wanted the credit for it. Hence the paradox of the vigour with which this
man, with no love for Christianity per se, forced through an agreement
with the Papacy.
After Marengo, Napoleon made immediate overtures to the new Pope
Pius VII, who was elected after a protracted conclave on 14 March r8oo.
The Consul celebrated a Te Deum in Milan Cathedral on r8 June and a
week later, at V ersilia, informed Cardinal Martiniana of his wish to come
to an agreement with the Pope. The news was conveyed to Rome, where
Pius VII at once accepted the principle of talks. Detailed negotiations
opened in Paris in November, with Archbishop Spina of Corinth and the
reformed Vendean Bernier as the principals on either side; Bernier, an
accomplished diplomat, was under the direction of Talleyrand who, as an
unfrocked priest, could not negotiate directly.
At this time there were three groups in the French Catholic Church:
the constitutionals, who had made their peace with the Revolution early
on; the reformist refractaires who had come to terms with Napoleon after
Brumaire; and the ultramontane faction of diehards. These three groups
were mirrored within Napoleon's own circle by those who thought like
him, those sympathetic to the Church (men like Fontanes and Portalis)
who wanted to enshrine it as the State religion, and the crypto-Jacobins
led by Fouche, who were violently anticlerical and detested the entire
project of rapprochement with Catholicism. This confused situation
produced some remarkable ad hoc convergences. Both the devout and the
anticlerical party would have preferred no treaty with Rome but merely
de focto separation of Church and State: the former thought religion
would revive best this way, while the latter thought it would wither on
the vine. The 'constitutionals' meanwhile thought Napoleon was on their
side, but in his heart he preferred. the authoritarian mentality of the
ultramontanes. He was suspicious of the insidious 'democracy' of the
constitutional church and the elections which the constitution civile had
introduced.
Bernier proved an inspired choice for the negotiations. There. were
three main obstacles to a general agreement. The first concerned the
appointment of bishops. Who should have the power to nominate to sees,
and what about those who had fled or been forced to resign by previous
Popes? The second was the desire of Pius VII that Catholicism should be
the state religion in France. The third, naturally, concerned the
revolutionary confiscation of Church property. Eight months of often
acrimonious negotiations followed. Napoleon pretended sympathy for the
idea of Catholicism as state religion but told the Pope that public opinion
would not tolerate a return to the ancien regime in any form. Since those
marcin
(Marcin)
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