Dissertation Fellow 1999-2000
Daniella Kostroun (History)
Duke University
Gender and Church-State Relations
in Absolutist France:
The Case of the Port Royal Nuns, 1609-1709
While most histories of French absolutism focus on Louis XIV’s
strategies to discipline male subjects and institutions, my dissertation
explores how these strategies work with regard to female subjects
and organizations. The case of the Port Royal nuns from 1609-1709
sheds light on the relationship between women and the state because
of the convent’s involvement in Jansenist struggles. I argue
that the nuns’ participation in these religious quarrels had
political implications because both Church and state based their
authority upon Catholic notions of hierarchy and obedience. Obedience,
in turn, was idealized as a feminine phenomenon because of the belief
in an inherent weakness of the feminine sex, which rendered women
more obedient than men. While Louis XIV and the Port Royal nuns
shared the belief in a "natural" feminine obedience, they
disagreed over what this obedience meant in the context of the Jansenist
debates. For the king, feminine obedience meant that the nuns should
follow his command to denounce Jansenism without question. For the
nuns, their ignorance in matters of theology meant that they had
to obey their consciences (which dictated that they remain silent
on the Jansenist question) above all else. The clash between these
two visions of obedience led to the violent destruction of Port
Royal by Louis XIV in 1709.
While my dissertation examines the nuns’ personal resistance
to the king, it also explores how male Jansenists incorporated the
nuns’ resistance strategies into their polemical pamphlets.
By associating individual conscience with the nuns’ qualities
of innocence and obedience, Jansenists argued that the king’s
attempts to dominate their religious conscience was an abuse of
power that undermined his claims to divine sanction. This argument
was particularly salient once Louis destroyed Port Royal. His inability
to peacefully discipline his opponents provided them with a powerful
symbol of tyranny in action, which, in the decades prior to the
French Revolution, they were only too willing to use.
|
