Word Finder - concordat

definition

A formal agreement between two parties, especially between a church and a state; specifically, an agreement between the Pope and a government.

Down to the repeal of the Concordat in 1905 all French governments continued to uphold two of the ancient "Gallican Liberties."

Up to 1905 it was also the case in France, where the ancient local customs now continue, pending the reorganization of the Church without the concordat.

His bull of the 1st of July 1519, which regulated the discipline of the Polish Church, was later transformed into a concordat by Clement VII.

A concordat may assume divers forms - historically, three.

The rupture of the concordat at once terminates the obligations which resulted from it on both sides; but it does not break off all relation between the church and the state, since the two societies continue to coexist on the same territory.

In the 17th century we have only to mention the concordat between Urban VIII.

Save in the provisions relating to ecclesiastical benefices, all the property of which had been confiscated, it reproduced the concordat of 1516.

The concordat was solemnly promulgated on Easter Day 1802, but the government had added to it unilateral provisions of Gallican tendencies, which were known as the Organic Articles.

It must be observed that the denunciation of a concordat by a nation does not necessarily entail the separation of the church and the state in that country or the rupture of diplomatic relations with Rome.

For the Italian republic, between Napoleon and Pius VII., analogous to the French concordat; abrogated.

It is impossible to designate as a concordat the concessions which were wrested by violence from Pius VII.

This first concordat was immediately suspended, and was not ratified until 1827; it is partially maintained.

The emperor of Austria continues to nominate to bishoprics by virtue of rights anterior to this concordat.

Before these alterations the relations between the state and the Roman Catholic communion, by far the largest and most important in France, were chiefly regulated by the provisions of the Concordat of 1801, concluded between the first consul, Bonaparte, and Pope Pius VII.

But during his administration the influence of the church over the schools was really much less than, by the theory of the concordat, it would have appeared to be.

By the concordat of Worms, 1122, the emperor surrendered the right of investiture by ring and staff, and granted the right of election to the clergy.

Leopold of Tuscany suspended the constitution, and in 1852 formally abolished it by order from Vienna; he also concluded atreatyof semi-subjection with Austria and a Concordat with the pope for granting fresh privileges to the Church.

The hellenizers had not lost all hope of converting the nation and were indisposed to acquiesce in the concordat.

The reader is referred to the article France (Law and Institutions) for the information respecting the various codes dating from this period, and to the article Concordat for the famous measure whereby Napoleon re-established official relations between the state and the church in France.

The promulgation of the Concordat (18th of April 1802) and the institution of what was in all but name a state religion tended strongly in the same direction, the authority of the priests being generally used in support of the man to whom Chateaubriand applied the epithet "restorer of the altars."

The prestige which the First Consul had gained by the Concordat was now lost by the overweening emperor.

It was clear that the spiritual forces of the time were also slipping out of his grasp. Early in January he sought to come to terms with the pope (then virtually a captive at Fontainebleau) respecting various questions then in debate concerning the Concordat.

His protest against the Concordat of the 21st of February 1857 between Portugal and the Holy See, regulating the Portuguese Padroado in the East, his successful opposition to the entry of foreign religious orders, and his advocacy of civil marriage, were the chief landmarks in his battle with Ultramontanism, and his Estudos sobre o Casamento Civil were put on the Index.

The Concordat brought the clergy into subjection, and enabled him to distribute benefices at his pleasure among the most docile of his courtiers.

In April 1850 he concluded a treaty with Austria sanctioning the continuation for an indefinite period of the Austrian occupation with 10,000 men; in September he dismissed parliament, and the following year established a concordat with the Church of a very clerical character.

In 1448 Eugenius's successor, Nicholas V., concluded a concordat with the emperor Frederick III.

Nothing was said in the concordat of a great part of the chief subjects of complaint.

This gave the princes an excuse for the theory that the decrees of Constance and Basel were still in force, limiting the papal prerogatives in all respects not noticed in the concordat.

