The Jesuits now returned to power, though not to their full power, at the court, and the remnant of the Jansenists was pitilessly persecuted. For nearly twenty years the opponents of the Jesuits attempted to evade the enforcement of the papal decisions, and it is said that more than a hundred priests were banished and a large number imprisoned. One of the bishops was deposed and degraded for resistance, and a fierce struggle shook the peaceful atmosphere of the innumerable monasteries. Fifty monks of one province of the Cistercian order were, in 1723, excommunicated and imprisoned by the authorities. The papal condemnation included propositions which were obviously sound and others which were no more than quotations of Scripture, so hastily had the vindictive sentence been promulgated. The Jesuits triumphed, however, and the reign of Louis XV. saw them fully reinstated at Versailles.
France was no longer the world-power she had been in the golden age of Louis XIV., and her selfish and dissipated monarch was blindly leading her toward revolution. The Jesuits, as before, clung to the prestige of the position of royal confessor, in spite of the flagrant immorality of the King, but the forces which would presently dislodge them were insensibly gathering power. The Puritans were silenced, rather than annihilated, and the Parlement, imputing to the Society much of the blame of its exile in 1753, revived its bitter hostility. The first stroke fell on them in that year. Father Pérusseau, the King's confessor, died, and a successful intrigue put in his place a priest who was not a Jesuit. Both Pérusseau and his successor refused absolution to a King whose libertinism was so cynically exhibited. In view of the persistent attack on their laxity during a hundred years, it would have been difficult for a Jesuit to do less. When, however, the Jesuits lost the principal position, there seemed for a moment some chance of their returning to favour in an indirect way. Mme de Pompadour also desired absolution, in order to find a convenient place in the Queen's suite; and, making a profession of penitence, she put herself under the spiritual guidance of the Jesuit Father Sacy. For a time he affected to believe in her sincerity; but the laughter of Paris disconcerted him, and the stern refusal of the Pope to interfere forced him to retire. From that time Mme de Pompadour and her courtiers were opposed to the Jesuits.