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LOUIS cil annulled a charge in which Pavillon, after having given the required signature to another formula drawn up by the pope, developed some new Jansenistic theories on grace; the pope, without arousing any feeling on the king's part, himself appointed a commission of French bishops to try Pavillon and three other bishops who refused to make the unreserved submission. Presently, in December, 1667, nineteen bishops wrote to the king that the appointment of such a commission by the pope was contrary to the Gallican liberties. The difficulties appeared insurmountable; but the nuncio, Bargellini, and the foreign secretary, Lionne, found a way. The four bishops signed the formulary and caused it to be signed, at the same time explaining their action in a letter expressed with such intentional ambiguity that it was impossible to make out whether their signatures had been given pure et simpliciter or not; the pope, in his reply to them took care not to repeat the words pure et simpliciter and spoke of the signatures which they had given sincere. It was Lionne who had suggested to the pope the employment of this word sincere. And thanks to these artifices, "the peace of the Church" was restored.

The question of Jansenism was revived, in 1702, by the case of conscience which the Jansenists presented to the Archbishop of Paris: "Is a respectful and silent submission to the decision of the Church sufficient in regard to the attribution of the five propositions to Jansenius?" Again the pope and the king were unanimous against Jansenism. In February and April, 1703, Clement XI called upon Louis XIV to intervene, and in June, 1703, Louis XIV asked Clement XI for a Bull against Jansenism. To keep peace with the Jansenists, however, the king at the same time begged the pope to particularly mention in the Bull that it was issued at the instance of the French Court. Clement, not wishing to yield to this Gallican suggestion, temporised for twenty-six months, and the Bull "Vineam Domini" (15 July, 1705) lacked the rhetorical precautions desired by Louis. The king, nevertheless, was glad to take it as it was. He hoped to make an end of Jansenism. But Jansenisin from that time forward maintained its resistance on the ground not of dogma but of ecclesiastical law; the Jansenists invoked Gallican liberties, asserting that the Bull had been issued in contravention of those liberties. More and more plainly the king saw in Jansenism a political danger; he thought to destroy the party by razing the convent of Port-Royal des Champs, dispersing the religious and disinterring the buried Jansenists (1709-11); and he sacrificed his Gallican ideas to the pope when he forced an extraordinary assembly of the clergy, in 1713, and the parliament, in 1714, to accept the Bull "Unigenitus" which Clement XI had published against Quesnel's book. But at the time of his death he wished to assemble, for the trial of Noailles, Arch-bishop of Paris, and the bishops who resisted the Bull, a national council to which he was to dictate, and Cement XI, naturally, scouted this idea, as bearing the marks of Gallicanism. Thus was Louis XIV ever anxious for an understanding with Rome against Jansenism, and in this alliance it was he who displayed the greater fury against the common enemy.

At the same time, he brought to his warfare against Jansenism a Gallican spirit, making concessions and displays of politeness to the Holy See when the conduct of the struggle required, but on other occasions using methods and terms to which Rome, rightly impatient of Gallican pretensions, was obliged to take exception (see Jansenius and Jansenism).

B. Louis XIV and Quietism.—His personal interest in the question of Quietism was shown in 1694, when, at the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon, he ordered three commissioners-Noailles, Bossuet, and Trons a —to draw up the Issy articles for the signature of Madame Guyon and Fénelon. In July, 1697, he asked the pope, in a personal letter, to pronounce as soon as possible upon the book "Maximes des Saints" (see ); in 1698 he again insisted, threatening that, if the condemnation were deferred, the Arch-bishop of Paris, who was already causing the "Maximes" to be censured by twelve professors of the Sorbonne—should take action. Here again, as in the matter of Jansenism, Louis evinced a great seal for correctness of doctrine and, on the other hand, an obstinate Gallicanism ready at every moment to prosecute a doctrine apart from and without the pope, if the pope himself hesitated to proceed against it.

C. Louis XIV and Protestants.—Strict justice, strict application of the Edict of Nantes, but no favour—such was Louis's policy towards the Protestants after 1661. It was a policy based on the hope that the union of all his subjects in one faith would sooner or later be easily accomplished. From 1661 to 1679 means were sought to limit as much as possible the application of those concessions which Henry IV had made to the Protestants by the famous Edict, and Pellisson, a convert from Protestanism, organized a fund to aid Huguenots who should come over to the Catholic Church. From 1679 to 1685 a more active policy was followed: Protestants were excluded from public office and from the liberal professions, while the police penetrated into Protestant families in order to keep watch upon them. Louvois's idea of quartering soldiers in Protestant households to bring them to reason was applied, after 1680, in Poitou by the intendant Marillac in the cruel fashion which has remained famous under the name of dragonnades. The king blamed Marillac, but in 1684, at the instigation of Louvois, the dragonnades recommenced in Poitou, Béarn, Guyenne, and Languedoc, with more excesses than the king knew of. Misled by the letters of Louvois and the intendants (see ), Louis believed that there were no more Protestants in France, and the Edict of 18 October, 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes and ordered the demolition of places of worship, the closure of Protestant schools, the exile of pastors who refused to be converted, and the baptism of Protestant children by Catholic parish priests. On the other hand, article xii of the edict provided that subjects could not be molested in their liberty or their property on account of the "alleged reformed" religion, so that, in theory, it was still permitted to anyone to be individually a Protestant. By these measures Louis imagined himself to be only registering an accomplished fact—the extinction of the heresy. Innocent XI, while praising the king's zeal, in the consistorical allocution of 18 March, 1686, expressed satisfaction with those French prelates who had censured the dragonnades, and begged James II to use his good offices with Louis to obtain gentler treatment for the Protestants.

The fugitive and proscribed Protestants thought of returning to France, even in spite of Louis. Jurieu, in his "Avis aux Protestants de l'Europe" (1685-86) and Claude in his "Plaintes des Protestants" (1686), gave utterance to the idea of a union of all the Protestant powers to force upon the King of France the return of the exiles. In the success of William of Orange, in 1688, Jurieu saw an indication that Engand would soon reinstate Protestanism in France, and that an aristocratic government would be substituted there for the monarchical. These prognostications were developed in the "Soupirs de la France esclave", which was issued in parts by subscription. In 1698, when the peace of Ryswick was being negotiated between Louis and William, two Protestant committees, at the Hague, made an attempt to commit Holland and England to the demand of liberty for French Protestants, but William confined himself to vague and politic approaches to the question in his dealings with Louis, and these were ill received. In a letter to Cardinal d'Estrées (17 January, 1686),