Petite Église

The Petite Église (Little Church; Stevenisten) was a group of French and Belgian Roman Catholics who separated from the Catholic Church in France following the Concordat of 1801 between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte. They were considered schismatic. One modern estimate gives its number of adherents as high as 100,000 at one time. The community declined following the death of its last episcopal adherent in 1829, and the last members submitted to the Bishop of Saint-Flour in 1911.