There are at least three reasons to be interested in Louis Veuillot. Firstly, in the middle of the century, he played an important role in the debate on the place to be given to classical culture in education. In 1851, Abbé Gaume published Le Ver rongeur des sociétés modernes, ou le Paganisme dans l'éducation, which condemned the introduction of texts from pagan antiquity, revived by the Renaissance, into the education of young Catholics. Veuillot lent his support in L'Univers, which he edited; he opposed Mgr Dupanloup, bishop of Orléans, a figure of enlightened legitimism; the affair went all the way to Rome and Pius IX had to respond with the encyclical Inter multiplices, which criticized Gallicanism and finally took a moderate stance on the question of the classics.
Second curiosity: Veuillot was the founder of a certain French pamphleteer style, which Thibaudet recognized after him in Drumont, Bloy, Daudet and Maurras. This is largely due to the social trajectory of Veuillot, an autodidact from the people, who ended up addressing the small provincial Catholic population with L'Univers. After 1851, Hugo attacked Veuillot for defending the coup d'état: he mocked him in Châtiments, but not without taking back from him the language of the people, which Veuillot had relayed.
Finally, Veuillot was a paradoxical friend of Baudelaire (and Nadar): was it because of his curiosity for evil, for sin? Both were also disciples of Joseph de Maistre. This friendship, with its alliance of opposites, was not without its upheavals. Veuillot mocked an article in the Société des gens de lettres on Nerval's death in 1855. It said that Nerval had "spiritualized life too much"; Veuillot replied that he had probably drunk too much. He speaks as a connoisseur, having himself belonged to this bohemian poet and journalist before his conversion in 1838. Outraged by the passage, Baudelaire nevertheless sent him Les Fleurs du Mal; Veuillot reviewed it in 1858, considering in his article that the author suffers from the comparison with Musset. Although the critic was present at Baudelaire's funeral procession, he continued to reserve judgment on the poet's texts.
Veuillot is constantly characterized according to two contradictory regimes. His physical ugliness disgusts, but he amuses with his nastiness and coarseness; according to a contemporary journalist, his style, laden with "horrific and appalling petarades [...], reeks of cabaret and sacristy ". His fledgling career is reminiscent of that of the petty journalists of the Restoration and the July Monarchy whom Balzac describes in Illusions perdues. His parents were illiterate, and he himself never went to college. In 1825, at the height of the Romantic battle, he began working for the solicitor Fortuné Delavigne, a literary enthusiast and brother of the poet Casimir Delavigne. He went on to become a veritable condottiere, a journalist for hire, systematically writing for ministerial journals. At the age of 19, General Bugeaud sent him to Périgueux to edit the Mémorial de la Dordogne; Guizot, his other boss, called him back to Paris in 1836 to edit La Charte de 1830. He then joined the Moniteur parisien, where he reported on parliamentary debates. But he was afraid of losing his moral compass, travelled to Rome in 1838, converted and temporarily left journalism to join the Administration de l'esprit public (the future Renseignements généraux). In 1841, Bugeaud took him with him to Algeria, where he took up the sword and contributed to the capture of Médéa and Mascara, but was nostalgic for the battle of pens and ideas. In 1843, he left the Ministry of the Interior to become editor-in-chief of L'Univers catholique. In so doing, he embraced the ideas of Joseph de Maistre, who, before Maurras, detested the triad of Renaissance, Reformation and Revolution. Veuillot's popular origins will never be forgotten; he is seen by many as the introducer of the democratic spirit into the Church, hitherto ruled by an aristocracy. His first battle, in the 1840s, was for the freedom of Catholic teaching, against the law Villemain was preparing on congregations, which would soon give the monopoly of teaching to the University. He epitomized the uncompromising Catholic polemicist who remained free to the end, refusing both the Chambre and the Académie.
