The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon

by Veronica Buckley

  He was a tall, lean man, well made, with a pale complexion and a large nose, and eyes full of passion and intelligence. I’ve never seen anything to match his expression; and once you had seen it, you could never forget it…It was grave and yet elegant, serious but lively. You saw at once the scholar, the bishop and the grand seigneur, but more than anything, in his face and in his whole appearance, you saw refinement, intelligence, benevolence, discretion, and above all, nobility. You had to make an effort to stop looking at him.

  In 1689, the dévot duc de Beauvillier, already well placed at court and keenly promoted by both Françoise and Bossuet, had been appointed governor of the dauphin’s three sons, the little ducs of Bourgogne, Anjou, and Berry, aged seven, six, and three years old respectively. Beauvillier had at once invited Fénelon to become tutor to the eldest boy. It was a vital post, since, after his father, Bourgogne was second in line to the throne: Fénelon would be educating the future King of France. He swiftly accepted, leaving the duchesse de Beauvillier to manage her own eight girls with the help of his now published Treatise.

  Though not daring to make him her own confessor, Françoise had gradually fallen under the spell of the brilliant and insinuating Fénelon, and he, eager to advance his own interests at court, had by no means discouraged her. At the height of her worries about her demoiselles and dames, he had written to her, revealing what the duc de Saint-Simon called his “coquettish” manner with those who wielded influence:

  I am sorry I didn’t know, before saying mass, that your name is Françoise…I’ve heard that you are unhappy about the way things are going at Saint-Cyr. God loves you and wants you to make Him loved. For that you need the holy intoxication of Saint François, which surpasses the wisdom of all the learned. When will the love of God be known and felt instead of this servile fear which disfigures religion?

  “Saint François” was the recently canonized Bishop of Geneva, François de Sales, whose practical teachings had once guided the struggling Jeanne d’Aubigné through the many difficulties of her own life. Rejecting the fear of eternal damnation, François de Sales had embraced instead the idea of “God as love,” and from this had developed a humanistic doctrine of salvation for everyday Catholics who neither claimed nor sought any special piety. Saint Francois’s state of “holy intoxication”—spiritual ecstasy, perhaps, or even simply a pervasive feeling of peace and acceptance—was profoundly appealing to Françoise in her current spiritual state, paradoxically both tepid and overstrung. It was deeply reassuring to hear, after the harassing and thundering of Bossuet and his ilk, that ordinary people, without great learning or great piety, could arrive so readily at this blessed place.

  Fénelon’s understanding of the profound new message, and his eagerness to speak of it with her, contrasted keenly with Louis’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the Church’s stock teachings: “No one needs to know anything about these theological things,” he had declared in his Mémoires. “…They’re more to do with opinionated people getting carried away…and they’re always connected with people’s interests in the world…” An uncomplicated soul himself, Louis had no sense of the psychological yearnings which had produced such passionate new “theological things,” and which made them so widely attractive; deeply self-satisfied, he could not empathize with those, like Françoise, who needed to achieve a measure of spiritual integrity in order to live at ease with themselves. Louis believed in God, and was afraid of hell, and was confident that he had stopped sinning in good time to cleanse his soul before he died—so much his marriage, and his faithfulness within it, had ensured. But in spiritual or psychological terms, he could venture no further, and because of this, his marriage with Françoise, though stable and useful on both sides, remained fatally limited. In the gap between them Fénelon had now presented himself, hinting at a closer marriage of minds than Françoise’s own husband had been able to offer.

