will and word of God. The Church needed to rise above any sort of conjecture that hinted it might have an agenda outside of the one on Moses' tablets. While King Louis XIV and the others of the ruling class were certainly aware of all the Church's agendas, the Church had long fought to hide it from the populace that supported it from the countryside.Molire ran what was arguably one of the three best-known and patronized venues of live entertainment in Paris. Whatever play Molire was running was bound to get an audience of appreciable size and, equally importantly, he tended to draw a segment of French society in which seeds of discontent had historical been well sown.The conflict is clear. The Church saw in Molire's play a potential embarrassment during a time in which it could ill afford to be embarrassed. Were the play allowed to open for the general public, it had the potential to become a rallying point for the forces opposed to the seemingly powerful authority of the Church. The Church had the power to stop a potential problem and it did so with the backing of the Queen Mother and through the mouth King Louis XIV who was, at that moment, not yet ready to further upset the apple cart of the French Catholic Church. Now understanding that the Church did perceive the production of Tartuffe as a threat and that it did, in fact, deal with that threat, it is interesting to explore whether Tartuffe ever truly posed a threat to the interests of the Church. Tartuffe presented an image of a holy charlatan taking advantage of a simple man. It was a time full of charlatans and confidence men yet Molire chose from a myriad of potential schemes, the Holy Man who is anything but holy. It might seem that the creation of Tartuffe as a Holy Man was a bit to timely to be coincidental, but Molire ultimately allowed plot elements distancing the work of Tartuffe from the Church. Tartuffe was not, despite his pretense, a member of the clergy. In...
