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The Concordat of 1801

1801 · Paris (Paris, France)

In July 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte and Pius VII conclude a concordat restoring the Catholic church in France after the Revolution. Catholicism is recognized as the religion of the great majority of the French; the state pays the clergy and nominates bishops, whom the pope institutes. The settlement governs French church and state relations until the separation law of 1905.

Tagged: Catholic

The Event

Date
1801 (exact)
Era
Revolution and the Nineteenth Century; Standard periodization of Catholic history
Location
Paris; today Paris, France
Traditions
Catholicism
Streams
Catholic
Key figures
Napoleon Bonaparte, Pius VII
Key texts
Concordat of 1801

Connections

Illustration for The Civil Constitution of the Clergy History Event The Civil Constitution of the Clergy 1790 ends the schism the Civil Constitution opened

Primary Sources

  • Concordat between the French Republic and Pius VII, 1801.

Secondary Sources

  • Chadwick, Owen. A History of the Popes, 1830-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
  • Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
  • MacCulloch, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Penguin, 2009.
  • O'Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Provenance: HIST-1337; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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