The persecution of the Protestants, however, partially reveals the narrow intolerance of Madame de Maintenon.  She sided but with those whose influence was directed to the support of the recognized dogmas of the Church in their connection with the absolute rule of kings.  The interests of Catholic institutions have ever been identical with absolutism.  Bossuet, the ablest theologian and churchman which the Catholic Church produced in the seventeenth century, gave the whole force of his vast intellect to uphold an unlimited royal authority.  He saw in the bold philosophical speculations of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Locke an insidious undermining of the doctrines of the Church, an intellectual freedom whose logical result would be fatal alike to Church and State.  His eagle eye penetrated to the core of every system of human thought.  He saw the logical and necessary results of every theory which Pantheists, or Rationalists, or Quietists, or Jansenists advanced.  Whatever did not support the dogmas of mediaeval and patriotic theologians, such as the Papal Church indorsed, was regarded by him with suspicion and aversion.  Every theory or speculation which tended to emancipate the mind, or weaken the authority of the Church, or undermine an absolute throne, was treated by him with dogmatic intolerance and persistent hatred.  He made war alike on the philosophers, the Jansenists, and the Quietists, whether they remained in the ranks of the Church or not.  It was the dangerous consequences of these speculations pushed to their logical result which he feared and detested, and which no other eye than his was able to perceive.

Bossuet communicated his spirit to Madame de Maintenon and to the King, who were both under his influence as to the treatment of religious or philosophical questions.  Louis and his wife were both devout supporters of orthodoxy,—­that is, the received doctrines of the Church,—­partly from conservative tendencies, and partly from the connection of established religious institutions with absolutism in government.  Whatever was established, was supported because it was established.  They would suffer no innovation, not even in philosophy.  Anything progressive was abhorred as much as anything destructive.  When Fenelon said, “I love my family better than myself, my country better than my family, and the human race better than my country,” he gave utterance to a sentiment which was revolutionary in its tendency.  When he declared in his “Telemaque” what were the duties of kings,—­that they reigned for the benefit of their subjects rather than for themselves,—­he undermined the throne which he openly supported.  It was the liberal spirit which animated Fenelon, as well as the innovations to which his opinions logically led, which arrayed against him the king who admired him, the woman who had supported him, and the bishop who was jealous of him.  Although he charmed everybody with whom he associated by the angelic sweetness of his disposition,