Parisian street songs and the propaganda campaign over the Sorbonne’s Chinese censure (1700)

Abstract In October 1700, the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne issued a formal censure of statements concerning Confucius and ancient Chinese religion from recent publications by two French Jesuits. Despite Louis XIV’s desire for silence on this issue, an avalanche of polemics and pamphlets on both sides sought first to influence the Sorbonne’s proceedings, and later to justify or undermine the censure. This article uses three hitherto unknown street songs to examine these debates and open a new perspective on how the broader Parisian population interpreted the issues at stake in the Sorbonne censure and in the Chinese Rites Controversy of which it was a part. In so doing, the article makes the case that street songs were not just vectors for the transmission of news but could be actively used by elites to shape public opinion as part of wider propaganda campaigns.