Count Sporck's intellectual interests led him to found a branch of Freemasonry in Bohemia, but they also had the effect of arousing the suspicion of the Habsburg ecclesiastical authorities for his flirtations with Jansenist philosophy and anti-Jesuitical polemicism.
On his deathbed, on suspicion of Jansenist views, he was refused communion by the Abbé Bouettin of the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church, but was given the last rites by his own chaplain.
But, because of the poem's Jansenist inspiration, Cardinal de Fleury, chief minister of Louis XV, blocked the poet's admission to the Académie Française, and instead Racine was induced to accept the post of inspector-general of taxes at Marseille in Provence.
He succeeded in winning over to his cause Simon Rock, till then an associate of Gerard van Swieten, the promoter of the Jansenist spirit in Austria, and with his assistance restored Thomism in the schools.
Her field of interest is European anti-Christian attitudes, Spinoza and Spinozism, the Huguenots, Jansenists and other opposition groups within French history.