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.