It is not wonderful, therefore, that the will of the Conqueror should remain uppermost in all church affairs during the course of the Consulate, when only a few courageous and noble souls dared to stand forth in the defence of ecclesiastical rights and liberties. The Consulate was termed the Lune-de-miel, the honeymoon, in this new union of Church and State; but its joys, such as they were, were to feel ere long the bitterness entailed by the unreasoning and imperious exactions of an overbearing consort.

The soldier who had risen to the command of armies had been honored with the title of First Consul; his head, yet uncrowned, was restless till it should feel upon it the emblem of royalty. It was his ambition to be called, and to be like Charlemagne, an emperor; he desired that the consecrating oils in the great ceremony should be conferred by no less a personage than the Holy Father himself, and he wished that the Pope should perform this ceremony at Paris. The venerable Pontiff, when apprised of this new demand of Bonaparte, was at a loss how to respond. He looked for counsel to his most prudent friends, and above all to the great Giver of light, and then weighing in the balance the great harm he knew must come from a formal refusal, and the immense benefits he felt must accrue to the Church from so slight a sacrifice, he determined, leaving the issue to Divine Providence, to gratify this wish of the General. He did not do so, however, before renewing his protest against the obnoxious Organic Articles, and obtaining from Bonaparte a promise of their speedy revokal.

In compliance with these resolves, the Holy Father set out from Rome on November 2, 1804, and after a journey of nearly a month's duration, through provinces once hostile, but now enthusiastic in their greetings, he reached Fontainebleau on Sunday, November 25th. Here he was met by Bonaparte who displayed at first an apparent desire to shower every honor upon his illustrious guest. Yet even this short stay near Paris was marked by the same evidences of fickleness and selfishness on the part of the First Consul, as were shown in his every relation with the Holy See. At one time it would seem as if nothing were too good for the aged Pontiff, and the Consul, to demonstrate this conviction, would display the most utter obsequiousness to his spiritual superior; an hour afterwards the Holy Father was made to feel most keenly the sense of humiliating dependence upon his tormentor. Yet the spirit of the martyr bore up bravely through storm and sunshine. He met the delegation sent to him from the French Senate with a calm undisturbed serenity that drew expressions of admiration from men hostile to the very name of religion; he forebore any words of reproach against the unwarranted demands of Bonaparte. There were, however, some things upon which he insisted strongly, and without which he would refuse, even on the eve of the great day, to be present at the coronation. There were among the French bishops men who had signed the Civil Constitution during the Revolution in defiance of ecclesiastical warnings to the contrary. Still unrepentant, they hoped under the protection of Bonaparte to continue in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction without yielding proper submission to the Holy See. To compel them to this latter course was the determined policy of Pius VII. though the constitutional bishops found a ready ally in the First Consul himself. The latter at first endeavored to gloss over the objections of the Pope, hoping that in the excitement of the day the coronation ceremony might take place before any action would be taken in regard to the obnoxious bishops. But Pius VII. was far too vigilant to become a victim to this deception. The aged Pontiff demanded the act of submission as a necessary condition before the great ceremony should proceed, and Bonaparte, tacitly acknowledging his defeat, yielded. The constitutional bishops at his command repaired to the presence of the Holy Father and complied fully with his wishes.

On the evening of December 1st, the Holy Father learned for the first time that the new Emperor had never contracted an ecclesiastically legal marriage with Josephine, his reputed wife. Despite the fact that all preparations for the great ceremony had been completed, the Pope sent word to Napoleon that he should refuse to take part in the coronation on the morrow unless the Emperor and Josephine should contract their marriage vows that very night in the presence of a duly authorized priest of the Church. Again the Emperor, fretful and impatient as he was, yielded to the demands of the Pope, and the marriage ceremony was performed at midnight in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of Cardinal Fesch, uncle to Napoleon. The following day, December 2nd, the Conqueror of Europe, the great Dictator of France, realized the dream of his lifetime. The solemn ceremony of his consecration and coronation as Emperor of the French took place in the great cathedral of Notre Dame in the midst of all the splendor which the united resources of Church and State could afford. The ceremony began shortly after ten o'clock, when Napoleon, proceeding with Josephine to the foot of the altar, in the presence of the Holy Father made the solemn promise that he would maintain peace in the Church of God. The two candidates for royalty knelt upon cushions and received from His Holiness the oils and imperial consecration. Napoleon then ascended the altar, and taking the crown into his own hands placed it upon his head, after which he took up the smaller crown of the Empress and bearing it to Josephine crowned her. She received the diadem kneeling. The ceremony was concluded with the Te Deum.

Pius VII. returned to Rome after what was to him a humiliating and exacting journey. Indeed he could congratulate himself that he had at all escaped perpetual exile at Paris. Before he had left that city, the new Emperor, flushed with his recent glories, conceived the plan of retaining the Pope at Paris. The latter, however, had prepared himself for the demand and could answer courageously, that if they were to use force they would have at Paris only a poor monk called Barnabas Chiaramonti. Before he had left Rome he had arranged that in such an emergency a new Pope would be immediately elected.

