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remedy the situation resulting from a division of the clergy yes, even of the Church into two camps. On the very same day (July 15, 1801) the Concordat was signed. In a farewell audience, Consalvi alluded to the great sacrifices which he had made for the sake of peace with France. The greatest were the relinquishment of claims to Church property and the concession to the ruler of the state of the right to appoint the bishops. Physically and mentally exhausted, Consalvi left the city in haste because of Napoleon's desire to see the Roman Bull of Confirmation at the earliest possible date. He had not won everything, but he had gained a great deal. He wrote: "Was it not a triumph to know that religion was to revive again in a country where people had worshipped the Goddess of Reason and read on the towers of temples the inscriptions, 'To youth, to manhood, to old age, to friendship, to commerce?' "
The event did not elicit a uniform echo on either side. Legitimists were shocked and there were plenty of angry free-thinkers. Some praised the Curia, and some poked fun at it. Pius and the cardinals were on the whole in agreement that a Concordat must not be spurned which made possible nothing less than the restoration of Catholicism in France and therewith its preservation in Europe, for under the cir- cumstances the apostasy of France would most certainly have involved other states. After a long debate it was ratified and die confirmation was sent to Paris. In order to weaken the effect of the agreement, Napoleon drew up the Organic Articles and proclaimed them together with the Concordat on Easter Day, 1802, These possessed the validity of state law, and in the spirit of an absolutism hostile to Rome forced the Church into chains of civil subservience, police supervision, and nationalistic limitations. The manner in which they were published created and was intended to create the impression chat they formed part of the Concordat and had, like it, been approved by the Holy See. Consalvi said that therewith the new structure erected at the cost of so much effort had been pulled down again. While the Monitcvr was making public the Concordat and the Articles in the same number in which die publication of Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity was announced, while Archbishop Belioy then well-nigh ninety was celebrating in Notre-Damc, in the presence of Napoleon and his generals, the coming of peace to the Church, while heralds were pro-
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