# Napoleon and Protestants

* This article is part of a series aboutNapoleon
Family
Wives
Joséphine de Beauharnais
Marie Louise
Children
Charles Léon
Alexandre Walewski
Napoleon II
Parents
Carlo Maria Buonaparte
Letizia Ramolino
Brothers
Joseph
Lucien
Louis
Jérôme
Sisters
Caroline
Pauline
Elisa
Life and career
Timeline
First French Empire
Coup of 18 Brumaire
Consulate
Assassination attempts
Constitutions
1799
1802
1804
1815
Napoleonic Wars
Coronation
Sale of Louisiana
Planned invasion of the United Kingdom
Holland
Mesures usuelles
Looting of art
Tactics
Weaponry and warfare
1st abdication
1st exile
Route Napoléon
2nd abdication
Death
mask
Battles and wars
French Revolutionary Wars
Siege of Toulon
French Revolution
13 Vendémiaire
Battle of Lodi
Battle of Bassano
Battle of Rivoli
French campaign in Egypt and Syria
Battle of the Pyramids
Siege of Jaffa
Battle of Marengo
War of the Third Coalition
Battle of Austerlitz
War of the Fourth Coalition
Battle of Eylau
War of the Fifth Coalition
Battle of Eckmühl
French invasion of Russia
Battle of Borodino
War of the Sixth Coalition
Battle of Leipzig
Battle of Vauchamps
Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube
Hundred Days
Battle of Ligny
Battle of Waterloo
Views
Catholic Church
Concordat of 1801
Tiara
Jewish people
Grand Sanhedrin
Infamous Decree
Protestants
Organic Articles
Slavery
Law of 20 May 1802
Saint-Domingue expedition
Homes and honours
Arc de Triomphe
Column of the Grande Armée
Equestrian statue
Palace of Fontainebleau
Les Invalides
Longwood House
Maison Bonaparte
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker
Milan
Rue de la Victoire
Warsaw monument
Legacy
Bank of France
Bonapartism
Cultural depictions
Napoleon complex
"China is a sleeping giant" quote
German Romanticism
Napoleonic Code
Propaganda
Tomb
Retour des cendres
Penis
Studies
Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven) :
vte :
Protestantism was generally proscribed in France between 1685 (Edict of Fontainebleau) and 1787 (Edict of Versailles). During that period Roman Catholicism was the state religion. The French Revolution began a process of dechristianisation that lasted from 1792 until the Concordat of 1801, an agreement between the French state and the Papacy (which lasted until 1905). The French general and statesman responsible for the concordat, Napoleon Bonaparte, had a generally favourable attitude towards Protestants, and the concordat did not make Catholicism the state religion again.
In April 1802, Bonaparte unilaterally promulgated the Organic Articles, a law designed to implement the terms of the concordat. It formally recognised the Lutheran and Reformed churches in France, provided for their ministers to be paid by the state and granted them several previously Catholic churches as compensation for Protestant churches destroyed during the persecutions of the reign of King Louis XIV. The articles were not negotiated with either Catholics or Protestants and were not informed by actual Protestant ecclesiology. For the first time, Protestant ministers took part in public ceremonies as paid agents of the state. The first Reformed church was legally established in Paris in 1802, and by 1804 there were 120 Reformed ministers on the state payroll. There had been only forty-eight ministers in France in 1750, all practising underground because it was a capital offence to preach in a Protestant church. The presidents of twenty-seven Reformed consistories were present when Bonaparte was crowned emperor in 1804. By the end of his reign, Napoleon had 137 Reformed pastors in his pay. With the expansion of the French Empire and the direct incorporation of the Netherlands, as well as western and northwestern German regions, France was now in possession of vast Protestant majority areas.
As a result of Napoleon's actions, French Protestants generally considered themselves emancipated and integrated into national life in the period from 1802 until Napoleon's defeat and exile in 1814. The Charter of 1814, the constitution introduced by King Louis XVIII, maintained the freedom of Protestants as it had been under Napoleon while restoring Catholicism as the state religion. Nevertheless, there was widespread violence against Protestants in 1815.