Le père Joseph: L’Éminence grise de Richelieu (review)

François le Clerc, in religion Père Joseph de Paris, was a significant figure in many domains of French life in the early-seventeenth century: within his order (the Capuchins) and through the Benedictine congregation of the Daughters of Calvary that he helped found and direct, he was important in ecclesiastical affairs; as an author and spiritual director, he was a major devotional and mystical thinker of the time; and as the “gray eminence,” one of Cardinal Richelieu’s closest political and diplomatic collaborators, he was an influential political figure. As its subtitle suggests, Benoist Pierre’s book concentrates on the last of these aspects, examining in detail the ideological roots and development of Père Joseph’s political action. Pierre finds a consistent vision throughout his subject’s career, combining enthusiasm for the French monarchy and a vision of Catholic Christian unity that would be peacefully accomplished and culminate in an anti-Ottoman crusade and, ultimately, in the eschatological triumph of the Church. An ideal of hierarchical unity, centered on the king of France, tied these two strands together and produced a set of policies that, although not identical to those Richelieu favored, were close enough to underwrite the two men’s long-term collaboration.

Presenting much new and interesting material, Pierre traces Père Joseph’s political outlook to his and his family’s experience before he joined the Capuchins in 1599. Le Clerc’s family was divided into Protestant (on his mother’s side), royalist-Catholic politique (on his father’s), and ultra-Catholic Leaguer (among his uncles) branches. This split, financial strains from his father’s early death, a series of vicious family disputes over inheritance, and a tension (which Pierre probably exaggerates in significance) between the culture of judicial office-holding on his father’s side and the traditions of the rural nobility on his mother’s side, all left the young man with a deep sense of unease. Pierre plausibly supposes that this early history left Père Joseph with a profound distrust of the world—hence his monastic vocation and mysticism—and a burning desire to reform it. In doing so, he became central to the dévot movement of Catholic revival and also to the remaking of the French state under Louis XIII. To trace Joseph’s transformative, religious vision of politics, Pierre mines his extensive communications with the Daughters of Calvary, as well as better known correspondence, official documents, and publications. Pierre traces a gradual development from focus on a new crusade (to be led by his early patron, the Duc de Nevers) to one of French hegemony combined with global missionary activity.

This is an ambitious book that substantially advances our understanding of French absolutism’s religious roots. It is not without its frustrations, however. It could easily have been shorter, notably by quoting its subject (a terrible stylist) less extensively. It is also thin on Joseph’s Capuchin identity, something that would presumably have clarified phenomena like his penchant for prophecy, his devotion to St. Louis (a patron of the Franciscans), and his major behind-the-scenes role in ecclesiastical politics. Still, Pierre’s chronicle of how mystical fervor penetrated and inspired the highest levels of the French state sheds important light on a vital, if not necessarily comfortable chapter of the history of early-modern Catholicism.