In reply to the protest of the Holy Father Napoleon wrote to his ambassador at Rome in the following style: “The pope has written me a most ridiculous, a most foolish letter. These people thought I was dead.… Since these idiots do not object to the possibility of a Protestant occupying the throne of France, I will send them a Protestant ambassador.… I will change nothing outwardly, if people behave themselves with me; but otherwise I shall reduce the pope to be bishop of Rome. Really, nothing is so wanting in sense as the court of Rome.”
Only the Emperor of Russia and the King of England he declared were masters in their own states, because they had no pope to trouble them.
A month later (February, 1806) Pius VII. received another letter from Napoleon.
“Your Holiness,” he wrote, “must profess the same regard for me in the temporal order as I profess for you in the spiritual order. All my enemies must be your enemies. That an Englishman, a Russian, a Swede, or a minister of the Sardinian king should henceforth reside in Rome or in any part of your states is entirely unfitting. No vessel belonging to any of these states should enter your ports.”
The Holy Father replied that he was unable to assent to demands which were opposed to the character of his divine mission, “which owns no enmities, not even with those who have departed from the centre of unity.” Napoleon attributed
the pope’s firmness to the counsels of Consalvi, and he determined to drive him from office. “Tell him,” he wrote to his ambassador, “that but two courses remain open to him: always to do what I wish or to quit the ministry.” He also informed the cardinal that none of his movements were unknown to him, and that for the first compromising act he should answer with his head; he would have him arrested in the streets of Rome. “These priests,” he said, “keep the soul for themselves and throw me the carcass.”
All this storm of imperial rage had broken upon the Head of the church because he had dared defend the honor of a Protestant girl, the daughter of a simple American citizen, against the attacks of the most terrible monarch of Europe.
Napoleon’s dream was to found a great western empire like that of Charlemagne, and for the accomplishment of this design he saw that the co-operation of the pope was necessary. He was therefore willing to defend the pope on condition that he should become his tool and lend himself as an obedient slave to his ambitious projects. But when he saw that there was no hope of bringing Pius VII. to accept his views on this subject, he began to govern the church after his own fashion. The bishops and priests who did not conform to his wishes were thrown into prison or forced to keep silence. He had his victories proclaimed from the pulpits; he furnished pastorals and exhortations in which it was made to appear that he was the defender of the faith, fighting against infidels and heretics; he recommended that prayers should be said that “our brothers, the persecuted Catholics of Ireland, might enjoy liberty of
worship.” “Inform M. Robert, a priest of Bourges,” he wrote, “of my displeasure. He preached a very foolish sermon on the 15th of August. L’Abbé de Coucy is a great worry to me. He keeps up too great a correspondence. I wish him to be arrested and put into a monastery.… It is really shameful that you have not yet arrested M. Stevens. People are too sleepy; else how could a wretched priest have escaped?… I see from your letter that you have caused a curé of La Vendée to be arrested. You have acted very wisely. Keep him in prison.” All religious newspapers—save one, the Journal des Curés, whose publications were strictly supervised—were suppressed. “No priest,” said Napoleon, “should bother his head about the church except in his sermons.” A special Sunday each year was set aside to commemorate the coronation and the victories of the Grande Armée; and in the sermon preached on that day particular mention was to be made of those who had fallen at Austerlitz. M. Portalis was charged with the preparation of a new imperial catechism, which was published in August, 1806. The children of France were taught that “the honor and the service of the emperor is one and the same thing as the honor and service of God”; that those who were wanting in their duty to Napoleon rendered themselves worthy of eternal damnation; and that God had given the crown not only to him, but to his family. The French bishops submitted in silence to this orthodox imperialism.
The next step was to deprive the pope of his temporal power. As Pius VII. had refused to enter into the emperor’s plans for the founding of a great western empire, he