Concordat

CONCORDAT, a term originally denoting an agreement be tween ecclesiastical persons or secular persons, but later applied to a pact concluded between the ecclesiastical authority and the secular authority on ecclesiastical matters which concern both, and, more specially, to a pact concluded between the pope, as head of the Catholic Church, and a temporal sovereign for the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs in the territory of such sovereign (pactum concordatum or solemnis conventio). It is to concordats in this later sense that this article refers.

For the purposes of a concordat the state recognizes the official status of the church and of its ministers and tribunals; guarantees it certain privileges; and sometimes binds itself to secure for it subsidies representing compensation for past spoliations. The pope on his side grants the temporal sovereign certain rights, such as that of making or controlling the appointment of digni taries; engages to proceed in harmony with the government in the creation of dioceses or parishes; and regularizes the situation produced by the usurpation of church property, etc. The great advantage of concordats—indeed their principal utility—consists in transforming necessarily unequal unilateral claims into con tractual obligations analogous to those which result from an international convention. Whatever the obligations of the state towards the ecclesiastical society may be in pure theory, in practice they become more precise and stable when they assume the nature of a bilateral convention by which the state engages itself with regard to a third party. And reciprocally, whatever may be the absolute rights of the ecclesiastical society over the appointment of its dignitaries, the administration of its property and the gov ernment of its adherents, the exercise of these rights is limited and restricted by the stable engagements and concessions of the concordatory pact, which bind the head of the church with regard to the nations.

Concordats have therefore the perpetuity of conventions which contain no time limitation; but, like every human convention, they can be denounced, in the form in use for international treaties, and for good reasons, which are summed up in the exigencies of the general good of the country. Nevertheless, there is no example of a concordat having been denounced or broken by the popes, whereas several have been denounced or broken by the civil powers, sometimes in the least diplomatic manner, as in the case of the French concordat in 1905. 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. To the situation defined by concordat, however, succeeds another situation, more or less uncertain and more or less strained, in which the two powers legislate separately on mixed matters, sometimes not without provoking conflicts.

Objects of Concordatory Conventions.

These cannot be described in detail; they bear upon very varied matters and we must confine ourselves here to a brief résumé. In the first place there is the official recognition by the state of the Catholic religion and its ministers. Sometimes the Catholic religion is declared to be the state religion, and at least the free and public exercise of its worship is guaranteed. As regards candidates for ecclesiastical offices, the concordats concluded with Catholic nations regularly give the sovereign the right to nominate or present to bishop rics, often also to other inferior benefices, such as canonries, important parishes and abbeys; or at least the choice of the ecclesiastical authority is submitted to the approval of the civil power. In all cases canonical institution (which confers ecclesias tical jurisdiction) is reserved to the pope or the bishops. In countries where the head of the state is not a Catholic, the bishops are regularly elected by the chapters, but the civil power has the right to strike out objectionable names from the list of candidates which is previously submitted to it. Certain concordats deal with the orders and congregations of monks and nuns with a view to subjecting them to a certain control while securing to them the legal exercise of their activities. Ecclesiastical immunities, such as reservation of the criminal cases of the clergy, exemption from military service and other privileges, are expressly maintained in a certain number of pacts. One of the most important subjects is that of church property. An agreement is come to as to the con ditions on which pious foundations are able to be made; the measure in which church property shall contribute to the public expenses is indicated ; and, in the 19th century, the position of those who have acquired confiscated church property is regular ized. In exchange for this surrender by the church of its ancient property the state engages to contribute to the subsistence of the ministers of public worship, or at least of certain of them.

Concordats in History.

Scholars agree in associating the earliest concordats with the celebrated contest about Investitures (q.v.), which so profoundly agitated Christian Europe in the iith and i 2th centuries. The first in date is that which was concluded for England with Henry I. in 1107 by the efforts of St. Anselm. The convention of Sutri of 'III between Pope Paschal II. and the emperor Henry V. having been rejected, negotiations were resumed by Pope Calixtus II. and ended in the concordat of Worms (1122), which was confirmed in 1177 by the convention between Alexander III. and the emperor Frederick I. In this concordat a distinction Iii. and the emperor Frederick I. In this concordat a distinction was made between spiritual investiture, by the ring and pastoral staff, and lay or feudal investiture, by the sceptre. The emperor renounced investiture by ring and staff, and permitted canonical elections; the pope on his part recognized the king's right to perform lay investiture and to assist at elections. Analogous to this convention was the concordat concluded between Nicholas IV. and the king of Portugal in 1289.

