diocesan Bishops were henceforward to exist, together with twelve Archbishops, while more than half the ancient Gallican Episcopate was to be entirely swept away. Against this revolutionary proposal Pius VII. protested, but he protested in vain. The master of France was inexorable, and Pius was compelled to yield. Cardinal Consalvi,[1] the Papal Secretary, says that he vainly urged that the deposition of one hundred French Bishops without condemnation was unprecedented in the annals of Christendom, that nothing could be more ruinous to the famous Gallican liberties. But the iron will of Napoleon broke through all remonstrances, and the Pope was compelled to require the French Bishops to place their resignation in his hands.[2]
Some complied. Some delayed and temporised. Others refused. The refugees in England replied that, holding their episcopal commission from the Holy Spirit, who had constituted them rulers in the Church of God, they could not submit to the Pope's requirements.[3] Nevertheless, their existence was ignored, and the combined power of Pius VII. and Napoleon Bonaparte carried this ecclesiastical revolution into effect.
Napoleon reserved to himself the right of appointment to the newly constituted Sees.[4] This unprecedented act of supreme authority[5] was, of course, altogether distinct from Infallibility; but it formed a precedent for almost limitless submission, and promoted a spirit of resignation to authority, which afterwards exhibited itself in the province of dogmatic truth, and contributed indirectly not a little to the passing of the
