of concordat, the official name being _pactum
concordatum_ or _solemnis conventio_. In theory these agreements may
result from the spontaneous and pacific initiative of the contracting
parties, but in reality their object has almost always been to terminate
more or less acute conflicts and remedy more or less disturbed
situations. It is for this reason that concordats always present a
clearly marked character of mutual concession, each of the two powers
renouncing certain of its claims in the interests of peace.

For the purposes of a concordat the state recognizes the official
_status_ of the church and of its ministers and tribunals; guarantees it
certain privileges; and sometimes binds itself to secure for it
subsidies representing compensation for past spoliations. The pope on
his side grants the temporal sovereign certain rights, such as that of
making or controlling the appointment of dignitaries; engages to proceed
in harmony with the government in the creation of dioceses or parishes;
and regularizes the situation produced by the usurpation of church
property &c. The great advantage of concordats--indeed their principal
utility--consists in transforming necessarily unequal unilateral claims
into contractual obligations analogous to those which result from an
international convention. Whatever the obligations of the state towards
the ecclesiastical society may be in pure theory, in practice they
become more precise and stable when they assume the nature of a
bilateral convention by which the state engages itself with regard to a
third party. And reciprocally, whatever may be the absolute rights of
the ecclesiastical society over the appointment of its dignitaries, the
administration of its property, and the government of its adherents, the
exercise of these rights is limited and restricted by the stable
engagements and concessions of the concordatory pact, which bind the
head of the church with regard to the nations.

A concordat may assume divers forms,--historically, three. The most
common in modern times is that of a diplomatic convention debated
between the authorized mandatories of the high contracting parties and
subsequently ratified by the latter; as, for example, the French
concordat of 1801. Or, secondly, the concordat may result from two
identical separate acts, one emanating from the pope and the other from
the sovereign; this was the form of the first true concordat, that of
Worms, in 1122. A third