The religious reaction reaches its climax in the famous Encyclical of Pius IX., which pronounces free thought to be the delirium of liberty, anathematises civil marriage, separation of church and state, liberty of religion, liberty of the press, liberty of speech, and the erroneous idea that the church ought to make its peace with progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation. But even more severely consistent than the Encyclical are the apologies for it, the German Bishop Kettler's _Die falsche und die wahre Freiheit_ and the French Bishop Dupanloup's _La convention du 15 Septembre et l'Encyclique du 8 Décembre_, which explain and justify the Pope's determined stand against "the insolent repudiation of all the great truths which form the foundation of human society." Let no one, however, imagine that these pamphlets are either very sensational in tone or very full of glaring absurdities. Both in manner and matter they have a strong resemblance to moderate articles in a Danish Liberal newspaper.
To such results did the Neo-Catholic movement lead. But it is to be noted that these results belong entirely to the domain of political history, and in no way concern literature. _Every movement continues to affect the course of general history long after it has ceased influencing the history of literature_. It affects the latter as long as it has, not only monarchs, nobles, and bishops, but men of distinguished intellect and talent in its service. After 1830 this is no longer the case with the religious reaction in France. The difference between the reaction in 1820 and the reaction with which exhausted and unhappy France was visited after the defeats and the Commune of 1870-71, is that the former vigorous crusade against light had almost every Frenchman of intellect and talent in its service, in its army, whilst the latter could not boast of a single supporter with any literary pretensions.
We have now to see how that first reaction came to an end. It was, in the first place, attacked from without. The daily press began to declaim against the spirit of antagonism to enlightenment; Béranger sang his songs on the subject; one enterprising publisher, Touquet by name, brought out between the years 1817 and 1824 thirty-one thousand copies of the works of Voltaire (1,598,000 vols.) and twenty-four thousand five hundred copies of the works of Rousseau. He was punished and the sale of his books was prohibited; but this aroused such exasperation that the _Globe_ prophesied a general apostasy from Catholicism, whereupon the country was again inundated with the Touquet editions.