The pope is constantly accused of violating the concordat, and constant demands are made for a general council, or at least a national one, which should undertake to remedy the abuses.

Bonaparte, in the Concordat which he forced upon the pope in 1801, did not provide for the return of any of the lands of the Church which had been sold, but agreed that the government should pay the salaries of bishops and priests, whose appointment it controlled.

In 1292 a synod was held here, and in 1474 an imperial diet, preliminary to that of Vienna, in which the concordat was decided which has therefore been sometimes called the Aschaffenburg Concordat.

Thereafter, when the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion was in the mind of the First Consul, Fesch resumed his clerical vocation and took an active part in the complex negotiations which led to the signing of the Concordat with the Holy See on the 15th of July 1801.

He had a hand in the negotiations for the Concordat, but, according to Lucien Bonaparte, looked on that measure as "ill-advised and retrograde."

But in 1798 the city was annexed to France and became the capital of the French department of Leman (to be carefully distinguished from the Swiss canton of Leman, that is Vaud, of the Helvetic Republic, also set up in 1798), while in 1802, by the Concordat, the ancient bishopric of Geneva was suppressed.

However, a solution that was right in principle proved impossible in practice, and the long struggle ended in a compromise by the Concordat of Worms (1122).

This had greatly increased since the Concordat of Worms, and reached its height under Innocent III.

In 1860 he prepared the legislative unification of Italy, opposed the idea of an alliance between Piedmont and Naples, and, after the fall of the Bourbons, was sent to Naples as administrator of justice, in which capacity he suppressed the religious orders, revoked the Concordat, proclaimed the right of the state to Church property, and unified civil and commercial jurisprudence.

In March 1825 he was created cardinal by Leo XII., and shortly afterwards was entrusted with an important mission to adjust a concordat regarding the interests of the Catholics of Belgium and the Protestants of Holland.

The understanding, however, between the two contracting parties was very far from being clear and complete, as each party still sought to attain its own aim by spreading in the Christian world divergent interpretations of the concordat and widely-differing plans for reducing it to its final form.

When the schism of 1130 broke out he endeavoured to procure the cancellation of the clauses of the Concordat of Worms and to recover lay investiture by way of compensation for the support he had given to Innocent II., one of the competing popes.

He also had to submit to the consequences of his origin on the occasion of a double election not foreseen by the Concordat of Worms, when he was forced to admit the necessity of appeal to Rome and to acknowledge the supremacy of the papal decision.

In the Empire the affairs of the Church were ameliorated - though not so quickly - by the Concordat of Vienna (1448).

The conquest of Milan by the French led to a personal interview at Bologna, where the " Concordat " with France was concluded.

The harrying was halted in 1795; and soon after the directory had been succeeded by the consulate, the Catholic religion was re-established by the concordat of 1801.

In the concordat of 1801 the papacy recognized the validity of the sales of Church of 180E g Y property, and still further reduced the number of dioceses; it provided that the government should appoint and support the archbishops and bishops, but that the pope should confirm them; and France recognized the temporal power, though shorn of Ferrara, Bologna and the Romagna.

The indignation of the pope and his advisers was not deep enough to prevent the ratification in 1803 of a somewhat similar concordat for the Italian Republic. In 1804 Pius consented to anoint Napoleon emperor, thus casting over a conquered crown the halo of legitimacy.

After the return from Moscow the emperor negotiated with his prisoner a new and more exacting concordat, but two months later the repentant pope abrogated this treaty and declared all the official acts of the new French bishops to be invalid.

In France, under the Concordat, the sovereign - and under the republic the president - had the right of nomination.

By additional articles the equality of religions was guaranteed and the rights of Protestants safeguarded, concessions which were denounced at Rome as a breach of the Concordat, which had been signed immediately before.

With the view of terminating these differences the king in 1827 entered into a concordat with the pope, and an agreement was reached with regard to nominations to bishoprics, clerical education and other questions, which should have satisfied all reasonable men.