Chapter XII: The Divorce (1809-1810) (3)

Notwithstanding the ascendancy which his holy character and the firm moderation of his spirit exercised over the emperor, the Abbé Emery was not deceived as to his personal action in the ecclesiastical commission. "Permit me," he wrote to the minister of religion, "out of respect for the bishops, to abstain from taking any deliberative part, and only to have a consulting voice; that is to say, that I may simply furnish upon the matters which may be discussed the lights and documents which my studies and experience may enable me to give." The Superior of St. Sulpice was once more to give his opinion freely before the impatient and haughty master, who claimed to subdue all wills and all consciences to his empire, "I do not call in question the spiritual power of the Pope," said Napoleon one day, when he had called the Ecclesiastical Commission to the Tuileries: "he has received it from Jesus Christ; but Jesus Christ has not given him the temporal power. It was Charlemagne who gave it to him, and I, as the successor of Charlemagne, wish to take it away from him, because he does not know how to use it, and because it hinders him from exercising his spiritual functions. What inconvenience will there be in the Pope being subject to me, now that Europe knows no other master?" "Sire," replied Emery, "your Majesty is better acquainted than I am with the history of revolutions. The present state of things may not always exist. It is not, then, necessary to change the order wisely established. The holy father will not agree to the concessions which your Majesty demands from him, because he cannot do it." Napoleon did not answer. The Abbé Emery had refused to sign the propositions accepted by the Ecclesiastical Commission; he dreaded the Council. "How is it that our bishops do not see," wrote he, "that the means of conciliation which the emperor demands from them are only a trick on his part to impose upon the simple, and a mask to cover his tyranny? Let him leave the Church tranquil; let him restore their functions to the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops; let him renounce extravagant pretensions, and all will soon be arranged." The emperor, meanwhile, let it be known amongst the delegates that he intended to send to Savona to have an understanding with the Pope. "This is a good time to die," said Emery. God granted him this favor. He had suffered long, and on the 28th of April, 1811, he breathed his last.

It was at this very moment that the Archbishop of Tours and the Bishops of Nantes and Treves set out for Savona, charged to obtain from the Pope the concessions necessary for the re-establishment of ecclesiastical order. Already the Council had been ostentatiously convoked without the circular letters making mention of the name of Pius VII. "One of the contracting parties has disowned the Concordat," said the summons to attend; "the conduct that has been persevered in, in Germany for ten years past, has almost destroyed the episcopate in that part of Christendom; the Chapters have been disturbed in their rights, dark manoeuvres have been contrived, tending to excite discord and sedition among our subjects." It was in order to prevent a state of things contrary to the welfare of religion, to the principles of the Gallican Church, and to the interests of the state, that the emperor had resolved upon collecting, on the 9th of July following, in the church of Notre Dame at Paris, all the bishops of France and Italy in national council.

The prelates delegated to Savona had for their mission to announce to Pius VII the convocation of the Council and the repeal of the Concordat. "We intend," said their instructions, "that the bishops should be instituted according to the Concordat of Francis I., which we have renewed, and in such a manner as shall be established by the Council, and shall have received our approbation. However, it would be possible to revert to the Concordat on the following conditions: 1st. That the Pope should institute all the bishops that we have appointed; 2nd. That in future our appointment shall be communicated to the Pope in the ordinary form; that if three months after the court of Rome has not instituted, the institution shall be performed by the Metropolitan." A letter, almost threatening, written by nineteen bishops assembled at the house of Cardinal Fesch, accompanied the officious propositions of the emperor. The anger of Napoleon had weighed heavily on the Council. On the 9th of May the three prelates arrived secretly at Savona.

