Pope Innocent summons Yves and considers sending him to a monastery

Pope Innocent summons Yves de la Croix and considers sending him to a monastery in a private audience that turns religious counsel into a threat to Yves’s place at court. The Pope rebukes Yves over Marie-Josèphe de la Croix’s music and his own neglected religious observances, while Yves weighs the cost of protest: a retreat could sever the royal patronage on which his work depends.

The summons and its setting

After walking through the darkened apartments of Versailles, Yves descends the Staircase of the Ambassadors, then faces the practical indignity of having to return to the ground floor and climb a narrow stair to reach his tiny attic rooms. A figure in blazing red emerges from the darkness: Cardinal Ottoboni, who tells Yves that Pope Innocent XII requires his presence. Yves answers in Latin that he is at the Pope’s service.

The change of setting gives the summons a formal, almost ceremonial quality. Cardinal Ottoboni leads Yves onto the terrace and points toward the gardens, where Pope Innocent XII stands between the water parterres, looking toward the peak of the sea monster’s tent. The Pope calls Yves to him, then draws him away from the cardinal and toward the Orangerie. Among its rows of small trees, the two men pause in silence before the interview becomes a reprimand. The movement away from the terrace creates privacy, but not equality: Yves follows the frail, much older Pope carefully, and later offers his arm’s compliance as the Pope takes his elbow for support on the return.

The Pope’s warning

Pope Innocent XII says he is distressed by Marie-Josèphe de la Croix’s pagan composition. Yves pleads that his sister meant nothing by it and that the work was innocent. The Pope’s response frames the issue not as a dispute about musical intention but as a danger to the souls of both siblings. His manner remains kind, yet Yves recognizes the sternness beneath it.

The warning widens from the composition to the court surrounding Yves. Pope Innocent XII names its debauchery, adultery, and bastardy, then adds heresy, atheists, and monsters among those advising Louis XIV. The list makes the court itself the source of spiritual danger: Yves’s proximity to power exposes him to influences the Pope distrusts. In this exchange, the sea monster is folded into the Pope’s catalogue of threats alongside heresy and atheism, while the music that has brought Yves to the interview is treated as part of the same perilous environment.

Religious neglect and the proposed retreat

Yves answers that his vows and faith protect him. The Pope tests that assurance by asking when he last said Mass or heard confession. Yves admits that many months have passed. Pope Innocent XII insists that vows and faith require attention, and suggests that François de la Chaise might hear Yves’s confession. The proposal shifts the discussion from a general declaration of belief to specific religious practices Yves has allowed to lapse.

The Pope then raises a more sweeping remedy: a year of meditation, perhaps, and a retreat to a monastery for a year of silence. Yves struggles to keep silent, but he does not protest. He believes that objecting could result in being sent away; exile from court would cost him Louis XIV’s patronage and everything that patronage means for his work. His silence is therefore neither simple submission nor evidence that he accepts the Pope’s judgment. It is a constrained choice made under the possibility of losing the support on which his professional life relies.

An unresolved decision

Pope Innocent XII does not announce a final order. He says he will observe Yves and consider what would do him the most good. The uncertainty leaves the proposed retreat hanging over Yves rather than resolving into either a punishment or a reprieve. At the end of the audience, the Pope offers his hand; Yves falls to his knees and kisses the papal ring. The gesture restores the outward form of deference, but it does not settle the conflict between religious obedience and dependence on royal favor. The summons ends with the Pope retaining the power to decide Yves’s future and Yves waiting, without having voiced the protest he feared would cost him his place at court.