Lutheranism as Heresy: Louis Maimbourg’s Gallican View of Church History

About the Publication

Andreea Badea, “Lutheranism as Heresy: Louis Maimbourg’s Gallican View of Church History”, in Reforming Church History: The Impact of the Reformation on Early Modern European Historiography (Gothaer Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 22), edited by Daniel Gehrt, Markus Matthias, and Sascha Salatowsky, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2023, pp. 179–192.

Louis Maimbourg was inextricably connected to the Sun Kingʼs propaganda machine. He wrote historical books in which he explained to a broad French audience why the expulsion of the Huguenots and the ecclesiastical separation from Rome were compelling prerequisites for a Gallican political and ecclesiological ideology. Hence, he incriminates the Reformation and frames Protestantism as nothing more than another doomed heresy in the long history of Catholicism. The Catholic Church distinguishes itself from the Protestant sects as the legitimate Church through its unity. However, at the center of this universal Catholic Church, Maimbourg sees the French king, Paris, and the Sorbonne.