Chabrol, the Prefect of Montenotte, announced their visit to the Pope. "They can come in when they wish," replied Pius VII. For four months the old man had been living alone, without external communication, deprived of his friends and his servants, without pen and ink, gently accepting his sufferings, but visibly enfeebled in mind and body. Disturbed at first, he soon recovered himself, talked familiarly with the bishops, and limited himself to asking that he might be granted the support of a few of his counsellors on this grave occasion. The request was denied in the most respectful manner; the prelates delegated by the Emperor Napoleon offered their assistance to the holy Father. The letter of the nineteen bishops dwelt upon the hope that the Pope would engage himself to do nothing contrary to the declarations of the Gallican Church in 1682; Pius VII protested that he had never had any intention of doing so, but that it was impossible for him to enter into any written engagement on the subject, the declaration having been condemned by Pope Alexander VIII. He discussed, without bitterness, the question of canonical institution, whilst altogether repelling the propositions put forth by the bishops. "All alone by himself, a poor man could not take upon himself such a great change in the Church," said he, smiling.

The discussion was prolonged, not only on the part of the prelates, but also on the part of the Prefect of Montenotte, who had frequent interviews with the Pope, using by turns menaces and caresses, seeking to act on the mind of Pius VII by the interposition of his physician, Dr. Porta, completely devoted to the imperial service. The Pope was complaining of his health; his intellect appeared at times affected by his long anguish. "The chief of the Church is in prison, and alone," said he, "nothing can be decided by him."

The virtues of Pius VII, like his natural weaknesses, contributed to the trouble of his conscience and his mind. Gentle and good, easily tormented by scruples, he was tossed about between the conviction of the duties which he owed to the holy see, and the fear of prolonging in the Church a grave disorder, which might bring about grievous consequences. In his interviews with the bishops he yielded everything, whilst thinking he was resisting, and finished by accepting a note, drawn up under his own eyes, containing in principle all the required concessions. He had not signed it, but the negotiators were contented with what they had obtained. "This morning we have drawn up the whole clearly and in French," wrote the Archbishop of Tours. "We have presented it to the Pope, he has desired a few changes in expression, some addition of phrases, some trifling erasures, and there has resulted from it an _ensemble_ quite as good, and indeed much better than we flattered ourselves on obtaining a few days ago." Next day, May 20th, in the morning, the negotiators took the road to Paris.

They had scarcely got a few leagues from Savona, and already the Pope was seized with remorse. Ill for several days past, deprived of sleep by the agitations of his mind and conscience, he reproached himself for all the articles of the note he had agreed to, and fell into a state of suffering which gravely disquieted his jailers. "I cannot conceive how I could accept these articles," repeated Pius VII; "some of them are tainted with heresy; it is an act of folly on my part, I have been half mad." "Absorbed in a complete silence, he closed his eyes in the attitude of a man who pondered deeply," wrote Chabrol, on May 23rd; "he only roused himself to cry out, 'Happily, I have signed nothing.' I told him to put full confidence in that which he had adopted in his conscience, which had no need of signatures, nor of conventions made by civil laws. He answered me that from that moment he had lost all peace of mind, and he has again fallen into the same absorbed reverie."

Thus the courage, and even the reason, of the unfortunate pontiff momentarily gave way under the pressure of a moral suffering beyond his forces. In order to calm him, Chabrol was obliged to despatch a courier in pursuit of the bishops, withdrawing the concessions implied in the first article of the note; then, at last, the scruples of the Pope were concentrated.

"This suppression is absolutely necessary," said he, "without which I shall raise a disturbance in order to make my intentions known." In advance, and by the very fact of the violent pressure exercised over a captive, old, sick, and alone, the emperor found himself in reality disarmed in face of the Council which he had just convoked; the concession which he had snatched from Pius VII became null, for the pope was protesting from the depth of his prison.

