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courts, attended a similar ceremony. Despite the king’s success at appropriating the building and
visually connecting it to the French monarchy, the jubilee is the only known record of Louis XIII
visiting the royal chapel of the Louvre.
Factors Influencing Louis XIII’s Decision
The church of the French Oratory, through its proximity to the Louvre and the
superimposition of the royal symbols of the fleur-de-lis and the serliana, symbolically reinforced
the king’s position vis-à-vis the church and state. But I would like to suggest another reason why
Louis XIII suddenly decided in 1623 to support the church and to refashion it into a statement of
his sovereign will. I believe he did it for the purpose of suppressing the supporters of the French
Oratory, specifically the dévots and Maria de’ Medici, with whom he was in conflict. The
political and religious beliefs held by these supporters, which were frequently in opposition to
those pursued by Louis XIII, forced the king to recognize the need to assert his royal power.
The dévots were a group of extremely pious and generally anti-royalist French Catholics
that emerged in early seventeenth-century France. Composed of clerics and lay persons,
including the founder of the French Oratory Pierre de Bérulle, the members of the group sought
to nurture their own piety and to participate actively in the Catholic Reformation that was then
sweeping France. To achieve their goals, the dévots worked towards the implementation of
some of the reforms issued in the decrees of the Council of Trent, which had yet to be officially
accepted by the king of France. One of the ways they were able to introduce reform was by
fostering the establishment of numerous religious foundations, one of which was the French
Oratory. 83
Many of the dévots had previously belonged to the group of late-sixteenth-century
militant Catholics, known as Leaguers, who were quite wary of Henri IV’s accession to the
throne of France. The once Protestant king’s continued tolerance of the heretical religion led the
conservative Catholics to look to Rome for leadership. The dévots, who were literally devoted
to Rome, challenged the rights of the Gallican church by viewing the pope as the supreme
authority over spiritual and temporal matters. They also favored French alliances with other
Catholic powers seeking to create a united Europe that could combat the heretical faith.
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