the vogue of upper-class deism, the philosophy of Descartes, with
its careful profession of submission to the Church, had at first an
easy reception; and on the appearance of the Discours de la Méthode
(1637) it speedily affected the whole thought of France; the women
of the leisured class, now much given to literature, being among
its students. [547] From the first the Jansenists, who were the most
serious religious thinkers of the time, accepted the Cartesian system
as in the main soundly Christian; and its founder's authority had some
such influence in keeping up the prestige of orthodoxy as had that of
Locke later in England. Boileau, who wrote a satire in defence of the
system when it was persecuted after Descartes's death, is named among
those whom he so influenced. [548] But a merely external influence
of this kind could not counteract the fundamental rationalism of
Descartes's thought, and the whole social and intellectual tendency
towards a secular view of life. Soon, indeed, Descartes became
suspect, partly by reason of the hostile activities of the Jesuits,
who opposed him because the Jansenists generally held by him, though he
had been a Jesuit pupil, and had always some adherents in that order;
[549] partly by reason of the inherent naturalism of his system. That
his doctrine was incompatible with the eucharist was the standing
charge against it, [550] and his defence was not found satisfactory,
[551] though his orthodox followers obtained from Queen Christina a
declaration that he had been largely instrumental in converting her
to Catholicism. [552] Pascal reproached him with having done his best
to do without God in his system; [553] and this seems to have been
the common clerical impression. Thirteen years after his death, in
1663, his work was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, under
a modified censure, [554] and in 1671 a royal order was obtained
under which his philosophy was proscribed in all the universities
of France. [555] Cartesian professors and curés were persecuted and
exiled, or compelled to recant; among the victims being Père Lami of
the Congregation of the Oratory and Père André the Jesuit; [556] and
the Oratorians were in 1678 forced to undergo the humiliation of not
only renouncing Descartes and all his works, but of abjuring their
former Cartesian declarations, in order to preserve their corporate
existence. [557] Precisely in this period of official reaction,
however, there was going on not merely an academic but a social
development of a rationalistic kind, in which the persecuted philosophy
played its part, even though some freethinkers disparaged it.