Napoleon judged thus; he did not avail himself of the articles immediately denied in the note drawn up by his negotiators, and painfully accepted by the Pope. In fact, the undertaking at Savona had failed; it began again at Paris, where the Council at length assembled on June 17th. The emperor had beforehand sought to intimidate a few of the priests called to take part in it. During his recent journey in Normandy he had Bois Chollet, the Bishop of Séez, called before him, accused of rigor towards the priests who had lately accepted the constitution. "You wish for civil war; you have already engaged in it," cried Napoleon, "you have embrued your hands in French blood. I have pardoned you, and you will not pardon others, miserable wretch; you are a bad subject, give me your resignation immediately." One of the canons of Séez, the Abbé Le Gallois, learned and virtuous, and who was looked upon as exercising a great influence over his bishop, was conducted to Paris, and put in prison in La Force. "The canon is too clever," said the emperor, "let him be brought to Vincennes." Le Gallois was to pass nine months there, and only the fall of the Empire was to put an end to his detention.

"Your conscience is a fool!" said Napoleon to De Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, whom he had made a chevalier of the legion of honor, when the latter protested against a clause in the oath. He had said as much to other prelates whom he had just convoked to the Council. It is a serious case for absolute power when it enters into a struggle with the most noble sentiments of human nature. The Emperor Napoleon had come to that point when he regarded as his enemies freedom of thought and freedom of conscience amongst his subjects still suspected of independence, _littérateurs_ or bishops.

Ninety-five prelates assembled, on the 17th of June, in the morning, in the church of Notre Dame. They were joined by nine bishops appointed by Napoleon, although they had not yet received canonical institution. At the second séance, when the affairs of the Council began to be seriously considered, the Ministers of Religion of France and Italy took their places in the assembly. In opening, on the 16th, the session of the Corps Législatif, the emperor had haughtily proclaimed his supremacy. "The affairs of religion," he said, "have been too often mixed up with, and sacrificed to, the interests of a state of the third order. I have put an end to this scandal forever. I have united Rome to the Empire. I have accorded palaces to the popes at Rome and in Paris. If they have at heart the interests of religion, they will often desire to sojourn at the centre of the affairs of Christendom. It was thus that St. Peter preferred Rome to a sojourn in the Holy Land."

On taking his seat at the Council, Bigot de Préameneu, then Minister of Religion, pronounced in his turn a discourse which history ought to assign to its true origin. The emperor enumerated, by the mouth of his minister, his numerous grievances with regard to the court of Rome, dioceses without bishops, the prelates deprived of canonical institution. "By this means the Pope has tried to create troubles in the Church and in the state. The sinister projects of the Pope have been rendered null by the firmness of the chapters in maintaining their rights, and by the good feeling of the people, accustomed to respect only the legitimate authorities. His Majesty declares that he will never suffer in France as in Germany, that the court of Rome should exercise on vacancies in the sees any influence by vicars apostolic, because the Christian religion being necessary to the faithful, and to the state, its existence would be compromised in countries where vicars, whom the government might not recognize should be charged with the direction of the faithful. His Majesty wishes to protect the religion of his fathers; he wishes to preserve it; and yet it would be no longer the same religion if it ceased to have bishops, and if one claimed to concentrate in himself the power of all. His Majesty expects, as emperor and king, as protector of the Church, as the father of his people, that the bishops should be instituted according to the forms anterior to the Concordat, and without a see ever remaining vacant over three months, a time more than sufficient for its being filled up."

The declaration fell like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Council. With the exception of a very small number of prelates acquainted with the negotiations of Savona, or in the confidence of the emperor, the mass of the bishops, come from a distance, ignorant or deceived, thought to find peace accomplished, or on the way of being accomplished, in the Church between the civil power and the holy see. On the previous evening all had applauded the words of Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, then the most celebrated amongst the religious orators, when he cried, "Whatever vicissitudes the see of Peter may experience, whatever may be the state and condition of his august successor, we shall always be linked to him by the bonds of respect and filial reverence. This see may be removed, it can never be destroyed. They may deprive it of its splendor, they can never deprive it of its force. Wheresoever the see may be, there all others will meet. Wheresoever this see may be transported, all Catholics will follow it, because wheresoever it may be settled there will be the stem of the succession, the centre of government, and the sacred depository of the apostolic traditions." When the prelates were successively called upon to give their consent to the opening of the Council, Mgr. d'Aviau, Archbishop of Bordeaux, replied, "Yes, I wish it; excepting, nevertheless, the obedience due to the sovereign pontiff, an obedience to which I pledge myself on oath." All the members of the Council, its president, Cardinal Fesch, at the head of it, took the oath of allegiance to the Catholic Church, apostolic and Roman, and at the same time a "faithful obedience to the Roman pontiff, successor of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and successor of Jesus Christ."

