THE problem of Church and state as it unfolded itself during the negotiations for the Concordat of 1801 between the Pope and the French state was surprisingly novel to European diplomacy. It revealed a cleavage of opinion practically unknown in former attempts to reconcile things temporal and spiritual. Although there was much talk among the associates of the First Consul about the dangerous Canossa precedent,1 the circumstances in 1801 were very different from those which gave rise to the Hildebrandine controversy. A new element had been intruded into this latest attempt to bring Church and state into harmonious relationship, making former endeavors to divide the fields of sovereignty seem almost simplicity itself.
This new phenomenon was nationalism, a revolutionary force, impatient of all traditional and venerable ideas of the essential unity of European thought and culture. It gloried in variety and assailed with unusual harshness the Catholic and imperial traditions of the Church of Rome.
An exhaustive definition of nationalism is hardly called for here. Enough research has been done, the results of which are pretty generally known, to enable us to use the term without too much ambiguity. Unfortunately for our purposes,
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