Authority and Order: Portalis and the Implementation of the Concordat of 1801

The success of the Concordat of 1801 in establishing a modus vivendi between post-revolutionary France and the Catholic Church ought not be taken for granted. It owes in significant degree to the design and application of Napoleons advisor on religious affairs, Jean-Etienne Marie Portalis. The Concordat is appreciated for having set the stage for the ultramontane Catholicism of nineteenth-century France, but as legislator and administrator, Portalis was looking back to the legal traditions of the liberties of the Gallican Church and the supremacy of the sovereign. Keywords: Concordat of 1801, religious liberty, schism, French Revolution
On Easter Sunday 1802, Mass was celebrated openly in the Cathedral of Notre Dame for the first time in full communion with Rome since the outbreak schism in the French [...]