Such was not the end which the emperor had proposed to himself in convoking the Council, and his wrath towards Cardinal Fesch was violent, as well as towards Boulogne. "I have ever in my heart the oath taken to the Pope, which seemed to me very ill-timed," wrote he to Bigot de Préameneu; "make researches to discover what is meant by this oath, and how the parliaments regarded it. Let the sittings of the Council be secret, and let it not have, either in session or in committee, any motion of order. The report that you make to the Council ought not to be printed." The commissions were to be appointed by ballot; the first elected was charged with drawing up the address to the emperor. The task was confided to the Bishop of Nantes, Mgr. Duvoisin, clever and wise, well advanced in the good graces of Napoleon, and who had been one of the delegates to Savona. To the first objections that his colleagues presented to him, the prelate responded that his draft of the address had received the approval of the emperor.

It was much to presume on the docility of an assembly, incomplete in truth, for a very small part of the Italian and German bishops had been convoked, independent, however, by character and station. Whilst Mgr. Duvoisin submitted his draft with regret to a revision which allowed nothing to remain of the complaisance but lately evinced for the imperial policy, an obscure prelate demanded that the entire Council should entreat from the emperor the liberty of the Pope. "It is our right; it is also our duty," cried Dessolles, Bishop of Chambery; "we owe it not only to ourselves, but we owe it also to the faithful of our dioceses--what do I say, to ail the Catholics of Europe, and of the whole world? Let us not hesitate; let us go, we must, let us go to throw ourselves in a body at the feet of the emperor, in order to obtain this indispensable deliverance." And as timid objections began to manifest themselves in the assembly, "What, messieurs?" resumed the bishop, "the Chapter of Paris has been able to ask for mercy to M. d'Astros, one of its members, and we will not have the courage to ask for the freedom of the Pope. And why should the emperor be provoked at it? Messeigneurs, the Divinity himself consents to be solicited, persecuted, importuned with our prayers; sovereigns are the image of God upon earth; by what right ought they to complain if we act towards them as towards the Master of Heaven?"

Emotion overcame all the members of the Council; the moderates and the waverers were drawn along by the ardor of the prelates personally attached to the Pope, or nobly resolved upon sustaining their convictions even to the end. The old Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishops of Ghent and of Troyes, claimed at once the liberty of the pontiff, and his canonical right to use the ecclesiastical thunderbolts. "Judge the Pope, if you dare, and condemn the Church if you can," cried Mgr. d'Aviau. The prelates pledged to the imperial power wished to adjourn the discussion; when they came to the vote on the draft of the address, now without color or life, Cardinal Maury proposed that it should only be signed by the president and the secretaries. This overture suited all the timid characters; the address was voted by sitting and standing. The emperor did not show himself satisfied. "The bishops are much, mistaken if they think to have the last word with me," said he. The Bishop of Chambery alone found favor in his eyes. "One is never to be blamed for asking for the freedom of his chief," said Napoleon. He had an order sent to the Council to answer his message on the subject of canonical institution within eight days, without losing time in useless discussions. A few of the more moderate bishops happened to be going out of the Tuileries from the imperial mass; the emperor approached them. "I have desired to act by you as princes of the Church," said he; "It is for you to say if you will henceforth be only beadles, The Pope refuses to execute the Concordat; ah, well! I no longer wish for the Concordat." "Sire," said Osmond, "your Majesty will not tear with your own hands the finest page in your history." "The bishops have acted like cowards!" cried Napoleon, with violence. "No, sire," again replied the prelate, who had so lately accepted the Archbishopric of Florence without waiting for canonical institution, "they are not cowards, for they have taken the side of the most feeble." The emperor turned his back on him.

