What Is a Faux Dévot?

Abstract

In Chapter 2, we examined the question of religious hypocrisy, focusing on the figures of Tartuffe and Louis XIV. In the present chapter, we shall focus on another key aspect of Tartuffe’s character— one that is both related to and distinct from his hypocrisy: his zealotry or, in modern parlance, fanaticism. Although religious zealotry was a feature of counterreformation France and still in evidence in the 1660s, Tartuffe’s zealotry has been somewhat overlooked since and its importance in the controversy underestimated. I hope to redress this imbalance here by reasserting the nature and significance of Tar-tuffe’s performance of zealotry and by examining the extent to which zealotry and hypocrisy were (and were not) perceived as being coterminous. Among other sources, I shall draw on the insights of the great preacher Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704), whose sermons are not the staple diet of moliéristes¹ but do, I believe, shed considerable light on the Tartuffe controversy. I am using the term zealotry here to describe a type of religiosity that tends toward conspicuousness, owing to its particular concern with the lives and souls of others. The zealot is a proselytizer; he seeks to change the world around him via his encounters with the people around him. The most subtle type of encounter would be through fervent prayer, though more commonly the zealot is identified as such by his delivery of audacious, hectoring sermons or, if he is a lay person, by boldly offering his opinions in his capacity as lay spiritual director or self-appointed advisor and sermonizer.