Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/758

 NAPOLEON

690

NAPOLEON

Chiirlcs, and t he ^'!lt elot 1 c Sist crs, liovotod to t caehfng and hospital work, and made his mother, Madame I^rtitia Bonaparte, protei'tres.s of all the congrega- tions of hospital sisters. He favoured the revival of the Institute of the Christian Schools for the religious instruction of hoys; side by side with the It/cees, he permitted secondary schools under the supervision of the prefects, but directed by ecclesiastics. He did not rest content with a mere strict fulfilment of the pecuniary obligations to the Church to which the Concorilat had boiuid the State; in 1803 and 1S04 it became the cvistom to jiay stipends to canons and dcsscrratils of succursal iiarishcs. Orders were issued to leave the Church in po.s.scssion of the ecclesiastical buildings not included in the new circumscription of (larishes. Though the State had nut bound itself to endow <lioccsan seminaries, Bonaparte granted the bishops national estates for the use of such seminaries and tlic right to receive donations and legacies for their benefit ; he even founded, in ISO-l, at the expen.sc of the State, ten metropolit.an seminaries, re-estab- lished, with a government endowment, the Lazarist hinise for the education of missionaries, and placed the Holy Sepulchre and the Oriental Christians under the protection of France. As to the temporal power of the popes Bonaparte at this period afTected a some- what complaisant attitude towards the Holy See. He restored Pesaro and Ancona to the pope, and brought about the restitution of Benevento and Pon- tecorvo by the Court of Naples. After April, 1803, Cacault was replaced, as his representative at Rome, by one of the five French ecclesiastics to whom Pius VII had con.sented to grant the purple late in 1802. This amba-ssador w.as no other than I5onaparte's own uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fe.sch (q. v.), whose secretary for a short time was Chateaubriand, recently made famous by his " I^e genie du Christianisme". One of Bonaparte's grievances agiiinst Cacault was a saying attributed to the latter: "How many sources of his glory would cease if Bonaparte ever chose to play Henry VIII!" Even in those days of harmony Cacault had a presentiment that the Napoleonic policy would yet threaten the dignity of the Holy See.

The idea of a struggle with England became more and more an imperious obsession of Bonaparte's mind. The Peace of Amiens (2."i March, 1802) was only a truce: it w;us broken on 22 May, 1S03, by Mor- tier's inva.sion of Hanover and the landing of the Eng- lish in French Guiana. Napoleon forthwith prepared for his gigantic effort to lay the ban of Europe on England. The Due d'Enghien, who was suspected of complicity with England and the French Royalists, was carried off from Ettenheim, a village within the territorj' of Baden, and shot at Vincennes, 21 March, 1804, and one of Cardinal Fesch's first acts as ambas- sador at Rome was to demand the extradition of the French hnigre Verndgues, who was in the ser- vice of Russia, and whom Bonaparte regarded as a conspirator.

N.M'oLEoN Emperor. The Coronation. — \Miile the Third Coalition was forming between England and Ru.ssia, Bonaparte caused himself to be proclaimed hereditarj' emperor (:J0 April-18 Mav, 1804), and at once surrounded himself with a brilliant Court. He created two princes imperial (his brothers Joseph and Louis), seven permanent high dignitaries, twenty great officers, four of them ordinarj- marshals, and ten marshals in active service, a number of posts at Court open to members of the old nobility. Even before bis formal proclamation aa emperor, he had given Caprara a hint of his desire to be crowned by the pope, not at Reims, like the ancient kings, but at Notre-Dame de Paris. On 10 May, 1804, Caprara warned Pius VII of this wish, and represented that it would be neces- sary to answer yes, in order to retain Napoleon's friendship. But the execution of the Due d'Enghien had produced a deplorable impression in Eiu-ope;

Royalist influences were at work against Bonaparte at the Vatican, and the pope was warned against crown- ing an emperor who, by the Constitution of 1804, would promise to maintain "the laws of the Concor- dat", in other words, the Organic Articles. Pius VII and Consalvi tried to gain time by dilatory replies, but these very replies were interpreted by Fesch at Rome, and by Cai)rara at Paris, in a sense favourable to the emperor's wishes. At the end of Jime, Napoleon I joyfully annotmced, at the Tuilerics, that the pope had promised to come to Paris. Then Pius VII tried to obtain certain religio\is and political .advantages in exchange for the journey he was a.sUcd to make. Na- poleon ilcclared that he woulil have no conditions dic- tated to him; at the same time he promised to give new proofs of his respect and love for religion, and to listen to what the pope might have to submit. At last the cleverness of Talleyrand, Napoleon's minister of foreign .affairs, con(|iu>re(l the scrujiles of Pius VII; he declared, at the end nf September, that he would accept Napoleon's invitation if it were officially ad- dressed to him; he asked only that (he ceremony of consecration .should not be distinct from the corona- tion proper, and that Napoleon would undertake not to detain him in France. Napoleon had the invita- tion conveyed to Pius VII, not by two bishops, as the pope expected, but by a general; and before setting out for France, Pius VII signed a conditional act of abdication, which the cardinals were to publish in case Napoleon should prevent his returning to Rome; then he began his journey to France, 2 November, 1804.

Napoleon would not accord any solemn reception to Pius Vll: surrounded by a hunting party, he met the pope in the open country, made him get into the im- perial carriage, seating himself on the right, and in this fashion took him to Fontainebleau. Pius VII was brought to Paris by night. The whole affair nearly fell through at the last moment. Pius VII in- formed Josephine herself, on the eve of the day set for the coronation of the empress, that she had not been married to Napoleon in accordance with the rules of religion. To the great annoyance of the emperor, who was already contemplating a divorce, in case no heir were born to him, and was displaying a lively irri- tation against Josephine, Pius VII insisted upon the religious benediction of the marriage; otherwise, there was to be no coronation. The religious marriage cere- mony was secretly performed at the Tuileries, on the first of December, without witnesses, not during the night, but at about four o'clock in the afternoon, by Fesch, grand almoner of the imperial household. As Welschinger has proved, Fesch had previously asked the pope for the necessary dispensations and faculties, and the marriage was canonically beyond reproach. On 2 December the coronation took place. Napoleon arrived at Notre-Dame later than the hour appointed. Instead of allowing the pope to crown him, he himself placed the crown on his own head and crowned the em- press, but, out of respect for the pope, this detail was not recorded in the " Moniteur". Pius VII, to whom Napoleon granted but few opportunities for conversa- tion, had a long memoranda drawn up by Antonelli and Caprara, setting forth his wishes; he demanded that Catholicism should be recognized in F'rance as the dominant religion; that the divorce law should be re- pealed; that the rehgious communities shoidd be re- established; that the Legations should be restored to the Holy See. Most of these demands were to no purpose; the most important of the very moderate concessions made by the emperor was his promise to substitute the Gregorian Calendar for that of the Revolution after 1 January, 1806. When Pius VII left Paris, 4 April, ISO.'j, he was displeased with the emperor.

But the Church of France acclaimed the emperor. He was lauded to the skies by the bishops. The par-