History
According to long-standing tradition, Mary, Martha, Lazarus and some companions, who were expelled by persecutions from the Holy Land, traversed the Mediterranean in a frail boat with neither rudder nor mast and landed at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer near Arles. Provençal tradition names Lazarus as the first bishop of Marseille, while Martha purportedly went on to tame a terrible beast in nearby Tarascon. Pilgrims visited their tombs at the abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy. In the Abbey of the Trinity at Vendôme, a phylactery was said to contain a tear shed by Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. The cathedral of Autun, not far away, is dedicated to Lazarus as Saint Lazaire.
The first written records of Christians in France date from the 2nd century when Irenaeus detailed the deaths of ninety-year old bishop Pothinus of Lugdunum (Lyon) and other martyrs of the 177 persecution in Lyon.
In 496 Remigius baptized Clovis I, who was converted from paganism to Catholicism. Clovis I, considered the founder of France, made himself the ally and protector of the papacy and his predominantly Catholic subjects.
On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, forming the political and religious foundations of Christendom and establishing in earnest the French government's longstanding historical association with the Roman Catholic Church.
The Council of Clermont, a mixed synod of ecclesiastics and laymen led by Pope Urban II in November 1095 at Clermont-Ferrand triggered the First Crusade.
The Avignon Papacy was the period from 1309 to 1377 during which seven French popes, resided in Avignon.
Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church had been the official state religion of France since the conversion to Christianity of Clovis I, leading to France being called "the eldest daughter of the Church." The King of France was known as "His Most Christian Majesty." Following the Protestant Reformation, France was riven by sectarian conflict as the Huguenots and Catholics strived for supremacy in the Wars of Religion until the 1598 Edict of Nantes established a measure of religious toleration.
The French Revolution saw a radical shift in power away from the Catholic Church as Church property was confiscated and the crop tax and special clergy privileges were eliminated. With the 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the clergy became employees of the state and the Catholic Church became a subordinate arm of the secular French government. Traditional Christian holidays were abolished and Roman Catholic priests were brutally suppressed through mass imprisonment and executions by drowning.
Napoleon Bonaparte negotiated a reconciliation with the Church through the 1801 Concordat, whereby the State would subsidize the Catholic religion (recognized as the one of the majority of the French), as well as Judaism, and the Lutheran and Calvinist branches of Protestantism. However, after the 1814 Bourbon Restoration, the ultra-royalist government headed by the comte de Villèle voted the 1825 Anti-Sacrilege Act, which condemned by capital punishment any stealing of consecrated Hosts. The law was repealed in the first months of the July Monarchy (1830–1848).
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholicism In France
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