The Jesuits and the Monarchy

The first three decades of Bourbon rule in France coincided with a period of violent fragmentation followed by rapid renewal within the French Catholic community. In the early 1590s, when Henri IV - Protestant head of the Bourbon house - acceded to the throne, French Catholics were at war with each other as Leaguer and Navarrist factions fought both militarily and ideologically for control of Catholic France. However, by 1620 a partially reconciled French church was in the process of defining a