1801 · Paris, France

Concordat of 1801 Between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII

In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII signed a concordat that restored the Catholic Church's legal standing in France after the devastation of the Revolution, but on terms that gave the state significant control over Church appointments and property.

The French Revolution had nearly destroyed the Catholic Church in France. Churches were closed or converted to 'Temples of Reason.' Priests were forced to swear loyalty to the revolutionary government or face execution. Thousands of clergy were killed or exiled. Church property was seized and sold. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 had tried to turn the Church into a department of the state, and when the pope condemned it, the rupture became total. By the time Napoleon took power, France was officially secular, but most of its people were still Catholic. Napoleon was not personally devout — he saw religion primarily as a tool for social order — but he recognized that governing France without the Church was like trying to steer with no rudder. The negotiations were difficult. Pius VII wanted the Church restored to something like its pre-revolutionary position. Napoleon wanted the Church useful but controlled. The concordat they signed in July 1801 was a compromise that satisfied neither side fully. Catholicism was recognized as the religion of the majority of French citizens, but not as the state religion. The pope agreed to accept the loss of Church property seized during the Revolution. Bishops would be nominated by the government and confirmed by the pope. The clergy would be paid by the state. Napoleon then unilaterally added the 'Organic Articles,' which imposed further restrictions the pope had never agreed to. The concordat held, with modifications, until 1905 when France formally separated Church and state. It set a pattern that influenced Church-state relations across Europe for a century, and its basic approach — the Church trades political independence for legal recognition — became a model the Vatican would use, for better or worse, in dozens of later agreements with secular governments.

Why it matters

Restored the Catholic Church's legal standing in post-revolutionary France while establishing a model of Church-state compromise that influenced concordats and diplomatic relations between the Vatican and secular governments throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.