  Though Saint François de Sales’s teaching had received the formal imprimatur of acceptance in Rome, it had proved all too easy to dilute and misinterpret into spiritual laziness, neglect of conventional religious practice, and even straightforward sin. The leader of the derivative “quietist” movement, the Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos, was now languishing in a Roman prison, awaiting trial for alleged sins of the flesh, but in France the message was being spread anew by a forty-year-old widow from Orléans, mystic, preacher, and writer of theologically inflammatory tomes, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon. The abbé de Choisy, himself a practising priest and, despite his penchant for women’s clothing, a solidly orthodox theologian, described the basis of Madame Guyon’s teaching as follows:

  One gives oneself to God with all one’s heart, without any formal ceremony, abandoning oneself entirely to the movements of the divine spirit, and then one is in a state of holy repose. While the soul is in this state, it pays no heed to what occurs in the imagination, or even what happens to the body…In the hearts of libertines, an idea like this can give rise to any number of scandalous disorders…

  Madame Guyon had just been released from an obligatory eighteen-month sojourn in a Paris convent. But despite her doubtful reputation, her passionate spirituality had captured the hearts of Françoise’s circle of dévot friends, notably the Beauvillier and Chevreuse families. Through them, it had reached Fénelon and then, rather too quickly, Françoise herself. Unconcerned with its evident byway to libertinage, she chose to understand it in terms of what she needed: salvation was possible after all without effort on her own part; the fate of her soul could be left in the hands of a loving God; she could stop fretting about the insincerity of her prayers and the moral value of toothache, and let herself relax at last in a state of “holy repose.”

  Listening to talk about Madame Guyon’s controversial books—The Short and Very Easy Road to Prayer and The Torrents of Pure Love—but without troubling to read them, and ignoring a papal condemnation of the “blessed lady” herself, Françoise introduced her to Saint-Cyr, where her appealing ideas swiftly began to run riot, first among the novice nuns and then among the girls themselves. Within weeks, the older “green” and “blue” girls were to be found not in their classrooms or at their tasks, but “hiding in the attics with copies of The Torrents, sighing over each mention of abandon and naked offerings.”

  For a time, Françoise simply left it all running out of control, caught up in her own confusion of spiritual with earthly love. If she had not exactly fallen in love with the “coquettish” priest whom “you had to make an effort to stop looking at,” she had at least fallen in love with the idea of him, and with his seductive spirituality, drawn from Madame Guyon, with its all-embracing, all-assuring divine love. In Fénelon, it seemed, she had finally found her platonic “other half,” a perfect match, perfectly responsive to her. In 1690, without informing Père Godet des Marais, a cautious investigator of the “pure love” doctrine, Françoise rather boldly asked Fénelon for an analysis of her own spiritual character, in the manner of a confessor. If she had expected an indulgent, even flattering response in the usual way of Godet des Marais or, formerly, Père Gobelin, she was startled by Fénelon’s lengthy reply. “I am hesitant to speak of your defects, Madame,” he began, and then continued:

  I’ll tell you what I think, and you can make use of it as God wills. You are unaffected and natural, which means that you often do good, without having to think about it, to those whom you like and admire. But to those whom you don’t like, you are cold and harsh, and that harshness can run to extremes…No one is allowed to have any faults at all…When you’re hurt, you’re deeply hurt.

  You were born with far too much pride, by which I mean the need for respect…This is harder to correct than the simplest stupid vanity. You don’t realize how deeply you still need to be respected…You like people to think that you deserve a higher place than you have.

  You have not yet broken this idol, myself. You want to reach God, but not at the expense of myself; on the contrary, you seek myself in God�
��I hope that God will grant you the light to understand this better than I have been able to explain it…

  …You need to make a long and careful examination of yourself…But you need not think you’re a hypocrite. Hypocritical people never think they’re hypocrites…Your piety is genuine. You have never had any of the world’s real vices, and its lesser errors you gave up long ago…

  Regarding affairs of state, you are far more capable than you think…but I think what you really want is a life of easy retirement…

  You love your family as you should, without being blind to their defects…but you are far too attached to your friends. If you could really die to myself, you wouldn’t care whether they were fond of you or not, any more than they were of the Emperor of China…

  You use up all your strength on the exterior things of piety…If you want to correct your defects, you need to concentrate on the inner things…

  In short, despite the supposedly easy doctrine of “pure love,” Françoise appeared to have quite a way to go on the road to salvation. Fénelon’s perceptive portrait had struck directly home, and she was not at all pleased to read it. Madame Guyon, by contrast, seemed to be more or less a saint in his view, or at least a person of exceptional spirituality. Fénelon even regarded himself, in a sense, as her disciple. His letter had made things perfectly clear. Quite obviously, he thought more highly of Madame Guyon than he did of Françoise herself.

