Jesuit Father François Annat and his Role as Minister for Religious Affairs in 17th Century France

This book explores the tremendous impact of Jesuit Father François Annat (1590-1670), a French government appointee at Court. His religious superiors approved of his taking on this work for the Crown. He served as Minister for Religious Affairs, or Royal Confessor or ‘keeper of the king’s conscience’, for Louis XIV. During Annat’s confessorate of sixteen years, no internal conflict in the Gallican Church was so strong as the Jansenist controversy. Today everything seems different, as revisionist history has viewed Jansenism as an orthodox Augustinian alternative to explain the Catholic Faith, in contrast to the prevailing Spanish Molinism and Suarezianism, whose roots were in Thomism and Aristotle. There was intense internal struggle within the French Church to devise a legal formulary that might decrease the strength of Jansenism. The present work examines the life of Annat in all of its complexities, a life which may have been forgotten by history if not for the celebrated literary figure Blaise Pascal, who was a committed Jansenist and foe of François Annat.