4. Jansenism: the war about grace

4. Jansenism: the war about grace

Jansenism: the war about grace 1. Michael Baius and the seeds of Jansenism Jansenism was the gravest and longest internal crisis experienced by the Roman Catholic Church in our period, provoking political and religious turmoil, persecution, and even schism, on a scale unknown since the Protestant Reformation a hundred years previously. France was once again the land where the drama was largely played out; yet to understand this, and indeed the whole context from which Jansenism was born, we have to step back for a while into the sixteenth century and ponder the life and work of a theologian born in Flanders (then a region in the south-west of the Netherlands, now divided between France, Belgium, and Holland). This was Michael Baius (1513–89), whom we could consider the spiritual

"grandfather" of Jansenism.

Baius spent his entire academic life teaching at Louvain University in the Spanish Netherlands. Louvain was one of northern Europe's foremost centres of learning, and a citadel of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Alongside this, it was also steeped in the humanism of Erasmus, determined to study the pure, original texts of Scripture and of the early Church fathers. Baius' own humanist ideals were focused on retrieving the theology of Augustine from what he believed was the diluted and distorted Augustinianism of the medieval schoolmen. Unfortunately for him, Baius' interpretation of Augustine seemed virtually identical with what Luther and Calvin had said about original sin, predestination, free will, and grace, and this would-be champion of Augustine found himself under attack from the anti-Protestant militants of his Church from 1560 onwards.

The controversy became so intense that in 1567, Rome intervened, and in the bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus, Pope Pius V condemned 79 propositions extracted from Baius' writings. The bull, however, neglected to name Baius as the author of the obnoxious propositions, which enabled Baius to shrug it off by simply claiming that the bull did not refer to him. Twelve years later, in 1579, Pope Gregory XIII remedied the oversight of his predecessor and condemned Baius in the bull Provisionis Nostrae. This time Baius could not wriggle free; he recanted. But it was, in a sense, too late. The damage was

done; Baius' revived Augustinianism was now in circulation, especially in his own university. And his later writings still seem permeated with the essence of his "recanted" views.

The most ardent foes of Augustinian theology within Roman Catholicism were the Jesuits. The fact that such a famous Catholic university as Louvain was playing host to Baius' ideas prompted the Jesuits to try to capture it for their own doctrinal outlook, which gave a much bigger role to human free will. Among the Jesuit zealots who arrived in Louvain to test their mettle against "Baianism" was Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623). The duel between Lessius and Baius went in the latter's favour; in 1587, he persuaded the university authorities to condemn most of Lessius' teaching as SemiPelagian or worse.

2. Molinism and the De Auxiliis controversy At this point, the quarrels in Louvain became linked with a parallel controversy that had broken out in Spain. (Since Louvain was in the Spanish Netherlands, the two disputes were politically within the same domain, the lands of King Philip of Spain.) The Spanish Jesuit Luis de

Molina (1535–1600)9 had systematized the anti-Augustinian perspective of Jesuit theology, and given it to the public in his landmark treatise The Harmony between Free Will and the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge,

Providence, Predestination, and Reprobation, with regard to Certain Articles of Saint Thomas' Prima Pars, published in 1588. Since the form of Augustinianism that prevailed in Spain was that of Thomas Aquinas and the Dominican order, Molina chose to subvert the Augustinian view by radically reinterpreting the teachings of Aquinas ("Thomism", as it was called, from Aquinas's first name Thomas).

Molina's argument can be summarized as follows. God gives everyone sufficient grace to be saved, but it hinges on our free will to make use of this grace. So far, this sounds like simply a form of Semi-Pelagianism. But Molina then introduced the sophisticated concept of God's "middle knowledge" (in Latin, scientia media). By this, Molina meant God's knowledge of what any person's free will would do in any situation—not just situations that actually occurred, but hypothetical or imaginary situations too. Traditionally theologians had ascribed to God two kinds of knowledge of His creation: (i) knowledge of all that He might possibly decree, and (ii) knowledge of what He had actually decreed. Molina introduced this third category "in the middle" of the other two: God's knowledge of "what would happen if "—middle knowledge (scientia media). Molina argued that God knew what every created will would do if it were placed in any possible set of circumstances. This knowledge was not based on what it was within God's power to decree, nor on what He had actually decreed, but was a mysterious and inexplicable knowledge of what any created will would freely choose to do, were it placed in this or that situation.

