ABSTRACT
Turning from the economic to the religious component in political affairs, we at once encounter evidence that Roman Catholicism was recovering from the losses and humiliations of the revolutionary-Napoleonic crisis. Indeed, this recovery erased even some features of the pre-1789 situation. In 1814 the Society of Jesus, outlawed as early as 1773 by the Vatican because of pressure from numerous secular rulers, was reinstated by Pope Pius VII, allowing the Jesuits to resume openly their mission of education and conversion. As we shall see in the next chapter, Catholic thinkers as diverse as the Savoyard de Maistre, the Frenchmen Bonald and Chateaubriand, the German Gentz and the Swiss Haller (the last two converts from Protestantism) led the intellectual counterattack against the heritage of the 'Godless Revolution'. At the same time, there was a visible increase in church attendance and sacramental observance, not uncommon in the wake of great secular convulsions.
