Authority and Order: Portalis and the Implementation of the Concordat of 1801

The success of the Concordat of 1801 in establishing a modus vivendi between post-revolutionary France and the Catholic Church ought not be taken for granted. It owes in significant degree to the design and application of Napoleon's advisor on religious affairs, Jean-Etienne Marie Portalis. The Concordat is appreciated for having set the stage for the ultramontane Catholicism of nineteenth-century France, but as legislator and administrator, Portalis was looking back to the legal traditions of the liberties of the Gallican Church and the supremacy of the sovereign.