Ruler / statesman · Modern
Napoleon Bonaparte
1769–1821 · Enlightened despotism
Baptized Catholic; excommunicated by Pius VII in 1809 after seizing the Papal States; received the last rites and was reconciled at St. Helena.
Napoleon restored the Church in France by the Concordat of 1801, then bound it with the Organic Articles (1802) and an Imperial Catechism (1806) that made obedience to him a religious duty; he annexed Rome, was excommunicated, and held Pius VII prisoner at Savona and Fontainebleau from 1809 to 1814. He treated religion as “the mystery of social order,” and his Civil Code and administration reshaped Europe.
Why he matters: The Concordat became the model for the Church's modern relations with states; his captivity of Pius VII, and the pope's quiet resistance, did more than any argument to produce the ultramontane revival (de Maistre's Du Pape) and the mind of Vatican I.
Where to be careful
His instrumentalising of the Church is Gallicanism and state control of the kind condemned in Auctorem Fidei (1794) and by Pius VII; his raison d'état (the execution of the Duke of Enghien, the wars) treats intrinsically evil means as permissible (Veritatis Splendor 80); his religious indifferentism (“Catholic in France, Muslim in Egypt”) is condemned in Mirari Vos.
Reading
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The Concordat of 1801 and the Organic ArticlesNapoleon Bonaparte and Pius VII · Short texts; the whole relationship is in them.
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To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VIIAmbrogio A. Caiani · The captivity of Pius VII told fully.
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Napoleon the GreatAndrew Roberts · A sympathetic modern biography, to be fair to him.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.