A Sanhedrin, and a Pope in Custody

In 1806 he convened an Assembly of Jewish Notables and put twelve questions to it about whether Jewish law permitted what French citizenship required: intermarriage, the authority of French courts, military service, the treatment of non Jews, the standing of rabbis, the taking of interest. The answers were drafted carefully. The following year he summoned a Grand Sanhedrin of seventy one members, deliberately reviving the name of the ancient court and the number of its members, to give those answers religious authority, and it declared that the civil provisions of Jewish law did not bind where French law governed while the religious provisions remained untouched. A consistory system was set up in 1808 to administer French Judaism on the model already applied to the other recognised religions. In the same year a decree restricted Jewish commerce and residence in the eastern departments for a fixed term, which stood beside the emancipation and qualified it.

The Catholic side of the ledger ran the other way. He crowned himself in 1804 with the pope present, annexed the Papal States in 1809, was excommunicated for it, and had Pius VII removed to Savona and then to Fontainebleau, where he remained in custody for years. Recognising religions and controlling them were the same policy.