Conclusion

Summary

In 1683 madame de Sévigné observed the extraordinary conversion of the King and court by the woman she had once parodied as ‘Madame de Maintenant’. Although almost none of our penitents were alive to see it, Louis XIV's conversion prompted the reform of the aristocratic lifestyle that had been so at odds with their devotional culture, and he embarked on a moral crusade that would also attempt to reform the debauched lives of most other social groups. After his conversion, the roi très chrétien selected confessors for important courtiers; they were no longer permitted to wear masks to mass, and 1684 saw the proscription of the performance of comedies and operas during Lent. Madame de Maintenon condemned the extravagance in the chapel at Versailles in a way which echoed rigorist sensibilities. Boredom set in at Versailles. Many foreign visitors observed the sterility of the court and the letters of Elizabeth-Charlotte, duchesse d'Orléans (1652–722) reveal her exhaustion with endless religious observances. To claim that our circle of rigorist penitents influenced the moral about-turn of the King and Court would be misguided: Louis XIV and madame de Maintenon never appeased the rigorists, who represented the opposition up to Unigenitus in 1713. As I have hoped to illuminate, however, rigorist women were the pioneers of a devotional culture which made penitence fashionable before madame de Maintenon.