L’Église catholique face aux États et la liberté religieuse
Catholic Church versus the State and religious freedom

Summary/Abstract: The relations between the Church and the State have always been quite strained. This article distinguishes six stages in the history of church state relations, as illustrated by means of six schemata. Pope Gelasius I in his letter dated 494 speaks about a perfect state of balance between the spiritual authority and the temporal power, whereas a Papal bull issued by Boniface VIII in 1302 affirms the grandeur of Roman authority. In 1590, Bellarmin tries to restore equilibrium in church state relations. However, the situation changes drastically with the French Revolution and the subsequent elimination of God from the public sphere. The French Concordat of 1801 contains an unprecedented article in which the Pope calls upon French bishops to resign. It is Leo XIII who renews the Gelasian dualism, laying the foundations for the doctrine of ‘the two perfect societies’, namely the Church and the State. The Lateran Treaty concluded between Pius XI and Mussolini in 1929, which led to the foundation of Vatican City, constitutes a real turning point in the whole history of concordats. Vatican Council II and its Declaration Dignitatis humanae on religious freedom (1965) leads to a major change in church state relations, together with the peaceful fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989– 1990, a real Copernican revolution in the field of religious law, still in force in these countries. It can be observed that since the 1960s concordats have been concluded not only in greater numbers than before but also in greater serenity.

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