Question

How did relations between the government and the Catholic Church change under Napoleon

Answer 1

In 1789, the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution, Catholicism was the official religion of the French state. The French Catholic Church, known as the Gallican Church, recognised the authority of the pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church but had negotiated certain liberties that privileged the authority of the French monarch, giving it a distinct national identity characterised by considerable autonomy. France’s population of 28 million was almost entirely Catholic, with full membership of the state denied to Protestant and Jewish minorities. Being French effectively meant being Catholic. Yet, by 1794, France’s churches and religious orders were closed down and religious worship suppressed. How did it come to this? What did revolutionaries hope to achieve? And why did Napoleon set out to reverse the situation?

Answer 2

Answer: The Catholic Church was restored as the official religion of France under Napoleon, after the Church had been attacked and repudiated during the radical phase of the French Revolution.

Context/detail:

In France during the Revolution, the church came to be seen as an enemy of the state. Church lands were seized, and many clergy members were imprisoned and even executed.

When Napoleon came to power after the French Revolution, he showed a willingness to restore the Catholic Church as the national church in France -- but in a way that made clear that the church was to serve the purposes of the French nation and, later, the French empire. The Concordat of 1801 was Napoleon's agreement with the Catholic Church. When he was taking the title of emperor in 1804, the pope, Pius VII, was there for the ceremony -- but the coronation was Napoleon's own action. He represented the center of power in France, and the church was subordinate to him.