The Power of the Sun-King at the Potager du Roi

Abstract

This chapter explores how natural knowledge was used as a tool of politics in the potager du roi at Versailles. Under the Sun King, Louis XIV, the royal gardens gained particular importance as a means of demonstrating the Sun King’s natural authority over the earth and his power to bring fertility and felicity to his lands. Jean de la Quintinie, director of the potager, the kitchen gardens at Versailles, contributed to this program with both his gardening and a book he wrote on raising fruit. In the book, he described the three different logics of governance he used in the garden to manifest royal power: physical control, land stewardship, and control of the effects of the sun on fruit. He drew the analogy between sun and Sun King as forces governing the earth, naturalizing royal power. La Quintinie described absolutism in France as a natural system of authority that paralleled the sun’s power in nature. But he also showed by analogy that absolutism could be dangerous and corrupting like the sun, providing a surprisingly critical portrait of absolutism even while celebrating the Sun King.