Description

Founded in 1627 and dissolved by Louis XIV in 1666, the Compagnie du Très Saint-Sacrement de l’Autel was a secret society of devout laymen and clergy that worked behind the scenes for charity, moral policing and the repression of Protestants and libertines — the « cabale des dévots » that Molière was thought to target in Tartuffe. Raoul Allier’s thesis, defended at the Paris faculty of Protestant theology and published by Armand Colin in 1902, was the first full history of the Compagnie from its own records. This is a faithful print-on-demand facsimile of the 1902 edition, reproduced in full from a library copy. The historical text is reproduced without modification; only the format, margins and legibility have been reset for modern printing.