French Civil Code, 1804
After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the “Napoleonic Code.” The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.
In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.
It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family. Though not officially a part of the Code Napoleon, this agreement with the Catholic Church and the pope plays a critical role in redefining Napoleon's France.
The Concordat. The Government of the Republic recognises that the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the religion of the great majority of the French citizens.
His Holiness also recognises that this same religion has derived and now awaits once more the greatest benefit and lustre from the establishment of the Catholic worship in France and from the personal profession of it which the Consuls of the Republic are making.
Therefore, after this mutual recognition, as much for the benefit of religion as for maintaining internal peace, they have agreed upon the following:
Article 1. The Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion will be freely exercised in France. Its worship will be public, and in conformity with such police regulations as the Government shall consider necessary to public peace.