Church. 10 There were then living fifty-nine of the schismatic Bishops who had been elected according to the rules of the Constitution Civile. They speedily relinquished the sees to which they had never had any right, and wrote to the Holy Father to announce the fact. They did not, however, act thus in obedience to the demand of the Sovereign Pontiff, but, as they stated, "for the sake of peace." Their letters, too, were far from complying with the requirements of the brief, but had been drawn up, with some slight modifications, according to a form prepared by Portalis, the newly appointed Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, who stated in a report that he had composed it after long discussions and that it had conciliated all opinions. His words leave no doubt that in spite of Bonaparte's promises the resistance of the constitutional Bishops to the Holy See was countenanced and encouraged, if not by him, at least by the members of his government, who still persisted in maintaining the Gallican, or rather the Jansenistic spirit which had been the original cause of the schism.11 In this officially inspired document the intrusive Bishops protested, indeed, that their faith was that of the Apostles; that they obeyed the Holy Father and submitted to him as the successor of St. Peter, in conformity with the canons and the decrees of the Church; that they adhered to the Concordat just concluded, and that they wished to live and die in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church and in communion with the Holy See. They did not, however, as Cardinal Consalvi observed, make use of the expressions presented to them in the kindest possible manner by the Holy Father for the purpose of inducing them to make their retractation, but employed well-known Jansenist formulas, which had been invented for the purpose of concealing that schism under a cloak of apparent adhesion to the centre of unity. It was, therefore, impossible to accept their retractation in the form which they had adopted.12 10 P. Rinieri, Vol. I., p. 346. The conditions to be performed were also fully specified in the brief. 11 Documents, t. IV., No. 924, p. 153. Lettrés d'évêques constitutionels au Pape. Documents, No. 925, p. 155. Portalis au Premier Consul, 14 Octobre, 1801. "Je joins également copie de la formula de démission, que j'avais redigée après de longues conférences, et qui a concitré tous les esprits." Jean Etienne Marie, Baron Portalis (1746-1807), had been before the Revolution a member of the Parliament of Aix. He was imprisoned in 1793 and set free after the death of Robespierre. Under the Directory he was accused of being a royalist and was proscribed, but fled from France, and returned in 1800, when he was named Councillor of State by Bonaparte. He was thus given the management of ecclesiastical affairs, and drew up the articles organiques in a strong Gallican spirit. Was named "Ministre des Cultes" in July, 1804, when he organized the seminaries and allowed some religious congregations to be recognized. 12 Documents, t. IV., No. 968, p. 251. Consalvi à Caprara, Roma, 14 Nov., At the interviews which the intrusive Bishops had at various times with Cardinal Caprara they maintained the same demeanor. They confessed that the formula which they had employed in their letter to Pius VII. had been given to them by Portalis, and they asserted that they thought that it had been drawn up in agreement with the Cardinal. They pleaded that the government had forced them to occupy sees of which the lawful titularies were still alive; that they had been ready to give them up; that by their action they had prevented the French people from losing all religion, and that in consequence they had suffered imprisonment and had been exposed to great danger. This resistance to the will of the Sovereign Pontiff was unfortunately imitated by many of the legitimate Bishops, who had until then shown their devotion to the Church by the courage with which they had faced dangers and privations. Of the 135 prelates who in 1789 had constituted the French hierarchy, there were still eighty-one survivors, the great majority of whom were in exile and residing in various parts of Europe. On being appealed to by Pius VII., forty-five of these gave in their resignation at once; the others hesitated for some time and protested against the Holy Father's decision; some even of these prolonged their resistance until the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815.13 The greatest opposition seems to have proceeded from those who lived in England, where the Archbishop of Narbonne held a meeting of seventeen prelates to discuss the question. He pointed out to them that the Pope in his brief had stated that in acting as he did he was forced to