Abstract EN:

During the catholic reformation and political crises of the seventeenth century, France witnessed the birth of a new group of faithful, the devots, or devout. Participating energetically in the catholic renewal, the devots, who were frequently from robe noble families, were in search of salvation under the auspices of new spiritualties, such as mysticism. The catholic league had already furnished the first occasion for them to form politically, and afterwards, one can observe a transfer from political to religious zeal in the Catholics which reinforced the spiritual movement in the early seventeenth century. However, their identity was not merely religious and social; it was also political. Frequently former catholic leaguers, the bons catholiques (“ good catholics”) grafted Christian political aspirations founded on religious morals onto their faith. Now, one is forced to accept that this religious movement is contemporary with the emergence of absolutism and the modern state, as well as with the idea of “reason of state”. Confronted with these new political realities, the bons catholiques engaged in a fight to defend a political ideal closely linked to their religion. Faced with the monarchical state which projected its own sacrality, they demanded a concept of the state forged on a vision of a connection between heaven and earth, in the subjection of man to god. Thus, the pamphleteer Mathieu de Morgues and the royal confessor Nicolas Caussin each expressed in his own style this conception of the political entity in its relation of dependence to god, and with all of its attributes, such as justice or truth, and protesting with a common voice against an absolutism which was out of proportion. Michel de Marillac, keeper of the seals and leader of the parti devot (devout party), differed fundamentally on this issue because of his doctrinal absolutism, marking the discontinuity between ideal and reality, between leader and party. Polymorphic, the political thought of the bons catholiques witnessed, however, a world conception and a moral attitude that underlay the religious criticism of the overflowing selflove and the auto-finalism of the sacrilized state, torn from natural and divine laws.