"The only and exclusive object of the council of 1811," the Abbé de Pradt has said in his "Histoire des quatre Concordats," "was to regulate the order of Canonical Institution, and to provide that it should not henceforth be hindered by any other cause than the objections urged against the appointments by the Pope. In this lay the whole dispute between the holy see and the princes. It was not only his own affairs that Napoleon was attending to in this settlement, it was also those of other sovereigns, whom he spared by his example the embarrassments which awaited them." The Council felt the extreme importance of the question. After a lively discussion, and in spite of the persistency of the prelates favorable to the court, the commission appointed for this purpose would not pronounce upon the message of his Majesty before sending a deputation to the holy Father, who might set forth to him the deplorable state of the churches in the empire of France and in the kingdom of Italy, and who might confer with him on the means of remedying these evils. "The emperor requires a decree of the Council before consenting to the sending of the deputation," repeated Cardinal Fesch and his friends. "That would be a sure method to make everything fail," cried the Bishop of Tournay, "for it would be exactly like saying to the Pope: Your purse or your life; give us the bulls and we shall be satisfied with you." Cardinal Fesch was constrained to carry to Napoleon the vote of the commission.

The emperor did not think highly either of the skill or the character of his uncle, and was not particular how he treated him. "He will not reject you," said the cardinal to a lady with a petition, "I have been turned out of doors, yes I, twice in a single day." He essayed vainly to explain to Napoleon the canonical reasons which had determined the commission.

"Still more theology," replied the emperor; "hold your tongue; you are an ignoramus. In six months I should get to know more than you. Ah! the commission votes thus! I shall not get the worst of it. I shall dissolve the Council and all will be finished. It is of small consequence what the Council wishes or doesn't wish, I shall declare myself competent, following the advice of the philosophers and lawyers. The prefects will appoint the curés, the chapters, and the bishops. If the metropolitan does not choose to institute them, I will shut up the seminaries, and religion will have no more ministers." The violence of the insult and the grandeur of the situation elevated the soul of Cardinal Fesch. "If you wish to make martyrs, commence in your own family, sire," said he. "I am ready to give my life to seal my faith. Be perfectly assured that unless the Pope shall have approved this measure, I, the metropolitan, will never institute any of my suffragans. I go even further: if one of them should bethink himself, in my default, of instituting a bishop in my province, I would excommunicate him immediately."

It was then that Napoleon recognized the advantages of the abortive attempt at Savona. "You are all noodles," said he to his ecclesiastical counsellors, "you do not understand your position. It will then be for me to extricate you from the affair; I am about to arrange everything." He dictated upon the spot the draft of a decree based upon the concessions at first accepted by the Pope. "The deputation of bishops to the holy Father has removed all difficulties," said he; "the Pope has condescended to enter into the difficulties of the Church; the sole difference is to be found in the length of the delay; the emperor wished for three months, the Pope asked for six. This difference not being of a nature to break up the arrangement already concluded, it became henceforth the duty of the Council to enact it. The deputation to the holy Father should convey to him the thanks of the prelates and the faithful."

At first the commission of the Council almost entirely fell into the trap. Could it be doubted that the authorization given by the Pope appeared to cut the question whilst reserving the rights of the holy see. The Archbishop of Bordeaux alone protested in the first place; he soon rallied to his side Broglie, Boulogne, and the Bishop of Tournay. In spite of the most ardent efforts of the bishops favorable to the court the majority of the commission ended by rejecting the decree. "You will answer for all the future evils of the Church," said the Archbishop of Tours to the Bishop of Ghent, "and I cite you before the tribunal of God." "I await you there yourself," replied Broglie.

