[2] The first half of the 17th century in France was a period of intense civil strife; the 1590 Edict of Nantes ended the French Wars of Religion but continued state persecution caused a series of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.

[3] La Feuillade graduated from the Sorbonne university in April 1639 and joined Solignac Abbey; in 1645, he was nominated as one of the delegates from the Diocese of Limoges to the Assembly of the French clergy in Paris.

Some were theological, like the dispute over Jansenism, others political, such as resisting demands by the regional Parlements that the Church pay taxes or the re-admission of Assembly members expelled by Cardinal Richelieu in 1641.

During the Fronde des nobles (1650–1653), the La Feuillade brothers supported the Court party led by Louis XIV's mother, Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin.

He was equally scathing in his assessment of François de La Feuillade, who died in 1691 when Saint Simon was 16 and in general, uniformly hostile to Louis XIV and his supporters, the majority of whom he dismissed as commoners.