 At some point after publishing his three feminist treatises, Poulain returned to theology and he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1679. His decision to take up a church career after having written treatises heavily critical of Scholastic philosophy might seem odd. There is no doubt that Poulain used Cartesian arguments as a basis for his feminist claims and that he was critical of Scholasticism, but we must also note that his third treatise is in many respect a reconciliation between his feminism and theology. When reconstructing Poulain’s opinions we must be careful not to identify him too closely with the character Stasimachus. As Carol Pal has argued in the case of the friendship between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, with strong Cartesian sympathies, and Anna Maria van Schurman, who was in many respects a Scholastic thinker, it was not unusual that seventeenth-century intellectuals combined elements from the old and the new philosophy (Pal 2012: 250–254). It is quite possible that Poulain was less militant a convert to Cartesianism than his character Stasimachus.