The emperor appeared to acquiesce without anger in the decision of the commission. "What is it in the decree that most displeases the bishops?" he asked of Cardinal Fesch. "It is the demand for it to be converted into a law of the state," replied the Archbishop of Lyons. "If that hinders them, they have only to take it out," replied Napoleon; "I can just as well make it a law of the state when I please." Cardinal Fesch gave a report of his mission; he promptly broke up the sitting (July 10th). On the following morning the Council was dissolved. In the night the bishop of Ghent, Troyes, and Tournay were arrested in their beds, taken to Vincennes, and kept in secrecy. The Duc de Rovigo was opposed to the arrest of the Archbishop of Bordeaux. "We must not touch M. d'Aviau," said he; "he is a saint, and we shall have everybody against us."

The Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had but recently given a peremptory reason against select companies. "There are not many brave men in the world," said he; "when you collect them all in the same corps, there is not enough leaven elsewhere to make the dough rise." Deprived of the most resolute of its members, the Council found itself in the hands of Napoleon like dough, soft and unresisting. The grand reasons, the elevated and powerful arguments which the captive prelates had made so important, lost all influence over the mass of their colleagues. "One is afraid of Vincennes and one has no desire to loose one's revenues," replied Cardinal Fesch to the entreaties of the persons who solicited the fathers of the Council to use their efforts in favor of the prisoners. By fear or persuasion the bishops, when personally urged and worked upon, bent one after another under the imperial will. The news from Savona were that the Pope's health was improved and that he was inclined to go back to the original concessions. The Council, dissolved on the 11th of July, quietly assembled again on the 5th August. The signature of about eighty bishops was considered certain. The public discussion was not renewed; the Archbishop of Bordeaux alone protested against sanctioning all the imperial claims by a decree, thirteen or fourteen prelates joining their mute protest to Aviau's declaration; and the votes were decided by sitting and rising. Subject to a power which they durst not discuss, the Fathers of the Council disliked to proclaim openly their personal subservience. The decree drawn up by the Emperor Napoleon came back to his hands confirmed by the approbation of the Council "Our wine was not considered good in the wood," said Cardinal Maury cynically, "you will find it better in bottles." A deputation of bishops set out for Savona.

A few months afterwards, under the pressure of the same arbitrary and sovereign will, Pius VII., now alone at Fontainebleau as he had been in his prison at Savona, had in his turn to yield in a certain measure to Napoleon's demands. As it had recently been at Savona, he was destined to see his concessions deformed and exaggerated in order to serve as a basis for a convention which he never ratified. On the day after the Council he showed no displeasure to the bishops who had come as delegates, but promised the investiture of the twenty-seven prelates who were nominated, and even gave to the deliberations of the Council a sort of sanction in a brief which he reserved to himself the right of drawing up. The form of it did not please the emperor, who sent it back to the Council of State for examination. The bishops who still remained in Paris waiting for the decisions of the holy Father were sent to their dioceses. "I don't wish to have a meeting of saints always here," said the emperor to Rovigo. In summoning the Council he had made the blunder of reckoning upon the easy docility of an assembly. "To ask men questions is to acknowledge their right to be deceived," said the Parisians on the day after the refractory bishops were arrested; "why does he summon a Council to imprison afterwards those who are not of his opinion?" The triumph obtained by Napoleon over the terrified prelates did not add to his glory, though it assisted in lessening for the moment his ecclesiastical difficulties. All the dioceses were now provided with bishops, and order was restored to the chapters. That was all the emperor then wished, his outrages upon the independence of consciences and on personal liberty weighing nothing in his balance. He was accustomed to set little value on rights which prevented the accomplishment of his designs. He had brought the bishops to submission, imposed upon the captive Pope a partial acceptance of his will, loftily vindicated the heritage of Charlemagne, and proclaimed his moral and religious supremacy: and now, leaving Pius VII. still at Savona and the refractory prelates at Vincennes, there was nothing more to keep him in Paris. The Russian campaign was already preparing.