The encyclical explicitly denounces the Filioque clause added by Rome to the Nicene Creed as a heresy, censures the papacy for missionizing among Eastern Orthodox Christians, and repudiates Ultramontanism (papal supremacy).
Royal was an ultramontane Catholic and the undisputed leader of the Francophone parliamentary bloc.
This has been especially true since the controversy surrounding the aftermath of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1994 and The Tablet's article about that letter On Not Inventing Doctrine published a year and a half later.
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Its main bastion in these early days was the French journal Univers under the leadership of Louis Veuillot.
After Italian Unification and the abrupt (and unofficial) end of the First Vatican Council in 1870 because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the Ultramontanist movement and the opposing Conciliarism became obsolete to a large extent.
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Thus, as a result of the 1929 Lateran Treaty which established a Concordat between the Holy See and the nation of Italy, the secular power of the Bishop of Rome, i.e., the Pope, was reduced to the one square mile of Vatican City, the smallest sovereign nation on earth.
Towards the end of the year 1788, Lord Stanhope, an Anglican, desiring to help the committee, and believing that their supposed Ultramontane principles, and in particular their accredited belief in the deposing power of the pope, were the chief obstacles in their way, drew out a "Protestation" disclaiming these in unmeasured language.