ABSTRACT
Catholicism shaped the features of Bourbon France in the wider world. Louis XIV and his successor supported the many abortive schemes of the Catholic Stuarts to regain the English throne; they also pressed for an alliance with Austria, ‘the only means of securing a lasting peace and maintaining the Catholic religion’. The Catholic Church and the Bourbon monarchy shared the belief that heresy was a cancer that threatened them both. In September 1727, a provincial Church council in Embrun demoted Soanen to the ranks of a layman and exiled him to the abbey of Chaise-Dieu. The secular clergy, the archbishops, bishops, vicar-generals, canons, curés and curates, were responsible for the daily administration of the Gallican Church. Finally, at the lowest level of the higher clergy, people find the 15,000 or so canons attached to the 136 cathedral chapters and over 500 collegial churches, or private chapels and foundations.
