf. the "Almanach impérial de

1806-1814."--Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon,"V., p. 208. The Prince de

Rohan, head chaplain, writes in a request he makes, The great Napoleon

is my tutelary divinity. On the margin of this request Napoleon attaches

the following decision: "The Duc de Frioul will pay to the head chaplain

12,000 francs,--tax on receipts of the theatres." (Feb. 15, 1810.)

Another example of the same type is M. Roquelaure, archbishop of

Malines, who addresses Josephine with a little ancient-régime speech,

at once episcopal and gallant. The First Consul, therefore, makes him

Member of the Institute. (Bourrienne, V., p. 130.) This archbishop, in

the administration of his diocese, zealously applies the policy of the

First Consul. "We have seen him suspend from his functions a priest who

had exhorted a dying man to restore ecclesiastical property which he had

taken." ("Dictionnaire biographique," published at Leipsic by Eymery,

1806, 1808.)]

[Footnote 51107: Roederer, III., p. 459 (December 30, 1802).]

[Footnote 51108: D'Haussonville, II., 257. (Report by Portalis to the

Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)--Idem., II., 226.]

[Footnote 51109: D'Haussonville, II., 237, 239, 272.--Pelet de la

Lozère, 201: "At other times Napoleon praised the priests, wanted

their services, largely attributing the departure of conscripts and the

submission of the people to their influence."--Idem, 173 (May 20, 1806,

words of Napoleon): "The Catholic priests behave very well and are of

great service. It is owing to them that the conscription this year has

been better than in former years... No branch of the State speaks so

well of the government."]

[Footnote 51110: D'Haussonville, III, IV.,and V., passim.]

[Footnote 51111: "Mémoires," by the Chancelier Pasquier, IV.,358.]

[Footnote 51112: D'Haussonville, IV.,366 (last phrase of the text): "A

deputation of six bishops will go and beg His Holiness to confirm this

decree."]

[Footnote 51113: To an ordinary reader, even Catholic, if not versed!in

canon law, Napoleon's exactions seem mediocre and even acceptable;

they reduce themselves down to fixing a delay and seeming to add to the

competency of councils and the authority of bishops. (D'Haussonville,

IV.,366, session of the council, Aug. 5, 1811, propositions adopted and

decree. Cf. the Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813, article 4.)]

[Footnote 51114: Comte D'Haussonville, IV.,121 and following pages.

(Letters of the prefect, M. de Chabrol, letters of Napoleon not inserted

in the "Correspondence," narration of Dr. Claraz.) 6000 francs, a

present to the bishop of Savona, 12,000 francs salary to Dr. Porta, the

Pope's physician. "Dr. Porta," writes the prefect, "seems disposed to

serve us indirectly with all his power.... Efforts are made to affect

the Pope either by all who approach him or by all the means in our

power."]

[Footnote 51115: Ibid. (Letters of M. de Chabrol, May 14 and 30, 1811.)

"The Pope has fallen into a state of stupor.... The physician fears a

case of hypochondria;... his health and reason are affected." Then, in a

few days: "The state of mental alienation has passed."]

[Footnote 51116: Mémorial (Aug.17, 1816).]

[Footnote 51117: D'Haussonville, V., 244. Later, the Pope keeps silent

about his interviews with Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood

that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even

treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."--Napoleon met

him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers,

XV., 295.)--It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these

tête-à-tête conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et

Servitudes Militaires," by Alfred de Vigny.]

[Footnote 51118: Comte Chaptal, "Notes": "No, in the course of

sixteen years of a stormy government, Bonaparte never met with so much

resistance and never suffered so many disappointments as were caused

by his quarrel with the Pope. There is no event in his life which more

alienated the people as his proceedings and conduct towards the Pope."]

[Footnote 51119: Ultramontanism; a set of doctrines establishing the

pope's absolute authority.]