Bonaparte has gradually extended his authority in Italy by annexing the Piedmont and by acquiring Genoa, Parma, Tuscany and Naples and added this Italian territory to his Cisalpine Gaul.
He now lays siege to the Roman state and initiates the Concordat of 1801 to control the material claims of the pope.
Bonaparte restores Catholicism in France by the 1801 concordat with Pope Pius VII, thus ending more than a decade of hostility and violence between the church and revolutionary France.
The main terms of the Concordat, signed on July 15, 1801, include: A declaration that "Catholicism is the religion of the great majority of the French" but not the official state religion, thus maintaining religious freedom, in particular with respect to Protestants.
The Papacy had the right to depose bishops, but this makes little difference, because the French government still nominates them.
The State will pay clerical salaries and the clergy swear an oath of allegiance to the State.
The Roman Catholic Church gives up all its claims to Church lands that were confiscated after 1790.
The Sabbath is reestablished as a "festival", effective Easter Sunday, April 18, 1802.
The rest of the French Republican Calendar, which had been abolished, will not be replaced by the traditional Gregorian Calendar until January 1, 1806.