yield to the compulsion of circumstances, 14 and thereby seemed to imply that by resisting him they would really serve him and obey him. He maintained that the Papal brief was the result of the cunning policy of Bonaparte, who hoped that by obtaining the power of nominating the new Bishops he should be able to disseminate throughout France the doctrines most favorable to his interests. "This man, who called himself a Mussulman in Egypt, was now trying to pass himself off in Europe as a Christian and a Catholic." The Archbishop's arguments, supported by those of the Bishop of Arras, who spoke in favor of the rights of the crown of France, persuaded thirteen of the prelates to decline to give up their 13 Le R. P. Jean-Emmanuel B. Drochon des Augustins de l'Assomption. La Petite Église, Essaf historique sur le Schisme anticoncordataire. Paris, 1894, p. 37. 14 "Cogimur, urgente temporum necessitate, quæ in hoc etiam in nos vim suam exercet magno cum dolore fatendum est nullas nostras sollicitudines, nullos labores pares resistendo temporum necessitate fuisse, cui parere omnino coacti fuimus." Documents, t. III., No. 732, pp. 379-380. Bref exhortant les évêques légitimes à se démettre, 15 August, 1801. sees, and in a letter to the Holy Father they requested him to allow them to explain their conduct, and not to come to any decision until he had considered the importance of their reasons. The four others, joined a few days later by the Bishop of Troyes on his arrival in London, placed their resignation in the hands of Mgr. Erskine, who was Cardinal Consalvi's agent in London.15 It should be observed that the prelates who refused to resign their sees had no intention of causing a schism in the Church, for they took care to inform the clergy of their respective dioceses that they consented that whoever should come there furnished with powers granted by the Holy Father under any form should exercise them freely as being the delegate of the Sovereign Pontiff.16 Nevertheless, a schism which, under the name of La petite Église, was at one time widely spread throughout the privinces of the south and west of France, and of which some adherents still survived not many years ago, seems to have owed its origin to two of the exiled Bishops then residing in Spain. While the other Bishops who had taken refuge in that country submitted to the Holy Father, Mgr. de Coucy, Bishop of La Rochelle, and Mgr. de Thémines, Bishop of Blois, refused to give their resignation. Mgr. de Coucy regarded Bonaparte as an usurper, who had no power to treat of religious matters in the name of France; he rejected the decisions of the Holy Father and refused to accept the Concordat. In his letter to his friends he maintained that religion could not be saved in France by making all the Bishops resign their sees, and that such a measure could not have been the fruit of the wisdom of the Holy Father if he had been left to himself, but that he had been led astray by perfidious promises of the restoration of religion." These letters, as well as pamphlets circulated in his name and for which he was not responsible attacking Bonaparte, the Concordat and even the Sovereign Pontiff, excited among the clergy in the provinces of La Vendée, Maine, Anjou, and especially Poitou, a spirit of resistance to the Concordat. They refused to publish it, to take the oath to the civil authorities which it prescribed or to acknowledge the Bishop whom Pius VII. had named in the place of Mgr. de Coucy. Such was Bonaparte's irritation at the opposition displayed against the Concordat and the new order of things in France by Mgr. de Coucy and Mgr. de Thémines, who was also accused of creating discord in his diocese by his writings, that in February, 1804, he obliged Charles IV. of Spain to imprison them. They were released in 1807 by the intervention of Cardinal Fesch. Mgr. de Thémines in 1810 took refuge in England, where for some years he still continued his opposition to the Holy See. He repented, however, when on his deathbed in Brussels in 1829, and in presence of the Papal Internuncio, Mgr. Cappacini, he made the declaration of submission to the Sovereign Pontiff which had been drawn up by Mgr. Poynter, Vicar Apostolic for the London district, for the use of the French priests residing in England.18 15 Documents, t. IV., No. 895, p. 93. Réunion des évêques Français à Londres, 21 Septembre, 1801. Documents, No. 896, p. 97. Erskine à Consalvi, 22 Septembre, 1801. Documents, No. 898, p. 99. Otto (the agent of the French Government in England) à Talleyrand, 25 Septembre, 1801. Documents, No. 899, p. 104. Les Evêques réfugiés en Angleterre au Pape, 27 Septembre, 1801. 16 Drochon, p. 61. 