A Lust for Virtue: Louis XIV's Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France

(Hardback)

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Midway through his reign, in the critical decade of the 1680s, the lusty image of Louis XIV paled and was replaced by that of a straitlaced monarch committed to locking up blasphemers, debtors, gamblers, and prostitutes in wretched, foul-smelling prisons that dispensed ample doses of Catholic-Reformation virtue. The author demonstrates how this attack on sin expressed the punitive social policy of the French Catholic Reformation and how Louis's actions clarified the legal and moral distinctions between crime and sin. As a hot-blooded young prince, Louis XIV paid little attention to virtue or to sin and, despite his cherished title of God's Most Christian King, violations of God's Sixth and Ninth Commandments never troubled him. Indeed, for the first two decades of his reign, he paraded a stream of royal mistresses before all of Europe and fathered sixteen illegitimate children. Yet, midway through his reign, in the critical decade of the 1680s, the lusty image of Louis XIV paled and was replaced by that of a straitlaced monarch committed to locking up blasphemers, debtors, gamblers, and prostitutes in wretched, foul-smelling prisons that dispensed ample doses of Catholic-Reformation virtue. Using police and prison archives, administrative correspondence, memoirs, and letters, Riley describes the formation of Louis's narrow conscience and his efforts to safeguard his subjects' souls by attacking sin and infusing his kingdom with virtue, especially in Paris and at Versailles. Throughout his attack on sin, women--so-called Soldiers of Satan--were the special targets of the police. By the seventeenth century, fornication and adultery had become exclusively female crimes; men guilty of these sins were rarely punished as severely. Although unsuccessful, Louis's attack on sin clarified the legal and moral distinctions between crime and sin as well as the futility of enforcing a religiously inspired social policy on an irreverent, secular-minded France.

Reviews

.,."this book will be very useful to both students of history and professional historians. It brings together in one place a significant amount of important information about the efforts of Louis XIV to rule France, provides important insights into that ruler's character, presents further evidence of the importance of religion in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the reasons why many inhabitants of France were ready for a change in thought, religion, and morality after Louis XIV's death. In addition, the author has placed all of this information into the context of contemporary scholarship."-The American Historical Review
.,."Riley deserves our gratitude for exposing much material that is good for thinking with, in so readable and economical a form."-H-France Book Reviews
.,."Riley successfully conveys to his readers his aim to resituate Louis XIV's attack on sin within the Catholic Reformation and away from Foucauldian modernization theories..."-The Review of Politics
...this book will be very useful to both students of history and professional historians. It brings together in one place a significant amount of important information about the efforts of Louis XIV to rule France, provides important insights into that ruler's character, presents further evidence of the importance of religion in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the reasons why many inhabitants of France were ready for a change in thought, religion, and morality after Louis XIV's death. In addition, the author has placed all of this information into the context of contemporary scholarship.-The American Historical Review
...Riley deserves our gratitude for exposing much material that is good for thinking with, in so readable and economical a form.-H-France Book Reviews
...Riley successfully conveys to his readers his aim to resituate Louis XIV's attack on sin within the Catholic Reformation and away from Foucauldian modernization theories...-The Review of Politics
[T]his book is highly readable. It is well written in a lively style, with colorful descriptions that are ofren fascinating. The author is a gifted storyteller, and his book is frequently engrossing. There are numerous interesting details about life in the streets of Paris and in the corridors of the palace at Versailes, as well as about the police, prisons, and asylums, women's lives, and crime and punishment. One would recommend this book as a supplementary text for students in college history.-The Historian
"This book is highly readable. It is well written in a lively style, with colorful descriptions that are ofren fascinating. The author is a gifted storyteller, and his book is frequently engrossing. There are numerous interesting details about life in the streets of Paris and in the corridors of the palace at Versailes, as well as about the police, prisons, and asylums, women's lives, and crime and punishment. One would recommend this book as a supplementary text for students in college history."-The Historian
..."Riley deserves our gratitude for exposing much material that is good for thinking with, in so readable and economical a form."-H-France Book Reviews
..."Riley successfully conveys to his readers his aim to resituate Louis XIV's attack on sin within the Catholic Reformation and away from Foucauldian modernization theories..."-The Review of Politics
"[T]his book is highly readable. It is well written in a lively style, with colorful descriptions that are ofren fascinating. The author is a gifted storyteller, and his book is frequently engrossing. There are numerous interesting details about life in the streets of Paris and in the corridors of the palace at Versailes, as well as about the police, prisons, and asylums, women's lives, and crime and punishment. One would recommend this book as a supplementary text for students in college history."-The Historian
..."this book will be very useful to both students of history and professional historians. It brings together in one place a significant amount of important information about the efforts of Louis XIV to rule France, provides important insights into that ruler's character, presents further evidence of the importance of religion in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the reasons why many inhabitants of France were ready for a change in thought, religion, and morality after Louis XIV's death. In addition, the author has placed all of this information into the context of contemporary scholarship."-The American Historical Review

Author Bio

PHILIP F. RILEY teaches in the Department of History at James Madison University. He is the co-author of The Global Experience: Readings in World History to 1500 and The Global Experience: Readings in World History Since 1500, (2001) and with Michael D. Richards, Term Paper Resource Guide to Twentieth-Century World History (Greenwood Press, 2000). He is a recipient of the James Madison University Distinguished Teaching Award.