Richelieu's Desmarets and the Century of Louis XIV

Abstract

Jean Desmarets, later Sieur de Saint-Sorlin, was a late Renaissance ‘universal man’: first Chancellor and founder-member of the Académie Française, last jester of the French royal court and star performer in ballets, novelist, playwright, poet, architect, inventor, and mystic. He was also the first man to publicise the notion of ‘a century of Louis XIV’. This book examines that notion by looking afresh at Desmarets's vigorous career and relating the ‘century of Louis XIV’ to its origins in the reign of Louis XIII. It questions historical misconceptions about Cardinal Richelieu's cultural policies and demonstrates the importance for the Court ballet of his patronage. Giovanni Bernini's illusionist sets and lighting effects for the Grand'Salle, which later became Molière's theatre and the Opéra, are discussed here. Desmarets's many high-level court offices, his family connections, and works — ballets, plays, poems, and religious and polemical pieces — reveal new and important links with contemporary institutions and preoccupations. In particular, the book considers the plays in the light of exemplary eloquence, and considers the intentions of the Académie Française, and the Quarrel of the Imaginaires, in relation to royal policy and the Cartesian revolution.