Perhaps we can illustrate what Molina meant with a parable. Suppose that a man—let us call him John—hears the Gospel preached. God knows

(by His middle knowledge) that if He gives John only fifty units of sufficient grace, John will not freely respond with repentance and faith. But

God also knows that if He gives John a hundred units of sufficient grace, John will respond more positively, so that he freely chooses to repent and believe.

In other words, Molina saw sufficient grace as imparting an impetus or momentum to free will to move in the right direction. Since the will was free, it could always resist. Even so, by virtue of His middle knowledge,

God knew the amount of sufficient grace to which anyone's will would respond positively in any situation. Therefore, in order to bring about anyone's salvation without violating their freedom, all God had to do was give a person the amount of sufficient grace to which He knew the person would freely respond in a specific situation, and then place him or her in that situation. Predestination was therefore God choosing, in the case of some people, to give them the amount of sufficient grace to which He foreknew they would respond freely by their own wills. To the rest, God still gave grace sufficient in itself to save them, even though they did not make a right use of it. In this way, Molina believed he had reconciled the universality of God's grace (everyone had sufficient grace to be saved), the reality of divine election (some were given a quantity of sufficient grace to which God foreknew they would actually respond), and the freedom of the human will (what made grace effective was always a person's free response).

Molina's new synthesis of grace and free will proved explosive. The Spanish Dominicans, who were faithful Thomists, were outraged by this reconstruction of Aquinas's theology into what they saw as a Semi-Pelagian enthronement of the human will as the decisive factor in salvation. They tried to prevent the publication of Molina's book, then to have it condemned by universities and the Inquisition. Eventually the conflict became so serious that in 1597, Pope Clement VIII set up a special commission, the De

Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae ("concerning the helps of divine grace"), to arbitrate between the contending parties. Dominicans maintained that scientia media was utterly foreign to Aquinas, and that Molinism was driven by a Pelagian exaltation of the human will. Jesuits maintained that Thomism (as expounded by the Dominicans), and the teachings of Baius in Louvain, were indistinguishable from Calvinism. The whole acrimonious debate took its name from this commission, and is known as the De Auxiliis controversy.

The commission sat through three papal reigns—Popes Clement VIII, Leo XI, and Paul V. Clement and Leo teetered on brink of condemning

Molinism. But the Jesuits were finally saved from condemnation by the fact that they were the undoubtedly successful spearhead of the whole Roman

Catholic Counter-Reformation, and were noted for their special devotion to the papacy. In 1607, after ten years of fruitless argument, Pope Paul V dissolved the commission and imposed silence on both sides. However, both ignored this "silence" and carried on disputing. In 1610, Baius' great

Jesuit antagonist Leonardus Lessius published a vast tome on the doctrine of grace, setting out Molinist views; but he was once again condemned by the University of Louvain, which stayed loyal to the Augustinianism of Baius (who had died 20 years previously). The decree of silence was reimposed in a new form by Pope Urban VIII in 1625.

3. Jansen, Saint-Cyran, and the grand project This, then, was the background at Louvain University when a young

Dutchman, Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), arrived there. Born at Accol, from a poor family, Jansen became a brilliant theological student at Louvain, where he was exposed to the Augustinian tradition of Baius. It is not entirely clear exactly when Jansen personally embraced Baius' legacy and made it his lifelong passion. What is clear, however, is that very little fruit would have emerged from this, had it not been for Jansen's friendship with another remarkable figure, the Frenchman Jean-Amboise Duvergier de

Hauranne, best known to history by his title of the Abbé de Saint-Cyran (1581–1643). A native of Paris, born into a rich Basque family, Saint-Cyran was educated by the Jesuits, studying at the universities of Paris and Louvain. After ordination to the priesthood, he was given the plush parish of Ixtassou in 1607, and later the wealthy abbey of Saint-Cyran, whose name passed to the man himself.

