• Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Episode 96: Louis XIV’s Absolutism and the “Affair of the Poisons”

Satanic masses. Child sacrifice. Renegade priests who deal in love potions and black magics. And a secret tribunal set up to weed out the unholy members of nobility who use them, all desperate to get close to an absolute monarch who keeps the entire nation under his thumb. It’s not the subject of Dan Brown’s latest book, it’s something that really happened in 17th century France at the court of Louis XIV, “The Sun King.” Julia Gossard, an alumna of UT’s History Program, now an Assistant Professor of French History at Utah State University, has read through the archives of the secret court and walks us through the connections between Louis XIV’s absolutist rule and a fantastic series of events that’s become known as “The Affair of the Poisons.”

Related posts:

Episode 58: Islam’s First Civil War Episode 60: Texas and the American Revolution Episode 78: The U.S. and Decolonization after World War II Default ThumbnailEpisode 89: Seven Skeletons

Posted September 12, 2017 More 15 Minute History, Watch & Listen

Recent Posts

  • NEP’s Archive Chronicles: A Brief Guide Through Some Archives in Gaborone and Serowe, Botswana
  • Review of Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution (2022), by Anasa Hicks
  • Agency and Resistance: African and Indigenous Women’s Navigation of Economic, Legal, and Religious Structures in Colonial Spanish America
  • NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Unexpected Archives. Exploring Student Notebooks at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Senegal
  • Review of No Place Like Nome: The Bering Strait Seen Through Its Most Storied City
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About