Religious Policy: Unity Through Persecution

Louis XIV's religious policies demonstrated absolutism's totalitarian potential. Believing that religious unity was essential for political stability, he systematically eliminated dissent within French Catholicism while destroying Protestant existence. These policies, culminating in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, achieved superficial conformity at enormous human and economic cost while storing future problems.

The persecution of Jansenists revealed the limits of acceptable Catholic diversity. This austere movement, centered at Port-Royal and emphasizing predestination and moral rigor, attracted significant support among judicial and intellectual elites. Louis, influenced by Jesuit confessors and suspicious of any independent religious authority, pursued systematic suppression. The destruction of Port-Royal (1710) and the bull Unigenitus condemning Jansenist propositions created lasting divisions within French Catholicism that weakened religious unity rather than strengthening it.

Protestant persecution escalated throughout the reign. Initial efforts focused on legal harassment and financial incentives for conversion. The dragonnades—billeting soldiers in Protestant households with license to commit violence—terrorized Protestant communities into nominal conversion. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) crowned these efforts, prohibiting Protestant worship and forcing pastors into exile. Perhaps 200,000 Huguenots fled France, taking valuable skills and capital to France's enemies. Those remaining faced continued persecution that created crypto-Protestant communities nursing grievances against the monarchy.

The religious unity achieved through persecution proved largely illusory. Forced converts remained Protestant in belief while conforming outwardly. Jansenist sympathizers maintained underground networks despite official suppression. The identification of throne and altar, while strengthening Louis's sacred character, bound the monarchy's fate to an increasingly questioned religious establishment. The moral costs of persecution—families divided, communities destroyed, consciences violated—undermined the monarchy's claim to paternal benevolence.