DescriptionThis dissertation examines the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in late seventeenth-century France and its connections to the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV and the shifting educational ideals of the period. Focusing on the detailed implementation of the edict in Paris, it discusses the importance of the development of a new bureaucratic structure that allowed Louis XIV to remain relatively involved in the details of implementation, while entrusting the daily operations to individuals loyal to the crown. Placing the Revocation in the context of administrative expansion, growing central control, and idealized Christian kingship, Louis XIV’s decision to end toleration of Protestantism in France becomes clearer. It also argues that education and social reform were central in the conception and execution of this edict, and that the Revocation was part of a moment in which conversion through education appeared possible. In combining religious conversion and education in an effort to form Protestants into French Catholics, Louis XIV built upon an absolutist vision of education and connected his efforts to a flourishing debate. For the Protestant families affected by this edict, particularly the children, this approach shaped their experience of the Revocation. This study of the interaction between state and society, ideals and practices, in 1685 allows a new and more complicated understanding of Louis XIV’s kingship, the meaning of conversion in the late seventeenth century, and the place of the Revocation in French history.