  It was more than she was prepared to endure. Confirming Fénelon’s view—“when you’re hurt, you’re deeply hurt…[and your] harshness can run to extremes”—Françoise decided that Madame Guyon would have to go, though Fénelon, somehow, must stay. The idea of “pure love” was to be cast out, yet its most seductive exponent must be retained. Thenceforth, Madame Guyon’s too-saintly person was never again seen at Saint-Cyr, though Fénelon, concerned to maintain his connection with Françoise, continued to turn up almost every day. The Short and Very Easy Road to Prayer and The Torrents of Pure Love were banned from the premises, with Père Godet des Marais ferreting out every last copy, including an unexpected few hidden by the littlest “red” girls, all of them under twelve years of age. There was resistance, not only from the girls, but quite strongly from the dames as well, and for two years and more it persisted, with ambivalent support from Fénelon, until the last of Madame Guyon’s acolytes had accepted the retraditionalized regime, and agreed to take the veil.

  And there Françoise might have stopped. Madame Guyon was out; Fénelon was still in; the dames and demoiselles were under control again; Père Godet des Marais had formally declared Françoise superior for life at Saint-Cyr, and she had rewarded him with the bishopric of Chartres. Vitally, the whole muddled episode had been kept from the notice of the King, who, though without any interest in theological issues per se, instinctively opposed the unorthodox as tending towards indiscipline in the Church and a dangerous fractiousness in the body politic.

  But Françoise could not stop there. Fénelon’s clear admiration for Jeanne Guyon had been a challenge to her sense of herself as a spiritually superior person—admittedly with difficulties in the surface matters of daily devotion, but in essence one of creation’s finer souls. Yet now, despite Françoise’s complete rejection of Madame Guyon, despite the lady’s personal eviction from Saint-Cyr and the abolition of her teachings on “pure love,” Fénelon had refused to turn his back on the “blessed lady.” Overlooking every question of theology, Françoise regarded this refusal as a simple choice of Jeanne Guyon over herself. The loss of the doctrine of “pure love,” with its reassuringly easy path to salvation, may have been disappointing, but the prospect of losing Fénelon himself was more than she could countenance: his respect—and perhaps more than his respect—was absolutely necessary to her; additionally, and immaturely, it had to be exclusive. It was not a matter of agreement or disagreement: it was a matter of agreement or betrayal. Fénelon must renounce Madame Guyon, and all her works, and all her displays.

  To this end, towards the end of 1693, Françoise arranged that Madame Guyon’s writings be submitted to Bossuet for formal assessment. It seems that Fénelon himself may even have been behind this move, wishing to see the “blessed lady” confirmed as a light of the Church, while Françoise naturally wished to see her ideas condemned and Fénelon consequently obliged to renounce her; there was also the suggestion, reported by Bossuet’s secretary, that “Madame de Maintenon wanted to clear Fénelon’s name” from all association with the suspect new doctrine. Surprisingly, Bossuet, “the eagle of Meaux,” with his famed, mighty theological intellect, was a complete ignoramus as far the Church’s mystic tradition was concerned: it appeared that he had never read a word of Saint François de Sales or even of the great mystic theologian, Saint John of the Cross. Madame Guyon’s ideas were in consequence quite new to him; he found them interesting, and thought the lady herself genuinely enlightened, observing at the same time that, as a member of “the weaker sex,” she had stepped out of her place by seeking to “develop doctrine and teach.” He suggested that the doctrine of “pure love” be examined formally by a circle of Churchmen, but for such an examination, the approval of the King would be required.

  The examination began early in 1694, and continued until the end of the year. Madame Guyon’s teachings were condemned, but the lady herself was exonerated of any heretical intention: she took herself off, apparently, to the spa at Bourbon. Outwardly at least, Fénelon submitted to the verdict with a good grace, and Françoise congratulated herself that the affair had been moved conclusively away from Saint-Cyr, with the King still unaware of the unorthodoxies formerly encouraged at her own personal domain.

