Crown, Church and Episcopate under Louis XIV (review)

Following his very important and very convincing study of The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589-1661 (ante, LXXXIV [1998], 112-113), Professor Bergin directs his attention to the 250 bishops who took office in the fifty-four years of Louis XIV's personal rule (1661-1715). Following the pattern established in the previous work, the book is a study of royal patronage that focuses on the personalities of the prelates, their origins (geographical, social, professional), their education, and their ecclesiastical careers. This meticulous and sweeping "collective portrait of bishops" (p. 14) contributes therefore to the assessment not just of the Gallican church, at its peak during this reign, but also of the Crown's vision of the role of that church in the kingdom.

The prosopographic study corrects or at least nuances the usual assertions on the social origins of the French episcopate: yes, the great majority came from the nobility (87.75%), but about 10% belonged to recently ennobled families (p. 60). One in five French bishops under Louis XIV was a commoner (p. 63). Unsurprisingly, the main characteristic shared by the vast majority of Louis XIV's bishops was to have been "born into families that were engaged in activities that had something to do with the service of the monarchy" (p. 79). This was a feature shared with the military, another occupation suffused by royal patronage (p. 343).

In other words, Bergin's research confirms what had already been assumed: here as in other instances the choice was the king's. According to what criteria and possible influences? That is the main question. Regarding influences, the king's confessors, the archbishops of Paris, and later the royal consort have been regularly mentioned. Bergin sees their hand in some key appointments, but in most cases, Louis played their "mutual rivalry" (p. 263) in order to make the right appointment. In the later years, Madame de Maintenon was more instrumental, but not as much as her enemies asserted.

As to the criteria, the book clearly demonstrates how Louis XIV endeavored to select the best men to run his national church. According to the 1516 Concordat and the Tridentine spirit, they had to be qualified, not only by their social origin but by their virtue, education, and experience. This meant that most French bishops of the period were formed as theologians, most of them with a licentiate's degree or doctorate from the Sorbonne, the Faculty of Theology of Paris. (By the time of Louis XIV's death, all but six of France's 121 bishops were theologians by training, p. 96.) Before their first episcopal preferment, at the average age of 41.9, they had an administrative experience, mostly as Grand Vicaire, that is vicar general of a portion of a diocese, often governed by a relative, who was therefore bolstering their promotion. An interesting part of Louis' policy was his notion that promotion to a metropolitan see should come only after a successful tenure of a minor bishopric. This episcopal mobility, the author writes of "musical chairs" (p. 318), was frowned upon by some, who considered that a bishop was wedded to his church. It certainly denotes a cursus honorum, from poorly endowed dioceses to richer ones, especially when associated with a political dignity of peer or president of the Provincial Estates; nevertheless, it also provided for the better qualification of the entire body. It is interesting, for instance, to note that during the 1680's, when the Crown was trying to "re-unite" the Huguenot minority to the national church, twenty southern dioceses fell vacant, and each one was given to a nominee with experience of preaching or mission to the Protestants (p. 247). This concern for qualification is also supported by...