Significant Secular Factors Determining the Religious Policy Louis XIV

When one analyses the religious policies of Louis XIV of France, it becomes abundantly clear that there were four main struggles that the Bourbon king embarked upon, crossing swords most importantly with the Huguenots, the Jansenists, and even and potentially most shockingly of all, particularly for the bearer of the title of ‘Eldest Son of the Church’, used by French kings since the Merovingian dynasty, the Papacy. The factors determining these policies were wide-ranging, with perhaps the most significant being Louis’ personal life and education along with his goals of personal glory and self-aggrandisement and extending his absolute power. In this manner, many of his confessional policies were in fact significantly driven by secular matters. However, it becomes quite evident that the policies of ‘le roi de soleil’ take a dramatic shift in tone in the later half of his 61 year-long personal reign, in favour of pursuing those which were more religiously directed, predominantly because of the influence of his new, devoutly catholic and highly influential wife Madame de Maintenon and his need to allay the ‘anger of God’, given military defeats in the War of the Spanish Succession.

It seems fair to separate Louis’ policy towards the Huguenots into two; one in which he pursues a policy of toleration for the protestants in France, and another in which he quite evidently begins to oppress them. Until the end of the Dutch War (1672-9), while admitting that he still wanted to ‘gradually reduce the number of Huguenots in [his] kingdom’, he did not wish to ‘oppress them at all by any new rigour’. Louis even seems to have drawn up plans for concessions on the catholic side in 1672 in a letter circulated to Protestant ministers. However, there was still significant concern about Huguenot presence in France, and so Louis pursued a policy of repression. This was shaped firstly from distrust, and fear of the protestants on Louis’ part, due to the religious context of divisions in France over the past one hundred years. The French Wars of Religion and the chaos that followed in the 16th century played on Louis’ mind, and was a factor in decision making regarding protestants, particularly with regards to his harder line policies, such as the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Louis describes his obligation to ‘wipe out all memory of the troubles, confusion and evil caused by the progress of that false Religion’. Even the abortive coup in 1629 by Huguenot forces at La Rochelle would have contributed to these sentiments The fear of the potential power of the protestants was unequivocally strengthened within Louis’ mind, recalling the regicide which protestants had committed across the channel in 1649. The King was acutely aware of the instability such a group could cause in his kingdom.

Furthermore, one can say that Louis’ religious policies were also caused by his secular desire to further his own status and power. In the context of the history of France, Louis wanted to distinguish himself as one of the great French kings, referencing his aspirations with regards to heretics to do as Charlemagne did in ‘[defending] religion against the Saxons, Huns and Saracens’ in his memoirs. We also know that Louis strove to enhance and strengthen his own power, but it is evident that he tried to do this through the persecution of Huguenots: one million protestants lived in France.Louis saw his kingdom as fundamentally divided. By extirpating heresy from France, and thus achieving more religious unity, he could seek to increase his own authority, with proportionately more loyal catholic subjects to a deeply catholic king. This unity was also useful in mounting opposition at home against his international rivals, the protestant England and the United Provinces, both with whom Louis eventually sought to make war with, often giving rise to unpopularity at home due to the obvious domestic financial difficulties accompanying conflict. By having more religious unity, he could seek to galvanise a more catholic population against the evils of Protestantism abroad. Therefore, the secular factors driving Louis’ religious policies may appear rather more significant than his religious motives.

With regards to Louis’ upbringing, despite being a stalwart catholic due to his Hapsburg mother’s education of the young Louis, he was rather ill educated in theological matters, showing a profound lack of understanding throughout his reign. This can be considered an additional secular factor for his religious policies, as Louis, having little knowledge of the teachings of Huguenotism, would have wanted to show no compromise with those he regarded as stone-wall heretics.

Nonetheless, Louis was heavily influenced by Jesuit confessors his whole life, providing the king with some of his most trustworthy religious guidance during his weekly confessional meetings. His staunchly catholic upbringing also meant that the Sun King was always mindful of his coronation oaths to eradicate heresy, a point also heavily emphasised by these confessors. It is possible to argue that Louis’ religious policies could be considered motivated by non-secular factors. However, this is not completely accurate, due to the fact that he was rather merciful towards the Huguenots at the beginning of the reign, not prioritising their persecution, focussing instead of international conflict. Louis only directed a policy of persecution of heretics in France after the Dutch War had concluded, when vhe had more time and resource to focus on domestic policy.

