Now-days, the government relies on schools and TV to
inform, guide, propagandize, and mold the opinions and attitudes of the people. In
Louis XIV's time, those functions were performed by the Church. The king could issue a
decree and the priests would all read it in their churches. The Catholic Church and
monarchy had evolved together. They supported one
another.
In England, King James I told Puritian petitioners
who wanted the episcopal Church of England altered into a presbyterian church, "A
Scottish presbytery agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil." This was
probably also the feeling of Louis XIV. (Some historians have said that the American
War of Independence was a Presbyterian rebellion. Presbyterian churches are governed by
the people of each individual church; the Catholic church is governed by a Pope and
Cardinals, much like a country was governed by a king and his
ministers.)
Donald Kagan, et al, in their textbook
The Western Heritage since 1648 (1979), give it as Louis's reason,
that a country could not be under one law and one king unless it was also under one
religious system. They also say that until the time of his death, Louis thought he had
done a great thing for which "God was indebted to him."
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