Le spiritisme et les démons dans les catéchismes français du xixe siècle

During the XIXth century, the main stream in the French catechism is to describe modern spiritualism as a mere superstition, without any relation with the Devil or any diabolical influence. This may be considered as an inheritance of the rationalist mood of the Enlightenment. But at the end of the XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth, under the pressure of secularization and the struggle between the Church and the Republic, a millenarist trend induces a short but hectic come-back of the Satanic scare. Modern spiritualism is identified as a pernicious manifestation of a new diabolical cult, connected with the Freemasons. After the First World War, the reconciliation between the Church and the State as well as the bourgeois evolution of modern spiritualism results in a more peaceful and rationalist appreciation of the so-called metapsychical phenomena