La religion catholique apostolique romaine sera librement exercée en France. Son culte sera public, en se conformant aux règlements de police que le gouvernement jugera nécessaires pour la tranquillité publique.'

place at nightfall; he was apparently not yet sufficiently proof against the raillery of the Parisians to test them with such a spectacle. Having, like Consalvi, alighted at the house of Monsignore Spina, the Abbé Bernier waited upon him immediate

matter to a conclusion. Through the me- During the stay of Cardinal Consalvi at diation of the Austrian Ambassador, one Paris, the First Consul had requested the last conference was permitted to debate nomination of a Legate à latere for France, this momentous article of the police des and desired especially the appointment of cultes. It stands the first in the Concor- the Cardinal Caprara. Caprara, having dat, and as finally settled runs thus: - consequently been appointed Cardinal Legate, was received everywhere on his passage through France, by civil and military authorities, with the most distinguished honours. In fortified towns a salute of cannon announced his arrival and departure, a troop of cavalry escorted his carThe words in italics are those which riage, and the préfets of the departments Consalvi insisted should be added, to re-attended his arrival at each town with a strict the application of police regulations public address. At Fontainebleau the to the ceremonies of religion. It does not whole municipal council waited upon him; seem to us that the words were worth a double escort of gendarmes and chasseurs fighting so desperately about on either escorted him to the gates of Paris: but side. Consalvi's object was to secure free there all honours ceased. Napoleon arliberty for the rites and ceremonies of the ranged his arrival so that it should take Roman Catholic Church; but since he admitted that the practice of Catholic worship should be amenable at all to police regulations, his restriction that these regulations should only be such as should in the judgment of the Government be necessary to public tranquillity, would not abridge ly, and invited him to occupy the magnifithe power of state authority, if it were dis- cent Hotel de Montmorency, which had posed to interfere with the liberty of been especially furnished and prepared for Catholic worship. At last, however, the him and his legation. He had an audience Concordat, with this article as it now of the First Consul on the morrow. Napostands, was agreed to by the First Consul. leon received the Cardinal in the most By this Concordat the Gallican Church gracious manner, spoke in the most flatterwas brought once more under the spiritual ing and affectionate terms of the Pope, and dominion of the Papacy; but the publication of the Concordat with the accessory articles organiques, the question of the admissibility of the constitutional clergy among the hierarchy of the restored establishment, and the temporal power of the Pope, were all matters pregnant with causes of disagreement, and danger to the continuance of harmony and confidence between the governments of France and Rome. The First Consul was just then in the midst of the negotiations of the Peace of Amiens, and was anxious that what he called the religious peace and the political peace should proceed simultaneously, and, for greater effect on the public mind, be published together. In the correspondence of Cardinal Caprara, who now took a prominent part in the relations of France with the Holy See, it is astonishing to observe the impetuosity, force of mind, intelligence, and knowledge which Napoleon brought to bear on this question, overwhelmed as he was with the labours which necessarily devolved upon him, when the whole internal and external political conditions had to be organised and settled on a firm basis.

then immediately began to enter on the question of the constitutional bishops.

The constitutional clergy, as they were termed, consisted of those members of the Church of France who had submitted themselves to the civil constitution of the clergy established by the Act of 1791. That Act had always been fiercely denounced by Rome as schismatical and heretical —a violation both of the laws and doctrines of the Church. Had it prevailed, it would, in fact, have placed the Gallican Church in a position extremely similar to that of the Anglican clergy under the statutes of Henry VIII. In the negotiation of the Concordat, one of the chief difficulties was to provide for those priests who had submitted themselves to the civil power. Bonaparte refused, very properly, to abandon them. The Pope refused to admit them, until they had recanted their errors, which at length they consented to do.

