Glossary
The words you need for the Sun King's world — defined plainly, with the historical caveats where they matter.
Absolutism
The doctrine and practice that all sovereign authority resides in the king, who answers to God alone. Historians debate how “absolute” Louis’s power really was — the provinces, the Parlements, and custom all constrained him — but no one disputes that he concentrated decision-making further than any French king before him. See reception & debates.
Divine right
The claim that the king’s authority comes directly from God, not from the people or any contract. Preached by Bossuet and enacted in the coronation ritual at Reims, where the king was anointed with the Sainte Ampoule.
Lit de justice
A solemn session in which the king appeared in the Parlement of Paris to impose the registration of an edict. The famous (apocryphal) story places “L’état, c’est moi” at a lit de justice on 13 April 1655; what is documented is that the young king did use the ceremony to overawe the magistrates.
Parlement (of Paris)
Not a legislature but the sovereign law court, which registered royal edicts and could remonstrate against them. The Fronde began as the Parlement’s revolt. Louis tamed it by ruling that it might remonstrate only after registering.
Intendant
The king’s commissioner in a province (or generality) for justice, police, and finance — appointed and revocable at will. The intendants were the long arm of the personal reign, displacing the great provincial governors.
Fronde
The rebellions of 1648–1653: first the Fronde parlementaire, then the Fronde des princes led by Condé. The young king’s flight from Paris in 1651 became the founding trauma of his absolutism. See the Fronde.
Mazarinade
The flood of pamphlets (thousands) attacking Mazarin during the Fronde — an early mass-media war that taught the court the power of print, and the king the value of controlling it.
The personal reign (le règne personnel)
The period from Mazarin’s death (9 March 1661), when Louis declared he would be his own first minister. Conventionally 1661–1715.
Colbertism / mercantilism
Colbert’s economic doctrine: the state’s power is measured by bullion, favorable trade balances, protected manufactures, and a strong merchant marine. See Colbert and the finances.
Taille
The principal direct royal tax, falling overwhelmingly on the peasantry (nobles and clergy were largely exempt). Its weight — and the exemptions — were the old regime’s central fiscal injustice.
Dragonnades
From 1681: the billeting of dragoons on Huguenot households, with license to live at the families’ expense, as a tool of forced conversion. Ordered under Louvois; the missionary in boots. See the Revocation.
Edict of Nantes (1598)
Henri IV’s edict granting French Protestants (Huguenots) freedom of conscience and fortified places of safety. Revoked by the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685).
Edict of Fontainebleau (1685)
Signed 18 October, registered 22 October 1685: the Revocation. Protestant worship banned, ministers exiled within fifteen days, children to be baptized and raised Catholic, emigration forbidden (and punished anyway). See the Revocation.
Huguenot
A French Calvinist Protestant. After 1685, those who stayed became nouveaux convertis (suspect converts) or religionnaires worshipping in the “Desert”; some 200,000 or more emigrated (estimate).
Camisards
The Protestant rebels of the Cévennes (1702–1705), who rose against persecution in a guerrilla war the aging monarchy struggled to suppress.
Gallicanism
The doctrine of the French church’s liberties against Rome, codified in the Four Articles of 1682: the pope has no temporal power over kings, councils outrank popes, papal power is limited by Gallican custom, and papal dogmatic judgments need the church’s consent. Louis enforced it against Innocent XI.
Unigenitus (1713)
The papal bull condemning 101 Jansenist propositions — accepted by Louis at the end of his life, on terms that made it a royal as much as a papal act, and a source of conflict long after his death.
Jansenism
The austere Catholic movement centered on Port-Royal, condemned by Rome and persecuted by Louis, who saw it as a faction. Port-Royal-des-Champs was razed in 1709–1710.
Sun King (Roi-Soleil)
Louis’s device: Apollo, the sun, dispensing light and order. Danced by the young king in the Ballet royal de la nuit (1653) and adopted as his formal emblem around 1662. A political program, not a nickname. See art and propaganda.
Versailles
The hunting lodge turned palace turned seat of government (court installed 1682): the machine for domesticating the nobility and staging royal glory. See building Versailles.
Lever and coucher
The ritualized rising and retiring of the king, performed before courtiers in graded order of intimacy — the daily theater of access that made proximity to the royal body the currency of power. See court, etiquette and ritual.
Grand couvert
The king dining in public with the royal family, watched by courtiers and visitors — majesty as spectator sport.
Maîtresse-en-titre
The king’s officially recognized mistress, with apartments and rank: La Vallière, then Montespan. A court office in all but name.
Morganatic marriage
A marriage in which the lower-ranking spouse (and children) gain no dynastic rights. Louis’s secret marriage to Madame de Maintenon (c. winter 1683–84, undocumented exact date) was of this kind.
Académie
The royal academies — française (1635), inscriptions (1663), sciences (1666), architecture (1671), musique (1669) — through which the crown organized and patronized French intellectual life.
The Spanish Succession
The crisis of 1700–1714: Charles II of Spain’s will named Louis’s grandson Philip of Anjou heir; the resulting war (1701–1714) ended with Philip V on the Spanish throne but renouncing the French succession (Utrecht, 1713). See the War of the Spanish Succession.
The Regency (la Régence)
The government of Philippe, Duke of Orléans, for the child Louis XV (1715–1723) — the reaction against everything Louis XIV had built.
Lettre de cachet
A royal order, sealed with the king’s signet, for imprisonment or exile without trial — the administrative monarchy’s most feared instrument.
Gloire
The reign’s master value: glory — military, cultural, architectural — as the purpose of kingship. Louis’s Mémoires return to it obsessively. See the Mémoires question.
Source notes
- Definitions follow standard scholarly usage; contested terms (absolutism, the “personal reign”) carry their caveats inline (2026-09-26).
- Dates: Edict of Fontainebleau 18/22 October 1685; Gallican articles 1682; Unigenitus 1713; dragonnades from 1681.