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By examining the precise manner of the king’s support and by considering the impact of
Jesuit statements questioning royal authority, I argue that Louis XIII became the church’s
primary benefactor because of his need to assert his authority over the Society of Jesus. By
dedicating royal funds to the construction of Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites and by commissioning
medals that promote an image of an absolute king, Louis affirmed his sovereign rights. In the
wake of the king’s actions, the Jesuits created an artistic program in their church that venerated
French kingship.
After presenting the origins of the Jesuit foundation and the design of Saint-Louis-des-
Jésuites to define the manner in which the Society benefitted from royal support, I will turn to
the foundation medals. By demonstrating that the medals connected Louis XIII to model rulers
especially known for their exercise of sovereign authority, I will show that the king used the
objects to construct an image of himself as an absolute monarch. In the next section I will
investigate the Society of Jesus’s position in seventeenth-century France, focusing on the manner
in which the group’s views on royal power were perceived, an analysis of which will reveal
Louis XIII’s motives for asserting his authority. I will then consider the Jesuits’ efforts to create
in the interior of Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites an environment demonstrating the order’s reverence
for St. Louis and the French monarchy, a veneration which is most visible in a series of four
paintings found in the transept showing scenes from the life of Louis IX. Finally, I will look at
the king’s first minister Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu and his involvement with
Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites, which I will argue further illuminates the king’s move towards an
absolute government (fig. 29).
The Church
In 1625 the superior general of the Society of Jesus Muzio Vitelleschi approved a plan
for a new church at the Parisian maison professe, a house for the religious who had taken their
vows and the administrative center for the Jesuit province of France. 5 The seventeenth-century
structure would be the third church dedicated to St. Louis constructed on the site, and as was
typical of Jesuit architecture, the design retained local building traditions. The history of the
maison professe as the hub of Jesuit activity in France began in 1580 when Cardinal Charles de
Bourbon donated land bordering the rue Saint-Antoine in the Marais quarter to the Society of
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