The King and His Conscience: the Religious Problems of Louis XIV, Part I
J.H.M. Salmon explains how spiritual values and political objectives were deeply in conflict throughout the long reign of Louis XIV.
In October 1685 the personal reign of Louis XIV had not run half its course when the dying Chancellor, Michel le Tellier, drafted an edict withdrawing the protection of the law from French Protestants. The King signed it in Madame de Maintenon’s drawing room at Fontainebleau, and some weeks later Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux and tutor to the Dauphin, majestically declaimed Le Tellier’s funeral oration, in which he represented Louis’s act as the culminating glory of the reign, comparing it with the work of Constantine, Theodosius and Charlemagne:
“You have asserted the true faith; you have exterminated the heretics. This is the great achievement of your reign; through it the real nature of your rule is revealed. By your act heresy is no more.”
A generation later, at a time when the splendour of the Sun-King was dimmed by poverty and defeat, an equally celebrated prelate dared to present another opinion of his sovereign’s religious attitudes. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai and former tutor to the King’s grandson, concluded his indictment of the royal policies with the words:
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