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the spirit of the council, which they did the following year at the General Assembly of the French
Clergy.
The events surrounding the third estate’s proposal reveal two major points concerning
Maria’s reign. First, she wanted to avoid conflict within the state by refusing to allow either the
Gallican principle of divine right, which favored the autonomy of the state, or the acceptance of
the Tridentine reforms, which benefited the conservative Catholics. Second, by suggesting that
the bishops introduce the spirit of the decrees within their dioceses, she effectively endorsed the
Catholic reforms and showed her preference for papal order. Maria performed few official state
actions that proclaimed her willingness to support the papacy and the rest of Catholic Europe, but
when viewing the scope of her actions relating to religious differences and foreign affairs, we
can see her partiality to the cause for a united Catholic Europe. She expressed this partiality in
the churches she supported.
Ultimately Maria de’ Medici acquired a great deal of power as regent, obliging Louis
XIII in 1617 to force her from her position so he could assume the throne. During this seven year
period she supported five newly-constructed churches for reformed religious orders, including
the Minims, the Discalced Carmelites, the Récollets, the Jacobins, and the French Oratorians.
The patronage allowed the queen to express her conservative backing of the Catholic
Reformation, a statement she could not make through official policy without running the risk of
inciting renewed aggression from the Huguenots. Her patronage also signaled her defense of
papal and Spanish policies to unite all of Europe under one faith. Following Louis XIII’s
accession to the throne, as Maria endeavored to regain the authority she had wielded as regent,
she again became a patron of churches for reformed religious orders, using the buildings as tools
to signify her continued search for power and ongoing support of conservative Catholic ideology.
The pursuits of the queen mother were key elements of the dissenting forces affecting her son,
ultimately compelling the king to assert his sovereign authority.
Louis XIII’s greatest concern was a need for fidelity to his person and the state.
Scholarship has often misconstrued this desire for loyalty as a dependence on others, a perceived
weakness most frequently demonstrated in Louis’s relationship with his first minister, Cardinal
Richelieu. Scholars argue that Richelieu was the official policy maker while the king was
merely a figurehead. 86 In the last twenty years, new research has begun to show that the king
and cardinal had a much more collaborative association whereby Richelieu would make policy
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