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Symbols
The Catholic Church plays a hugely important role in the lives of Tartuffe’s characters. To them, it represents traditional aspects of religion, such as piety, charity, and faith. Further, because the Church was so powerful in seventeenth-century France, it takes on added significance, representing order and obedience. Tartuffe uses the power of this symbol in order to manipulate the characters around him, especially Orgon, who is completely taken in by his religious charade. Tartuffe is ostentatiously charitable, humble, and pious, taking on aspects associated with the Church in order to seem like a representative of the Church itself. The connection that Tartuffe creates between himself and the Church makes him extremely dangerous. As long as he is linked to this powerful symbol, the characters working against him cannot fully defeat him. Only when the King himself declares Tartuffe a hypocrite, at last severing Tartuffe’s ties to the Church, does he cease to be dangerous to Orgon and his family.
The Catholic Church Quotes in Tartuffe
The Tartuffe quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Catholic Church. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 1, Scene 5
Quotes
He used to come into our church each day
And humbly kneel nearby and start to pray.
He’d draw the eyes of everybody there
By the deep fervor of his heartfelt prayer;
He’d sign and weep and sometimes with a sound
Of rapture he would bend and kiss the ground.
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There’s just one insight I would dare to claim:
I know that true and false are not the same;
And just as there is nothing I more revere
Than a soul whose faith is steadfast and sincere,
Nothing that I more cherish and admire
Than honest zeal and true religious fire,
So there is nothing that I find more base
Than specious piety’s dishonest face—
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Get the entire Tartuffe LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Catholic Church Symbol Timeline in Tartuffe
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Catholic Church appears in Tartuffe. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1, Scene 1
...using excessive shows of faith to mask their true sins, and perverting the power of the Church .
(full context)
