France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
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.
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