Napoleon naturally looked on this section of the priesthood as the most attached to the new order of things in France. Moreover, had the constitutional clergy been wholly left out in naming the new hierarchy, their rejection might have sown the seeds of

no contemptible disaffection, since their April, 1802, while the ratifications of the claims were advocated by persons of great Treaty of Amiens were being exchanged at influence; and in so difficult a matter as an the Tuileries, the Concordat was proentirely new establishment of the Catholic claimed in the streets of Paris by the PreChurch as the national Church of France - fect of Police; and at eleven o'clock the a Church which was to be endowed by the Cardinal Legate, in the scarlet robes of the State, in the face of the religious indifference Sacred College, followed by his Legation and even opposition and contempt of a large and the newly-appointed archbishop and portion of the community-it would have bishops, proceeded in state to Notre Dame, been utterly impolitic of Napoleon to sub- which had been prepared and adorned for mit to the dictation of the Papacy, and set the occasion by the labour of two thousand them wholly aside in the choice of the new workmen, to offer up a Te Deum for the bishops. Cardinal Caprara had received establishment of civil and religious peace. instructions from Rome not to give the in- The Legate à latere, according to immestitution canonique to a single member of morial custom, should, on solemn occathe constitutional clergy. The First Con- sions, be preceded by a golden cross carried sul on his side was resolved that a certain by a man in scarlet on horseback. The number should be inducted, and after a pre- Cardinal had requested to know whether it liminary consecration in Notre Dame (now would be advisable to retain this custom, restored to Christian worship), of Mon- and it was arranged that the golden cross seigneur Belloy as Archbishop of Paris, should be carried in a coach preceding that and Monseigneur Cambacérès as Archbishop of the Legate. Public curiosity had been of Rouen, and of the Abbés Bernier and aroused to the highest pitch by the anDe Pancemont as Bishops of Orleans and nouncement of an ecclesiastical display to Vannes, the First Consul named twenty-two which Paris had been a stranger for so new bishops for consecration, of whom ten many years. On its success or failure the were constitutionnels. Caprara was in the First Consul had staked a considerable greatest state of despair. Nevertheless, portion of his prestige; and it was a politic after repeated interviews of the stormiest stroke to unite together in one ceremony character, in which he was assured that, if the thanksgiving for the peace so ardently France were left in a state of schism, the desired by the people, after all the horrors whole responsibility would lie with him- of civil massacre and the suffering entailed self; by dint of coaxing and cajolery, with by foreign warfare during the last twelve an aged cardinal at his wits' ends to concil-years, and the thanksgiving for the restoraiate the dogmas of the Court of Rome and the will of the First Consul, and by dint of asseveration, as Caprara says, on the part of the new Bishops of Orleans and Vannes that the constitutionals had really made abjuration of their errors, the Degate consented to give them induction. The constitutional bishops subsequently denied that they had made any such abjuration at all. It is impossible now to decide how far Caprara was really deceived. M. d'Haussonville, however, points out that the Bishops of Orleans and Vannes about this time received respectively 50,000 and 30,000 francs for services in connexion with the Legate.

The First Consul had succeeded in his wishes. On Easter Sunday, the 13th of

* In the Correspondance' of Napoleon may be found a passage sufficiently indicative of the way of regarding the question, which is found in a letter addressed to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, the Bishop of Lyons: Vous devez agir avec dextérité, mais réellement placer le plus de constitutionnels possible et bien vous assurer ce parti. Vous ne devez point vous dissimuler que cette question de constitutionnels et de non-constitutionnels, qui est parmi le grand nombre des pretres une question religieuse, n'est pour les chefs qu'une question politique. Enfin vous me déplairiez infiniment et feriez grand

mal a l'Etat si vous choquez les constitutionnels.'

tion of the Church. And we may well imagine with what impatience the First Consul must have supported the timid and dilatory proceedings of the Court of Rome and its Legate; for the matter of the reconcilation of the bishops, without whom the ceremony could not have been performed with a sufficiently imposing body of ecclesiastics, was only settled on the very day preceding the Te Deum. A large body of the generals still boasted that they would take no part in the ceremony at Notre Dame. Napoleon, however, had taken as much precaution for the success of this his first Te Deum in Paris, as he would have done to win a battle. The state coaches of the old royalty of France were brought out and regilt. All the great officers of State were in the procession with unusual splendour. personally invited by Napoleon to appear The Consuls themselves, it was made known, had ordered new dresses of sumptuous magnificence; and the ladies who frequented the salon of the wife of the First Consul, were invited to take part in the display, and to exhibit all the resources of a grande toilette. The most elegant among them were to form a body of ladies of honour to

