| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Philip F. Riley. A Lust for Virtue: Louis XIV's Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France. (Contributions to the Study of World History.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2001. Pp. xvi, 203. $69.95.

Some authors are criticized for rushing their Ph.D. dissertation to print without thorough editing to remove those parts of the scholarly apparatus demanded by doctoral convention. Others are criticized for not including works published during the years they have taken to revise their dissertation for publication. Neither criticism is valid in the case of Philip F. Riley's book. Thirty years have passed since Riley defended the first version of his conclusions about Louis XIV's interest in the morality of his subjects. Between 1973 and 1990 he published four articles related to this subject. He now presents the fully developed version of what he calls "Louis XIV's attack on sin in seventeenth-century France," based on his dissertation, the articles, and continuing research. 1

Louis XIV firmly believed that one of his most important duties was to eradicate sin and instill virtue in the people of France. Riley shows clearly how that conviction, "more juridical than spiritual," developed from Louis's childhood onward, and how it could co- exist with the other, often contradictory, elements of Louis XIV's character. Riley argues convincingly that, for the most part, the development of Louis's concept of sin and virtue can be traced to his mother and his teachers, along with Bishop Bossuet and Louis's confessors, rather than to his second wife, Madame de Maintenon. The role of the latter was to encourage Louis from the mid 1680s onward to increase his efforts to combat sin and instill virtue. . . .

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