However, the end of the Dutch War is hugely significant in the transition of Louis’ policy towards the Huguenots, marked by the infamous dragonnades. This was enabled by the freeing up of troops used in the war against the United Provinces, allowing Louis to billet these troops onto Huguenot families to cause havoc in protestant communities. Although there is historical debate as to how personally liable to culpability Louis was in these events, Wilkinson’s view is that it is unlikely the monarch would not have been aware of the impact of one of his most significant religious policies is a fair assessment. Nevertheless, the secularity of the cause of Louis’ desire to ramp up the persecution of the Huguenots is undeniable.

King Louis’ most famous act, the Edict of Fontainebleau, or the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, while being somewhat derived from the Sun King’s desire for glory amongst his catholic European counterparts, the distinct turn in policy towards a more immoderate approach can be directly attributed to the influence of Madame de Maintenon. In 1683, Louis fell in love with his mistress, a lady of extreme and irresistible piety. She had already shown how successfully persuasive she was in her conversion of many of her family and friends, and so it was inevitable that the love-struck Louis would also adopt this line of thinking. And so, this extreme act of religious devotion is due to her influence. There is thus reason for thought that the Madame’s influence propelled Louis’ desire to secure the favour of the Papacy after decades of struggle was the sole reason for enacting this momentous act against heresy.

However, there is some evidence for Louis’ secular motives for the Edict of Fontainebleau. Firstly, as evidenced by the Edict itself, Louis sought to ‘efface entirely the memory of the troubles, the confusion, and the evils that the progress of that false religion have caused’, alluding to the turmoil that France had seen in the past with its religiously divided people. Thus Louis can be said to be finally expelling the Huguenots to avoid future ‘troubles’ and so eradicating potential threats to his power. Moreover, he felt a need to accelerate the rate at which the Huguenots were either leaving France or converting: 230,000 Huguenots were claimed to have been catechised by the archbishop of Narbonne, a number which provokes certain scepticism. At that rate however, the extinction of Protestantism would be achieved by the 1730s, when Louis would already be dead. And so, wanting to claim the title of the French king who finally expelled the troublesome protestants, Louis desired the glory for himself. Secondly, after the failure to act at the Siege of Vienna in 1683, a truly ignominious decision for the so-called ‘Rex Cristiannissimus’, Louis needed a decisive action to reclaim his title, and prove to the Pope and to other rulers, notably the Emperor Leopold I, that he was a worthy leader. Thus, such a severe act of piety was driven by his international rivalries and personal desire for glory, giving reason for the secularity of the nature of his decision making in 1685.

The ramifications of the edict were catastrophic for France in many ways. The economy of France was damaged by the emigration of some 200,000 skilled, and sometimes well educated, workers. These Huguenots went on to strengthen Louis’ rivals, by fleeing to neighbouring countries such as the Dutch Republic, England and Brandenburg-Prussia and according to Warren Scoville, they potentially even spearheaded technological revolutions in their new home countries. Militarily, it is said that 10,000 soldiers fled France and became a part of Louis’ enemies’ armies, an undesired side-effect for the king and his war-mongering attitude towards the rest of Europe. Moreover, he was providing his arch enemies, the English and the Dutch, with reason to fight the tyrannical king in the future. Therefore, the intensely negative effects of the Edict on France, socially, economically and internationally, suggest that Louis cared little for these matters when developing policy on the Huguenots: these consequences were almost inevitable for such a polemic and despotic decision, therefore showing that Louis was willing to sacrifice such damage for the purpose of serving his religion. Once more, one can discount the argument, presented by historians such as Roland Mousnier, that, given the severity and manner in which the Huguenots were persecuted, Louis’ actions were ‘inhuman, an affront to the dignity of man, and contrary to the spirit of Christianity’. One of the issues here is with the forced communion of protestants which occurred in this period, which is, as Mousnier puts it, ‘a sin against the Holy Ghost’. However, it is fair to say that Louis believed that this was the correct action, and, given his catholic upbringing, any sin deemed against the ‘Holy Ghost’ would be halted. Thus, Louis’ ignorance of deep religious context drove him to violent persecution, but his reasoning for such policies was rooted in religious factors. It may also be significant that religious persecution was not such an antiquated practice in the 1680s, compared to today, and so modern views such as that of Mousnier may be disregarded in deciding whether Louis’ policies were derived from religious or secular thinking: he merely saw it as common practice against supposed heretics, a point emphasis by Bluche in his overwhelmingly positive view of Louis’ policies. Therefore, we can say that the factors for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were in fact religiously derived, although the factors for his distrust of and desire to persecute the Huguenots in the first place were secular.