Pope and his council; so that, at last, Consalvi in a mémoire set forth no less than sixteen almost irremediable obstacles of a dogmatic nature respecting the oath to be taken by the Emperor, and other matters attending the ceremony. These, however, were in time either avoided or overcome; and the Pope, to his honour, would make no bargain affecting his temporalities, but conferred a favour, almost unprecedented in the history of the Papacy, without any stipulations; he trusted that the generosity of Napoleon would yield to his own personal influence, and that both the temporal and spiritual interests of the Church would be benefited by his presence in Paris.

consulted on the subject. Nevertheless, ably be the case in all transactions with the this was the honeymoon of the relations of Holy See, difficulties did not fail, on conNapoleon and Pius VII., who corresponded sideration, to present themselves to the with each other in person on affectionate terms. The First Consul had, moreover, testified by various spontaneous acts of kindness his desire to gratify the Pope. Thus, without solicitation he surrendered Pesaro and Ancona; obtained from the Neapolitan Court the restitution of the duchies of Benevento and Ponte Corvo; and even made the Pope a present of two brigs of war for the protection of his coasts against Barbary corsairs. All these acts, may, however, have been performed with a view to put the Pope in a favourable disposition for the acceptance of the invitation to Paris, which Napoleon now meditated, in order to obtain by the presence and ministration of Pius VII. at his coronation, the highest consecration in the power of any earthly authority to bestow on the contemplated conversion of his rule in France into an Imperial dynasty. With this view he had replaced M. Cacault, his Minister at Rome, by his uncle the Cardinal Fesch; a measure in itself not agreeable to the Court of Rome, since the frank good humour and urbanity of M. Cacault had won for him the good-will and affection of Pius VII. and his secretary, and were in marked contrast with the pretentious airs and meddling humours of his successor.

Napoleon, says M. de Pradt, always considered his coronation by the Pope as forming one of his chief titles to respect in the eyes of the French nation; and of the value set upon it even by his adversaries, an idea may be formed by the tirade written from St. Petersburg against the Pope on this subject by that great apostle of Papal infallibility M. de Maistre:

The misdeeds of an Alexander Borgia are less revolting than this apostasy of his weak successor. I lack words to give you an idea of the grief which this projected journey of the Pope occasions me. If he really intends accomplishing it, I simply wish him a speedy death.

I desire with all my heart that the wretched pontiff may go to Saint Domingo and consecrate Dessalines... All that one can now desire is that he may end by degrading himself to be a punchinello of no authority." **

Napoleon never responded to the courtesy of the Pope, anxious as he had been to obtain his presence. To avoid the formality of the first interview, the new Emperor affected to meet his venerable guest by accident at one of the rendezvous de chasse in the forest of Fontainebleau, surrounded by his piqueurs and a pack of hounds. A carriage was drawn up to convey them both to the Chateau, but Napoleon had not the grace to offer precedence to the Pope, and the two potentates took their places simultaneously at the opposite doors. These things are paltry and ridiculous; but they show how insincere was the affected deference of Napoleon for Pius VII.; and the whole residence of the Pontiff in Paris was marked by a series of petty tricks, which might have been regarded as insults and humiliations.

The return of the Pope to Rome, in May 1805, marks the conclusion of the negotiations of Napoleon with the Papacy in matters of a spiritual nature alone; henceforward temporal matters were destined to be the great subject of debate between them.

midst of the merciless, all-absorbing conAnd, indeed, it was impossible, in the flict of European Powers for domination, and in presence of the colossal schemes of empire entertained by Napoleon, that the Papacy should not, as a temporal Power, become sooner or later involved in the general embroilment of Europe.

