Napoleon Bonaparte

The Revolution had left French religion in pieces. Church property had been sold, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had split the priesthood between those who swore to it and those who refused, worship had been suppressed and then partly restored, and two rival hierarchies were operating. The agreement Napoleon reached with Pius VII in 1801 settled it by conceding almost nothing that mattered to the state. Catholicism was acknowledged as the religion of the great majority of French citizens, which is not the same as an established church. Every existing bishop on both sides was asked to resign so that a new episcopate could be built; the government nominated bishops and the pope instituted them; the confiscated property stayed with those who had bought it; and the clergy were paid by the state, which made them salaried officials.

The following year the government added the Organic Articles unilaterally, a body of regulation controlling seminaries, publication of papal documents, and the conduct of worship, which the pope had not agreed and never accepted. Parallel articles were issued for the Protestant churches, giving them recognition and salaries on similar terms. The arrangement therefore recognised several religions and funded them under supervision, rather than establishing one, and that model outlasted its author across a good deal of Europe.

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.