This study is concerned with the evolving spirituality of the Congregation of the Oratory of Jesus under Pierre de Bérulle and Charles de Condren in relation to the social and political environment of seventeenth-century France. The mentalité of the Congregation is shown to be principally that of sections of the clergy, robe nobility, officiers, bourgeois, and professionals, in opposition to the Jesuits and the emerging absolutist state.