The Pope had returned to the capital of The main facts of the journey of the Pope the Holy See a good deal disabused of the to Paris are matters of ordinary history, and illusions with which he had set out on his the negotiations which preceded his visit are journey. He had trusted much to the effect not sufficiently important to require notice which such a manifest exhibition of goodhere. There never was any serious objec- will, and of a desire to conciliate the favour tion on the part of the Pope or the Sacred of the new Emperor, would exercise on the College to the journey; yet, as must inevit-generosity he imagined to be inseparable *Correspondance de M. de Maistre, vol. i. p. 138. from a great mind; and this the more since

Napoleon seemed to have taken up the rôle | If we usurped an authority which we do not of protector of the Church, and had thrown possess, we should render ourselves culpaout hints to the Legate of intentions of ble of an abominable abuse before the trifuture munificence. But Pius VII. in private conversations, of which no record remains, had been able to extract no definite assurance from the sovereign, to the foundation of whose dynasty he had given all the consecration which his sacred character enabled him to confer, either on the subject of the Legations or of the articles organiques, or any of the questions still remaining unsettled between the Courts of Paris and Rome. The only real religious satisfaction which resulted from his journey was the complete recantation of the constitutional bishops couched in terms of submissive veneration for himself and his authority.

Patterson was a Protestant, he denounced with real or affected indignation the protection thus afforded by the Pope to the cause of Protestantism. Nevertheless, had Napoleon looked back into past history, he would have discovered that the maintenance of the inviolability of the marriage contract had always been treated by the Popes as one of their most sacred duties, and that in this cause they had defied the might of emperors and kings as terrible as his own. when the violent words of the Emperor were reported to the Pope, he merely bowed his head, and said, his duty was clear, and that by the help of God he would not be found wanting."

bunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in his justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the dictates of our conscience and the invariable principles of the Church.' While the letter concludes with a touching assurance of affection, its whole tenor and length testify to the painful care and conscientiousness with which the Pope had examined every point in the case. But Napoleon was perhaps the last person in the world to believe in such conscientious scruples; and in this matter, which is a pure question of fact and canon law, he evinces his utter insensibility to scruples of conscience more perhaps than The Papal allocution addressed to the in any other part of his dealings with the Sacred College, on the return of the Pope, Papacy. He affected to believe the Pope's was, however, in spite of all secret disap- unfavourable verdict was a mere trick to pointment, of an effusive and even affection- revenge himself for not having recovered ate character. At Fontainebleau,' said the Legations. He spoke with the utmost the Pope, we embraced with our arms this indignation against the Pope; and as Miss prince so powerful and so full of affection for ourselves; and he dwelt with satisfaction on the political and religious benefits he had drawn or anticipated from his visit. The intercourse between Napoleon and the Pope had been of a cordial and even affectionate character, and the correspondence which they subsequently maintained showed manifest tokens of the esteem and admiration engendered by personal acquaintance. Such sentiments had a beneficial influence on the arrangement of a second Concordat for the settlement of Church affairs in the Cisalpine kingdom. But unfortunately, immediately on the settlement of this difliculty, a question arose of quite a personal nature with Napoleon, and one which put One of the least satisfactory chapters in to the test the conscientious scruples of the M. de Haussonville's volumes is that on the Pope to a very painful degree-the ques-occupation of Ancona in 1805. He has not tion of the validity of the marriage of one word of excuse, not the slightest phrase Jerome, the younger brother of Napoleon, of palliation, for this military measure of Nawith Miss Patterson, at Baltimore. This poleon; and yet, though it may not be juswas the first episode in the struggle between tified, it may to some extent be explained. Napoleon and the Papacy, and its influence Ancona was one of those important stratewas felt throughout the whole of its dura- gic positions in Central Italy which had tion. By the rules of French civil law the again and again been occupied by foreign marriage was void, since it was contracted Powers, with far less excuse than can be when Jerome was a minor, and without the brought forward in favour of Napoleon. It consent of his mother. But the marriage had but very lately been in possession of had been duly solemnised, according to the the French, and was surrendered to the rites of the Catholic Church, by the Bishop Pope by Napoleon himself without any conof Baltimore; and if the marriage was once ditions -a piece of generosity on his part valid, it could not, as is well known, be which receives very small notice at the dissolved by divorce. The decision of the hands of M. d'Haussonville. But although Pope was made known to Napoleon in a he made no conditions, he urged the Court letter written with his own hand. It is of Rome, both at the time of its surrender beyond our power,' he says towards its con- and afterwards, to put the place in a good clusion, to pronounce a judgment of nullity. I state of military defence; and this he had

So