This theme of secular thinking in the first half of Louis’ reign, followed by religiously motivated thinking in the second half is undeniably an aspect of Louis’ religious policies pertaining to another religious minority: The Jansenists. The king followed a much more docile policy towards the Jansenists compared to the Huguenots, nonetheless they were deprived of power, and their strongholds, at Port Royal and Port Royal des Champs, were harassed. Louis had always harboured a distrust of the Jansenists since his boyhood, having been effectively traumatised by the Fronde. Jansenism was a religious sect strongly associated with the most prominent frondeurs, and so, having been taught and hence influenced by Mazarin, he was somewhat afraid of Jansenism and the potential unrest identified with it. They posed a potential threat to the crown and its authority, and so Louis saw it fit to rid them of their power. Thus, Louis, had secular motives prompting his Jansenist policy.

Furthermore, there is certainly reason to believe that Louis was particularly mindful of such a small group of catholic puritans because of his mere lack of understanding of Jansenist doctrine. We have already discussed Louis’ lack of theological understanding in relation to the shunning of compromise with the Huguenots, but his policy towards the Jansenists is greatly influenced by it: Louis saw any deviation from his catholicism as heretical, and so, despite Jansenism not being so, he still attacked it with an unending fury. Louis instinctively felt a need to persecute ‘any deviation from his own conservative orthodoxy’, but this once again due to his lack of education, not religious motivation.

Additionally, external influence was indubitably crucial in Louis’ policies towards the Jansenists. While prominent advisors such as Le Tellier, who was himself a Jesuit, played a role in poisoning the king against the Jansenists, Louis’ Jesuit confessors were extremely decisive in determining his course of action, evidenced by the Duc de Saint-Simon’s insistence that the king had ‘vigorously adopted the Jesuits’ opinion’. These confessors were especially offended by Jansenist ridicule of their practices, mainly that of forgiving sin according to circumstance. This was a practice indulged by Louis and his confessors, and so, while putting to shame some of Louis’ own beliefs and hence his lifestyle of adultery and other sins, they allowed themselves to be poisoned against by the Jesuits in the King’s mind. This strong influence may also provide reason for how Louis refrained from changing his negative stance on the Jansenists for much of his reign. This influence, while somewhat motivated by religious opposition to Jansenism, was driven by desire for retribution of ridicule and the desire to stop the spread of ideas which were directly criticising of Louis’ own lifestyle, and so his policies were secularly motivated indeed. This case is very similar to how prominent Quietists, such as Fénélon, criticised Louis, in that Louis, out of his own pride, was moved to rid himself of them.

However, towards the end of his reign, Louis became much more religiously motivated in his policies towards the Jansenists. He ramped up his campaign in severity against them, by seeking numerous papal bulls condemning Jansenists as heretics, such as in 1703 with Vineam Domini, and in 1713 with Unigenitus Dei Filius. He also razed Port Royal to the ground in 1709, demonstrating his fresh relentlessness against them. This increase in action against the Jansenists can be attributed to the influence of Madame de Maintenon, which began having a bearing on Louis’ policy after 1683, and certainly led to more intense distrust and hatred of religious deviants, and Louis’ desire to become a more loyal servant to the Catholic Church. However, what we must consider is the effect that Louis’ war-mongering had on his religious policy: his armies suffered numerous defeats in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) at the hands of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene. Louis considered these military failures to be the result of the anger of God against him. Therefore, in order to seek retribution from heaven, Louis believed that ridding the world of supposed heretics would allay this divine fury. Thus one notices Louis’ more religiously motivated policies towards the end of his reign.

