Histories of religious orders traditionally prioritize the actions of their founders, their subsequent evolution seeming almost like an afterthought. In contrast, Seán Alexander Smith’s history of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists) focuses on the period following Vincent de Paul’s death. He demonstrates how the congregation’s evolution from 1660 until 1736 was shaped by the countervailing pressures of loyalty to de Paul’s ethos and fidelity to Louis XIV and Bourbon interests. Smith considers the impact of these competing loyalties on the congregation’s reputation through an analysis of four controversial missions—its service to the court as parish priests of Versailles and Fontainebleu and chaplains in the royal chapel; two colonial missions, first in Madagascar and later in the Île de Bourbon (presently Réunion); and, finally, the congregation’s proselytizing missions to Huguenots and convicts in the navy’s galley ships.

Smith shows how the congregation’s proximity to secular power often undermined its religious aims. The mission to Madagascar ended in failure in 1671 because the congregation, utterly dependent on the secular colonizers, the Compagnie de l’Orient and later the Compagnie des Indes, became associated with them in the minds of the local population. Since the relationship between colonizer and local population was characterized by violence and conflict, the congregation was unable to gain the trust of the local population or to make more than a handful of converts. The mission to Versailles sucked the Lazarists into the world of the court and bound them tightly to Louis XIV’s will. Smith shows how they lost their independence on matters of fundamental importance when these collided with Louis’s interests. So, in 1697, Louis vetoed the appointment of the Savoyard Maurice Faure as superior general in favor of the Frenchman Nicholas Pierron, not wishing to have the priests servicing his court subject to a superior outside his control.

The Lazarists’ galley missions reveal the extent to which the order was prepared to act as Crown agents, actively working to convert Huguenot prisoners in fulfillment of royal as much as religious ends. Smith cites the testimony of one former Huguenot prisoner, Jean Marteilhe, who characterized the Lazarist actions as persecuting the poor Huguenots at the cost of humanity. Finally, Smith’s analysis of the congregation’s second colonial mission to the Île de Bourbon from 1711 to 1736 shows the distance traveled by the order from its traditional ethos. There, the priests became coffee planters, slave owners, and colonial administrators, jealous of their preeminence on the provincial council.

Smith has undertaken a careful analysis of the official records and congregation sources to reveal the disparity between the congregation’s professed ethos of simplicity (esprit primitive) and its assiduous service within the power centers of the realm. It is a fascinating and highly readable account of the manner in which a religious community’s choices could become corrupted by closeness to power. Smith is perhaps overly generous to the congregation, highlighting the criticism leveled by the order’s own members against these trends and the efforts made by superiors and by individual priests to maintain the order’s original ethos. By comparing the congregation to the Jesuits and the Capuchins, he gives the impression that the order’s actions in support of the monarch were the norm. However, many female religious orders fought determinedly to preserve their right to nominate their own superiors. Similarly, many priests, particularly in Paris, maintained determined resistance to the absolutist regime and fought for the Gallican liberties. Some indeed opposed the forcible conversion of Huguenots and helped them to flee France. Equally, the Jansenists fought tenaciously against the encroachment of monarchical power on religious decisionmaking.

The Lazarists, therefore, appear to have made a choice to ally themselves to the Bourbon regime in return for influence and corporate expansion. In a carefully nuanced conclusion, Smith argues that the congregation may not have deviated as much as individual members feared from the path set by Vincent De Paul but that De Paul’s own choices, such as that of sending the mission to Madagascar, may have set irreconcilable aspirations for his order. In sum, Smith’s study is a valuable contribution to understanding the complex impact of absolutism on religious orders in early modern France.