17 Drochon, p. 52. Frora 1804 Mgr. de Concy had held no further communication with his diocese, but letters still were circulated in his name. (From a letter of Mgr. du Chilleau, Bishop of Chalons sur Saone, 5th Nov., 1804; same, p. 142.) Mgr. de Coucy's resistance was not so prolonged. In 1815, when, after the battle of Waterloo, the Bourbons were again restored, there survived only sixteen of those Bishops who had refused to tender their resignation; the others had been nearly all reconciled with the Holy See before their death. Mgr. de Coucy, who a few years later was named Archbishop of Rheims, was among those who in 1816 submitted to Pius VII. and humbly craved pardon for their resistance to his will. The remainder soon followed their example, and by 1820 Mgr. de Thémines alone persisted in his refusal.19 The schism was, however, perpetuated in various parts of France by several members of the clergy, who, having followed their Bishops in their refusal to accept the Concordat, declined to imitate them in their retractation. Their numbers were gradually reduced by their conversion or their death, but when they had disappeared their followers still maintained a semblance of religion, meeting on Sunday to recite the prayers for Mass and Vespers as well as on the feasts which had been suppressed by the Concordat. As lately as 1893, besides a few very small groups of these dissidents in the Dioceses of Montpellier and of Lyons, there were still in Bas-Poitou (Departments of Les Deux-Sevres and La Vendée) as many as 2,400, whose numbers were gradually diminishing, and in 1903, according to Cardinal Mathieu, they were only represented by a handful of peasants.20 In the audience which Bonaparte gave to Cardinal Caprara on November I he proved that he supported the schismatic clergy in 18 Drochon, p. 165, p. 213. 19 Drochon, p. 145. 20 Drochon, p. 282. Cardinal Mathieu, Le Concordat de 1801. Les origines, son histoire, Paris, 1903, p. 83. "La petite Église en ce moment achéve de mouvie, ayant perdu, il y a fort longtemps son dernier prêtre, et tout récemment ses derniers chefs couvertiss par Léon ХПІ. représentée seulement par une poignée de paysans." their resistance to the demands of the Holy See, though there was no doubt that if he chose he could have insisted on their submission. With a great show of irritation and his usual impetuosity, he poured forth a torrent of the most bitter accusations against the Romans (a guisa di torrente, like a torrent). They sought to lead him by the nose, he said, with their endless delay in forwarding the bull for the delimitation of the new dioceses; they laid snares for him by persuading the Pope not to accept the constitutional Bishops whom he intended to name to the number of fifteen. The Cardinal vainly repeated the objections which he had made on a previous occasion. He could only obtain an assurance that none of the leading members of the schism should be chosen, and to his request that they might at least be obliged to submit and to make the declaration prescribed in the Holy Father's brief, Bonaparte replied "that the demand was arrogant and that to comply with it would be cowardly." He then began a long dissertation on the canonical institution and ended by declaring that "the profession of faith made by the Bishops and their oath of obedience to the Pope were as good as a thousand acts of submission."21 On the previous day the Abbé Bernier, by order of the First Consul, had presented to the Legate a note containing five questions, which would seem to have been intended to ascertain what concessions the Holy See was inclined to make and what was the extent of the powers it had conferred on Cardinal Caprara. The government wished to know: First. If the new delimitation of the dioceses would be accepted by the Pope? Second. If, in that case, the government might announce at once that there would be only fifty sees in France, ten of which would be archbishoprics? Third. Might it also announce that these sees would be those designated by the government? Fourth. Had the Cardinal the power to grant jurisdiction at once to the new Bishops to be named by the Consul, so that they could be consecrated as soon as possible after their nomination? Fifth. If he had not, could he not at least guarantee that the Sovereign Pontiff would grant the canonical institution to the Bishops designated by the First Consul, even if several of them had been constitutional Bishops ?22 Cardinal Caprara prudently refrained from giving an answer in writing to these questions; they were not even mentioned at the audience of the following day, but, as has just been seen, his attempt to obtain any concession met with no success. It was Bonaparte's intention to publish the Concordat on the 18th 21 Documents, t. IV., No. 979, p. 272. Caprara à Consalvi, Parigi, 2 Novembre, 1801. 22 Rinieri, I., p. 381. |