Furthermore, it suggests a lack of heed for secular matters with regards to policy towards Jansenism, that Louis pursued such an ultramontane policy towards the end of his reign. He consistently sought papal backing through the authorisation of bulls condemning Jansenists, in order to legitimise his crusade against them. This strongly undermined Louis’ own efforts to enhance his claim as head of the French Church, and limiting papal authority over the himself in his kingdom. In doing this, he also ridiculed himself in front of his nobility and his people, who he had poisoned against the Papacy for years beforehand after years of conflict with the Popes.

Moreover, while it may seem that, in retrospect, Jansenism was not heretical, Louis was totally convinced of it towards the end of his reign, through the pope’s continual damning of Jansenism through his bulls. However, it is fair to say that the factors determining policy towards Jansenists were more secularly driven at the beginning of his reign than his factors for the persecution of Huguenots, with memory of the chaos of the Fronde and the influence of Jesuits being the most prominent. From the 1680s onwards, attacks against Jansenists were much more religiously driven, similar in his policy towards Huguenotism.

The shift from mainly secular to religious factors determining Louis’ spiritual policies is particularly apparent in his dealing with the Papacy. Louis was in constant conflict with Rome, specifically Pope Innocent XI, for much of the first half of his reign. The king, seeking to extend his powers in his kingdom, was influenced by more Gallican ideals, and sought to reduce papal authority in France. One of the more famous episodes was Louis’ attempt at extending the droit de régale in 1673. This was the French king’s right to tax vacant bishoprics, however given the Concordat of Bologna had not been updated to apply to France’s new territory, the papacy deemed it unlawful for Louis to extend this right into these lands. This extension was, as previously mentioned, driven by Louis’ desire to exert control over all of his lands, but also it was out of a need for more income to try and fund the expensive Dutch War (1672-9) which Louis had embarked upon the previous year. This is clearly a secular motive for his policies. Moreover, the publishing of the Gallican Articles in 1682, after threats of excommunication by the Pope, was certainly driven by Louis’ desire to stamp his authority as head of the French Church. There is also reason to believe that Louis’ personal rivalry with Pope Innocent XI drove his policies towards Rome. Louis had objected to the appointment of Innocent XI as Pope in 1676, given that he harboured some Jansenist beliefs, the French king saw him as a natural enemy, and so Louis actively acted against the Pope’s word.

However, after the 1680s and the marriage to Madame de Maintenon, Louis adopted a much more conciliatory approach. In 1693, a compromise was reached with Pope Innocent XII, and Louis subsequently sought the hope of the Papacy in legitimising his efforts against supposed heretics. Papal bulls such as Vineam Domini and Unigenitus Dei Filius were needed to counter the threat of Jansenism, and condemnation against the Quietists was sought of Fénélon’s writings. In the words of Wilkinson, ‘Louis XIV subsequently became a suppliant at the court of Rome for pronouncements against Jansenism’. Pope Clement XI expressed himself how he could not ‘applaud the zeal of our most dear son of Jesus Christ, Louis, the Most Christian King of France.’

Overall, it is difficult to find religious factors for Louis’ opposition to Rome and its authority, being a devout Roman Catholic. Even after the marriage to Madame de `Maintenon in 1683, it still took Louis ten years to reconcile with Rome, upon Pope Innocent XI’s death in 1689. Thus, one can deduce that secular reasons did rule Louis’ religious policies, as a personal rivalry was what prevented him from making peace with the institution which he was brought up being a devoted servant of. Despite this, the papal authorisation sought after 1700 through bulls would suggest otherwise.

In conclusion, the factors for Louis’ religious policies in the first half of his reign are almost certainly secular; from self-aggrandisement and his education to the influence of ministers and the effect his wars had on his realm. However, in the later half of his reign from the 1680s, he became much more religiously orientated because of his infatuation with and devotion to Madame to Maintenon and the military defeats in the 1700s. While this seems less relevant in regard to the dealings with the papacy, given that he did not reconcile until 1693 ten years after his marriage to Madame, this is particularly clear when one considers his dealings with the Huguenots and Jansenists. In the end, it seems that Louis handled the issues of religion in a deeply divided France in a vacillating manner and as David Sturdy sees it, Louis seemed to become ‘locked in religious controversies of immense complexity’, and then attempting ‘crude’ and ‘simplistic’ solutions.