  During the course of the year, however, Louis had learned of a political tract critical of his rule, supposedly penned by Fénelon, his courage perhaps boosted by his recent election to the Académie Française. Written in the form of a personal letter to the King, it berated Louis harshly for neglecting his suffering and starving people in a continuing pursuance of martial glory against King William and his Grand Alliance. “Your Majesty’s ministers have made your name hated,” the letter declaimed. “This gloire…is dearer to you than justice…You do not love God,” it concluded. “Your fear of Him is only that of a slave; it is Hell and not God that you fear. Your religion consists only of superstitions, in superficial little practices…You are scrupulous in small details, and hardened to horrible evils.”

  It is most unlikely that Louis actually saw this letter, at least at this time, since Fénelon continued in his post as tutor to the duc de Bourgogne, and even began to take the same role for the duc’s younger brothers as well. And a few months afterwards, at Françoise’s prompting, the King appointed him Archbishop of Cambrai, the wealthiest archdiocese in France. From Françoise’s point of view, the archbishopric may have been a token of her continuing respect for Fénelon, or a bribe to keep him quiet about the “pure love” affair at Saint-Cyr, or even a means of keeping him safely out of the way for a time: the new appointment would require his absence from court for up to nine months of the year. In any event, she herself was evidently still in high favour with the King, benefiting from handsome new apartments at the château of Marly, Louis’s favourite place of retreat. All seemed to be well.

  A few weeks after Fénelon’s consecration, which had taken place in the chapel at Saint-Cyr, the King recorded the death of the dissolute old Archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Champvallon, who had presided at his marriage to Françoise. The Archbishop, aged seventy-two, had apparently died of an apoplectic fit in the arms of his mistress, leaving most of the courtiers sniggering, and a pious few concerned about the possible content of his funeral eulogy. “The archbishop of Paris,” began Spanheim, who, however, was not obliged to make his views quite public, “had all the advantages one could draw from a fortunate birth, an attractive exterior person, qualities of mind, a reputation for eloquence and learning, the dignity of his position, and not least, the favour and good graces of his king…One recalls, h
owever, various circumstances concerning scandalous commerce…with the abbesses of Pontoise and d’Andely, and…a certain présidente of Bretonvilliers and other mistresses…in his charming house near Paris…”

  The ambivalently pious Harlay de Champvallon was almost replaced as archbishop of Paris by the unassailable Bossuet, but Françoise managed to persuade the King to appoint a potential ally of her own instead. This was Monseigneur Louis-Antoine de Noailles, a man of illustrious family and modest ambition, having already declined the same archbishopric no fewer than three times already. But Louis, respecting Françoise’s piety, accepted her suggestion.

  It had not been Françoise’s piety at all that had inspired her, however, on this occasion. She had really had to press Noailles, a provincial bishop known above all for his generosity to the poor, to accept the lordly appointment in Paris, insisting to him that the Jesuits were “declaring war on us on all sides.” “What better cause could there be,” she wrote, “than the King’s salvation? Yes, you would have to endure the evils that others have created in the past, but think of how you could change things in the future! Monsieur,” she urged, “you are young [he was forty-four], you are in good health. How can you prefer repose to work, when Providence has given us this opportunity without our even seeking it? But be careful to keep this letter secret…”

  The Jesuits were not in fact declaring war on Noailles “on all sides,” though they might have been had they known of his discreet Jansenist sympathies. But Harlay de Champvallon had been an ally of the King’s Jesuit confessor, Père de la Chaise, and both had been not only staunch opponents of Fénelon, but also staunch opponents of any influence Françoise herself might claim over the King—including the indirect influence of a public declaration of the royal marriage itself. The “evils” which “others” had created may have been no more than the “superstitions [and] superficial little practices” of which Fénelon had accused the King in his unsent letter, and which the orthodox Père de la Chaise allowed to pass unchallenged, though Françoise may also have been referring to the King’s continuing warmongering, which none of his chosen prelates had attempted to discourage, and which Bossuet, at least, considered vital for the nation’s continuing earthly glory.