Lamennais, with his two lieutenants, submitted, and deeply wounded, retired to La Chenaie. The famous Paroles d'un croyant (1834) marks Lamennais's severance from the church. "A book, small in size, but immense in its perversity," was Gregory's crit icism in a new encyclical letter. The work had an extraordinary circulation and was translated into many European languages. Henceforth Lamennais was the apostle of the people alone. Le Livre du peuple (1837), De l'esclavage moderne (1839), Politique a l'usage du peuple (1839), three volumes of articles from the journal of the extreme democracy, Le Monde, reveal him as a missionary of liberty, equality and fraternity. Le Pays et le gouvernement (1840) caused him a year's imprisonment. He struggled through difficulties of lost friendships, limited means and personal illnesses, faithful to the last to his hardly won dogma of the sovereignty of the people, and, to judge by his contribution to Louis Blanc's Revue du progres, was ready for something like communism. He was named president of the "Societe de la solidarite republicaine," which counted half a million adherents in 15 days. The Revolution of 1848 had his sympathies, and he started the short-lived Peuple constituent and the equally short-lived Revolution democratique et sociale. In the constituent assembly he sat on the left till the coup d'etat of 1851 ended all hopes of popular freedom. While deputy he drew up a constitution, but it was rejected as too radical. A translation of Dante chiefly occupied him till his death (Feb. 27, 1854), in Paris. He refused to be reconciled to the church, and was buried according to his own directions at Pere La Chaise without funeral rites, being mourned by a countless concourse of democratic and literary admirers.
During the most difficult time of his republican period he found solace for his intellect in the composition of Une voix de prison (1846) written during his imprisonment in a similar strain to Les paroles d'un croyant. He also wrote Esquisse de philosophie (1840). Of the four volumes of this work the third, which is an exposition of art as a development from the aspirations and necessities of the temple, remains the best evidence of his think ing power and brilliant style.
There are two so-called Oeuvres completes de Lamennais (1836; 1844). The most noteworthy of his writings subsequently published are: Amschaspands et Darvands (1843), Le Deuil de la Pologne (1846), Mélanges philosophiques et politiques (1856) , Les Evangiles (1846) and La Divine Comedie—translations of the Gospels and of Dante.
Part of his voluminous correspondence has also appeared. The most interesting volumes are the following: Correspondance de F. de Lamennais, edit. by E. D. Forgues (2 vols., 1855-58), Oeuvres ine'dites de F. Lamennais, edit. by Ange Blaize (2 vols., 1866) ; Correspondance inedite entre Lamennais et le baron de Vitrolles, edit. by E. D. Forgues (1819-53) ; Confidences de Lamennais, lettres inedites de 182r h edit. by A. du Bois de la Villerabel (1886) ; Lamennais d'apres des documents inedits, by Alfred Roussel (Rennes, 2 vols., 1892) ; Lamennais intime, d'apres une correspondence inedite by A. Roussel (Rennes, 1897) ; Un Lamennais inconnu, edit. by A. Laveille (1898) ; Lettres de Lamennais a Montalembert, edit. by E. D. Forgues (1898) ; and letters published in the Revue bleue, Revue britannique, etc.
Among lives or studies the following may be mentioned: Notices by Sainte-Beuve in the Portraits Contemporains, vol. i., and Nouveaux landis, vol. xi.; F. Brunetiere, Nouveaux essais sur la litterature con temporaine (1893) ; E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes, ii. (1898) ; P. Janet, La Philosophie de Lamennais (189o) ; P. Mercier, S.J., Lamennais d'apres sa correspondance et les travaux les plus recents (1893) ; A. Mollien et F. Duine, Lamennais, sa vie et ses idies; Pages choisies (Lyons, 1898) ; The Hon. W. Gibson, The Abbe de Lamennais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in France (1896) ; E. Renan, Essais de morale et de critique (1857) ; E. Scherer, Mélanges de critique religieuse (1859) ; G. E. Spuller, Lamennais etude d'histoire et de politique religieuse (1892) ; F. Duine, Lamennais (1922) ; P. Harische, Lamennais (1924). C. Boutard, Lamennais sa vie et ses doctrines.