The Concordat of 1801 (review)

50 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION the Baltimore area. A log meeting built in 1713 at Patapsco was the first place of worship in the present city limits. Notice, though somewhat belated, may still be taken for the sake of completeness of an article published in January, 1928, in the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly (vol. 37: 35-85) on "The Quakers, their Migration to the Upper Ohio, their Customs and Discipline ," The author was H. E. Smith, of Marietta, Ohio. The article is very fully illustrated with cuts of persons, meeting houses, etc. There is a very full account and bibliography of the life and work of a little known Quaker in the new quarterly Pennsylvania History, vol. 2 (1935) : 86-98. This is "William Thornton, Architect" by William Sener Rush. Thornton was born in Tortola or an adjacent island in 1759; he became a physician, poet, and painter. But he is most deserving of fame as architect of the Capitol at Washington, and of other buildings. He died in 1828. Pending the publication of a forthcoming volume of the Dictionary of American Biography this sketch is probably the best in print on this subject. An unusual but effective use of the Quaker journal was made by Professor Cecil K. Drinker, of the Harvard School of Public Health, in a series of public lectures under the Lowell Institute, given in Boston in Tenth and Eleventh months, 1934. The general subject was "Health, Medicine and Doctors in Colonial Days, as Depicted in the Diary of Elizabeth Drinker (1758-1807)." It is understood that the lectures will shortly be printed. It is to be hoped that the whole journal, heretofore published only in part, will also be completely published. Samuell Gorton, for so he spelled his Christian name, was no Quaker, but his career (c. 1592-1677) is of importance for a study of early Quaker background in New England. A fresh account of him by Kenneth W. Porter appears in the New England Quarterly for September , 1934 (Vol. vii, p. 405 ff.). BOOK REVIEW The Concordat of 1801. By Henry H. Walsh. Columbia University Press, 1933. 259 pp. $3.50. One of the most intriguing of unsolved political problems is the relation of church and state, and in particular the relation of the state to that embodiment of a supposedly universal ethic, the Roman Catholic Church. This problem has had many forms, but has probably reached its acutest form with the development of the modern nationalist state. After being an almost academic question for some time, it has again intruded itself into practical politics with the development of various forms of dictatorship in Europe and the overthrow of a dictatorship in Mexico. BOOK REVIEW51 Very timely, therefore, is Dr. Walsh's discussion of the attempt to solve the problem by the Concordat of 1801. By the beginning of the nineteenth century Napoleon, then First Consul , felt that he needed a well organized religion as a support to his government. The Constitutional Church established during the Revolution in France had "good maxims" but "few of the faithful." Hence he turned to the Catholic Church, though its many members were badly split into factions. The Pope, having just returned to Rome after a period of exile, was only too willing to listen to a possible protector. To find such in the land of Rousseau was almost too good to be true, but worth investigating. Thus the time was ripe for a rapprochement, and neither side was too strongly intrenched to ignore the other. All was not smooth sailing, however. Though Napoleon had no intention of allowing the priests to become stronger than the government, most of his supporters were more or less openly opposed to any recognition of the Roman Church. On the other hand, the French requirements were extremely distasteful to the Church, in particular the demand that all the bishops of the old regime resign and that the Church abandon all claim to Church property confiscated during and since the French Revolution. At last, after about a year of negotiating, the Concordat was signed on July 5, 1801. This Concordat, inter alia, recognized that the Roman Catholic religion was the...