THE AFFAIR OF JEROME.

Even at the entrance of the Eternal City, new complications met to annoy and confuse him, which, however, he settled with his usual diplomatic firmness and condescension. The affair of Prince Jerome was just then attracting attention. The latter, a lad of nineteen, and brother of the Emperor, had married while in America, December 24, 1803, a certain Miss Patterson, a descendant of one of Maryland's best families. The ceremony was performed by Archbishop Carroll, and was valid in the eyes of the Church. Upon his returning to France with his young bride he was met by the anger of his imperial brother, who as soon as possible wrote to Pope Pius VII.: "I have several times spoken to Your Holiness about a brother, nineteen years old, whom I sent on a frigate to America, and who after a month's stay, married in Baltimore—although a minor—a Protestant daughter of an American merchant. He has just returned; he feels the extent of his fault. I have sent back Miss Patterson, his alleged wife, to America. According to our laws the marriage is null. A Spanish priest so far forgot his duty as to give the nuptial blessing." Napoleon then proceeds to request the Pope to declare the marriage invalid, giving as his principal reasons: That the lady was a Protestant; that Jerome was yet a minor according to French law; that the Gallican Church of France held it invalid, and that the marriage was clandestine and null according to the Council of Trent. To all these objections the Holy Father answered that the marriage was entirely valid, that it was not subject to the Council of Trent, the decrees of which had not been published in America, and that it was not in his power to annul the same unless stronger reasons were brought forward to warrant such action. To this determination the Pope adhered unflinchingly, despite the threats and revengeful actions of Napoleon. Even later, in 1807, when Jerome was married to a princess of Wurtemburg, the Holy Father, far from consenting, renewed his declaration as to the validity of the first marriage.

Napoleon, now at the summit of his political and military career, looked forward to still other conquests. He had crowned himself Emperor of the French at Paris; he received another crown at Milan, making him king of Italy. Then came Austerlitz and Jena and Eylau to humiliate Austria and Prussia and Russia. He became a king-maker by placing his brothers upon the thrones of Naples, Holland and Westphalia. The battle of Wagram, 1809, brought Austria to the feet of the Emperor, who demanded in marriage the hand of the Austrian Emperor's daughter, the Princess Maria Louisa. Josephine, her claims long vanished, was divorced from Napoleon upon the plea of State necessity. An emperor to be an emperor indeed, must be able to look upon the children who shall carry his great name to posterity. The marriage of Josephine and Napoleon had been fruitless in this regard; reasons of State, therefore, demanded, according to Napoleon, that a dissolution should take place, and that a new empress be called to the throne. This reasoning of Napoleon was accepted by Europe; only the Holy Father withheld his approbation and assent. Josephine was divorced and the Emperor remarried to Maria Louisa. It was on this occasion that the terms were coined in the ecclesiastical world "the red and the black cardinals," at the great ceremony which was performed by Cardinal Fesch in the Tuileries, April 2, 1810. Of the twenty-nine cardinals then in Paris, thirteen, including Consalvi, refused to honor the occasion with their presence. This mark of disapprobation was punished by the Emperor who besides depriving them of their salaries forbade them to wear the colors or insignia of their cardinalatial rank. Hence their designation as the black cardinals. These two divorces betray sufficiently the shallow honor of Napoleon in dealing with the Church, a quality which other events of this period brought more into evidence.

The vainglorious assumptions of the Emperor knew no bounds. Petted and flattered where he was not feared, he often smiled as he heard himself compared with Alexander, Caesar, or Charlemagne. He designed as a means of greater glory the complete solidification of his empire under his own supreme control. Only one obstacle lay in the way of his colossal ambition. He chafed at the thought that there was yet in Italy one little state which would hold out against his pretensions; and then, hurried on by the lust of power, and blinded by prosperity, this pretended successor of Charlemagne proceeded against the Pope. Again the aged Pontiff remonstrated. He reminded Napoleon of his former injustice in the matter of the Organic Articles; he reproached him for the injurious dispositions of the Civil Code which he had introduced into France, especially the law granting divorce, the tendency of which laws was to render the discipline of the Church almost null; and now in the face of this new danger, the projected subjugation of the States of the Church, he reminded the Emperor of the judgments that the Almighty must send upon those who disregard His Divine ordinances. The words of the Pope, instead of moderating the intentions of Napoleon, served only to fill him with violent anger. He determined thenceforth to cast aside all promptings of conscience and to take immediate steps for the complete subjugation of Rome. Benevento and Ponte Corvo at once fell into his hands; his troops took possession of Ancona and all cities on the Adriatic coast; Rome itself was invaded; the Papal militia was incorporated with the French; the Pope was deprived of every official necessary for the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and surrounded by a guard in his own palace of the Quirinal.

EXCOMMUNICATION OF NAPOLEON.