The lengthy discussions on ecclesiastical benefices in Germany ended finally in the concordat of Vienna, promulgated by Nicholas V. in 1448. Already at the council of Constance attempts had been made to reduce the excessive papal reservations and taxes in the matter of benefices, privileges which had been established under the Avignon popes and during the Great Schism; for example, Martin V. had had to make with the different nations special arrangements which were valid for five years only, and by which he renounced the revenues of vacant benefices. The council of Basel went further: it suppressed annates and all the benefice reservations which did not appear in the Corpus Juris.

Eugenius IV. repudiated the Basel decrees, and the negotiations terminated in what was called the "concordat of the princes," which was accepted by Eugenius IV. on his death-bed (bulls of Feb. 5 and 7, '447). In Feb, 1 448 Nicholas V. concluded the arrangement, which took the name of the concordat of Vienna. This concordat, however, was not received as law of the Empire. In Germany the concessions made to the pope and the reserva tions maintained by him in the matter of taxes and benefices were deemed excessive, and the prolonged discontent which resulted was one of the causes of the success of the Lutheran Reformation.

In France the opposition to the papal exactions had been still more marked. In 1438 the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges adopted and put into practice the Basel decrees, and in spite of the in cessant protests of the Holy See the Pragmatic was observed throughout the i 5th century, even after its nominal abolition by Louis XI. in 1461. The situation was modified by the concordat of Bologna, which was personally negotiated by Leo X. and Francis I. of France at Bologna in Dec. 1515, inserted in the bull Primitiva (Aug. 18, 1516), and promulgated as law of the realm in 1517, but not without rousing keen opposition. All bishoprics, abbeys and priories were in the royal nomination, the canonical institution belonging to the pope. The pope preserved the right to nominate to vacant benefices in curia and to certain benefices of the chapters, but all the others were in the nomination of the bishops or other inferior collators. However, the exercise of the pope's right of provision still left considerable scope for papal intervention, and the pope retained the annates.

The concordats drawn up during the 17th and 18th centuries either fell to the ground or had to be recast. In the i9th century we find a long series of concordats, of which a good number are still in force. The first in date and importance is that of 1801, concluded for France between Napoleon and Pius VII. after laborious negotiations. Save in the provisions relating to ec clesiastical benefices, all the property of which had been con fiscated, it reproduced the concordat of 1516. The pope condoned those who had acquired church property; and by way of com pensation the government engaged to give the bishops and cures suitable salaries. 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. After having been the law of the Church of France for a century, it was denounced by the French Govern ment in 1905.

A concordat with England was proposed by Castlereagh in 1814, but the negotiations broke down ever the question of episcopal nominations. In addition to the case of France, important con cordats were concluded during the i 9th century with Germany, Bavaria (1817), Prussia (1821), Hanover (1824); Austria denounced by the Austrian Government on the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870) ; Spain (1851, 1855, 1904) ; Switzerland (1828, 1845, 1888) and Portugal (1857, i886). In the case of Russia, a formal concordat was found inapplicable even as far back as 1847. In the case of Holland and Belgium, concordats have been replaced by an amicable modus vivendi. In the case of Italy, concordats existing when the present kingdom was formed were then abrogated, but Catholicism is fully recognized as the State Religion.

See J. Turmel's article on "Concordat" in Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics; Catholic Encyclopaedia, art. "Concordat"; Mirbt, art. "Konkordate" in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopddie, 3rd ed. (with reff.) ; for the relation between Church and State in various countries see Vering, Kirchenrecht, §§ 30-53 ; and on the French concordats see Baudrillard, Quatre cents ans de concordat (1905) ; de la Meurthe, Documents sur la negociation du concordat et sur les autres rapports de la France avec le Saint-Siege 0905).