Section 4: Religion

When he became king in an elaborate church ceremony in 1661, Louis’s formal relationship with God was solidified in the eyes of his people. Many believed that the king of France had healing powers. Visiting the Abbey of Saint Remi, Louis was met by 2500 people afflicted with scrofula, tuberculosis of the neck. “Louis touched each one, tracing the sign of the cross over every ravaged face with the open palm of his right hand. As he did so, he spoke the words, ‘God heals you, the king touches you.’... To be king meant that his subjects, high and low, saw Louis as a living God… with the necessary qualities to enable him to represent divine law and order in nature.” Along with his power over the government and armies of France, Louis was responsible for “the spiritual welfare of his people” and the defense of Catholicism. 

During the ceremony that made him formally king, the bishop who officiated publicly urged Louis to crack down on French Protestants, whose rights were protected by the Edict of Nantes. What was that document and why did Louis’s decision to revoke [abolish] it lead most historians to characterize it as his greatest crime?

Louis was raised in the common belief among Catholics that Protestantism was a “Satanic” heresy that damned its followers to Hell; most Protestants thought the same of Catholics, and referred to the pope as “Anti-Christ.” These mutual hatreds didn’t happen in a vacuum. Eighty years before Louis was born, France was convulsed by the “wars of religion”--a civil war between French Catholics and French Protestants, also known as Huguenots. After years of horrific atrocities committed by both sides, peace was finally restored in 1598, with the Huguenots winning basic religious freedom under the Edict of Nantes. France was officially Catholic, but it tolerated Protestants, and that was enough to keep the peace, more or less.

The Edict of Nantes also allowed French Protestants political and military power in specific provinces where they outnumbered Catholics. One historian notes that, “French Protestants, although forming no more than around 6 per cent of the population, ran the equivalent of a state within a state, with separate assemblies and armed forces” in the regions they controlled.  Many of these same regions supported Conde during the Fronde rebellion (see Section 1), a fact that Louis definitely noticed. A mental connection was forged in his mind: Protestantism = treason. 

At first, the government used positive incentives to persuade Protestants to convert to Catholicism, including giving converts money. However, Louis quickly turned to repression. By the early 1660s, the government had shut down many Protestant churches, forbidden Protestants from emigrating (many fled anyway), barred them from certain professions (soldiers, midwives, lawyers) and started taking out of circulation Protestant bibles. Every Protestant church was monitored by a royal agent, who kept a close eye on the congregants, and Protestant families were forced to provide for one or more Catholic soldiers, who lived in their homes and bullied them to convert. Finally, the only meaningful right that the Huguenots still had–the right to not be Catholic–was taken away when Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. One historian characterized this action as, “one of the most criminal and least enlightened acts in the entire reign of the Sun King” as it led to thousands of arrests and the mass emigration of many of France’s most productive citizens. 

Even within the Catholic Church, Louis’s reign was not without controversy. The French Catholic church was fiercely independent and regularly challenged French kings’ powers over their subjects’ “hearts and minds.” The French clergy independently elected its own Assembly of the Clergy, which every 5 years voted to give (or not) the government a massive chunk of cash as a “gift”. There were 266,000 clerics in France and some of them openly criticized the king during Sunday sermons for cheating on his wife, high taxes on the poor to fund wars and palaces, and for encouraging gambling at Versailles. One priest refused the king’s then mistress absolution before Easter Mass, putting her immortal soul in jeopardy.

Louis also clashed with Pope Clement X over what Louis saw as his right to appoint clergy inside the borders of his kingdom. Some French church leaders refused to sign loyalty oaths to Louis as the conflict dragged on from 1673-1682, when the French clergy finally bent to the king’s will. From that moment on, French Catholics officially acknowledged that the pope was the head of the Catholic Church, but that his judgements had to have the consent of believers. In addition, the French church (in consultation with the king) had the right to determine its own leadership, not the pope.