The King and his Conscience: the Religious Problems of Louis XIV, Part II

Either Louis XIV's struggle with the Papacy over his regalian rights, nor his persecution of the Huguenots, secured the unity of belief among his subjects that he assumed to be as important a religious consequence of his authority as it was a political one. The issue of Jansenism continued to provide a profound spiritual division within French Catholicism.

Behind the King’s conflict with the Jansenists lay the same elements of religious zeal, court intrigue and misconstrued reason of state that impelled him to revoke the Edict of Nantes. The contradictory aspects of his policy were even more apparent; for, while his measures against Protestantism had strengthened his hand against the Pope, Louis’ constant appeals to Rome in his campaigns against Jansenism undermined his own brand of political Gallicanism.

Theological subtleties did not in themselves interest the King. If he had not thought it beneath his office to display petulance, he might have repeated the impatient reaction cf his mother, Anne of Austria, to the complex Jansenist arguments on the way in which man might hope for salvation: “Fi! Fi! Fi! de la Grâce.”