Concordat of 1801
The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between the First French Republic and the Holy See, signed by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII on 15 July 1801 in Paris.[1] It remained in effect until 1905, except in Alsace–Lorraine, where it remains in force. It sought national reconciliation between the French Revolution and Catholics and solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France, with most of its civil status restored. This resolved the hostility of devout French Catholics against the revolutionary state. It did not restore the vast Church lands and endowments that had been seized during the Revolution and sold off. Catholic clergy returned from exile, or from hiding, and resumed their traditional positions in their traditional churches. Very few parishes continued to employ the priests who had accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of the revolutionary regime. While the Concordat restored much power to the papacy, the balance of church-state relations tilted firmly in Bonaparte's favour. He selected the bishops and supervised church finances.[2][3]
Bonaparte and the Pope both found the Concordat useful. Similar arrangements were made with the Church in territories controlled by France, especially Italy and Germany.[4]
The main terms of the Concordat of 1801 between France and Pope Pius VII included:
According to Georges Goyau, the law known as "The Organic Articles", promulgated in April 1802, infringed in various ways on the spirit of the concordat.[8] The document claimed Catholicism was "the religion of the majority of Frenchmen," and still gave state recognition to Protestants and Jews as well.
The Concordat was abrogated by the law of 1905 on the separation of church and state. However, some provisions of the Concordat are still in effect in the Alsace–Lorraine region under the local law of Alsace–Moselle, as the region was controlled by the German Empire at the time of the 1905 law's passage.