ABSTRACT
As early as April 1802 the Legislative Chamber adopted a set of 'organic articles' purporting to give legal effect to the agreement of the previous summer. Instead, they reversed a number of assumptions which had seemed to underlie the Concordat. No papal legislation could be published in France, nor could any nuncio or legate be sent there without governmental approval. Prefects were to report any disloyal behaviour on the part of churchmen. The latter, indeed, were explicitly equated once more with salaried state officials. The pope protested, to no avail. Then in 1804, Pius was induced to come to Paris for Napoleon's coronation as emperor of the French, only to have the agreed ceremony in Notre Dame altered without prior notice: at the climactic moment, Bonaparte placed the imperial crown on his own head. Less than two years later, in 1806, the government in Paris announced a new catechism, to be used as the basis for all Catholic religious education throughout the Empire. The seventh lesson in particular, though approved by the docile nuncio to France, Cardinal Caprara, nevertheless outraged more deeply devout church leaders. Every true believer, it stated, must pledge to 'Napoleon I, our Emperor, love, respect, obedience, loyalty, military service . . . because God . . . whether for peace or for war, has made him the minister of His power and His image upon earth' .
