Michael Burleigh details the decimation of the bishoprics and clergy in Franch during the Revolution. This had the unintended consequence of raising the profile of the Pope: Without local or regional authorities to look to, the remaining French clergy looked all the way to Rome: “Ineluctably, the papacy assumed a solitary dignity in a drastically simplified landscape, and ultramontanism, or overarching loyalty to the pope, grew among the clergy as a defence mechanism against those who paid their salaries [the French authorities] and who could therefore dismiss them for dissidence.”