Jansen and Saint-Cyran may have met as students at Louvain; they certainly became well acquainted in Paris in 1609. At any rate, the wealthy

French priest and the poor Dutch scholar grew to be intimate lifelong friends. They spent the period 1611–14 closeted together on land owned by the Saint-Cyran family, studying Scripture and the early Church fathers.

After this Jansen returned to Louvain, where he entered the priesthood and lectured in theology. He and Saint-Cyran kept up a lively correspondence.

In September 1616, Jansen penned a letter to Saint-Cyran which gives us our first glimpse of the grand project that was beginning to dominate his life. Jansen had now come to believe that the only subject that really mattered to him as a Christian and a theologian was divine grace, and that the only teacher worth studying on this exalted theme (outside the Bible) was Augustine. "I love him uniquely", Jansen wrote. "It seems to me that nothing among the ancients and moderns comes near him by a hundred leagues. The more I read him, the finer I find him."

So began a long series of letters between Jansen and Saint-Cyran on the Augustinian doctrine of grace. Considering that Pope Paul V had imposed silence on this topic as a result of the De Auxiliis controversy, the two men adopted an elaborate code to prevent condemnation if their letters were discovered. Interestingly, Jansen kept a close eye on the proceedings of the Synod of Dort from 1618–19, declaring that the Dutch Calvinists were

thoroughly sound Catholics on the matter of predestination! (By "Catholic" he meant "in harmony with the true doctrine taught by Augustine".) From 1621, Jansen's project took concrete shape: he would read and re-read

Augustine's writings against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians on the doctrine of grace, distil the essence, and write a commentary. He referred to the commentary by the codeword "Pilmot"; its actual name was Augustinus.

Jansen's hope was that the book would rescue the Roman Catholic Church from the debased theologies of free will so beloved by the Jesuits, and restore the truth as taught by Augustine and his successors (such as Baius).

There is little more to tell of Jansen's life. He began writing Augustinus in 1627; in 1635 he became Bishop of Ypres; in 1638 he died, having just finished his great treatise, which he entrusted to his chaplain Lamaeus. It was published in 1640 in Louvain. When the Jesuits learned the nature of the work that was rolling from the presses of the printer, a certain Zegers, they made every effort to stop him; but Zegers, incensed by their interference, made his men work night and day to get the Augustinus into print before Jesuit efforts to suppress it could bear fruit. Little could its author have foreseen the convulsive movement his book would launch, bearing his name—Jansenism.

4. The Arnauld family and Port-Royal Some historians have argued that Jansenism should really be called

Cyranism, because Saint-Cyran was the man who transformed Jansen's teachings into a spiritual movement with the potential for wide appeal.

Where Jansen had been above all a scholar and thinker, Saint-Cyran was a leader of men and women, exceptionally gifted at seeing into the human heart and inspiring others to lives of devotion. He also possessed an almost messianic sense of mission, believing that he had been chosen by God to make Jansen's ideals into a vital reality in the French Church of his day.

Sometimes this attitude provoked negative reactions; one critic described Saint-Cyran as "an insulting and violent person, lacking any respect for those who in any way disagree with him". More often, Saint-Cyran's singleminded enthusiasm kindled an answering fire in the souls of others, especially those who had submitted to his spiritual guidance.

Saint-Cyran was propelled into greater prominence by his relationship with the great Cardinal de Bérulle (see section 3.2, above) from 1620 onwards. They became enduring friends. Bérulle admired Saint-Cyran's patristic learning; Saint-Cyran admired Bérulle's blend of spirituality and practical energy, and found his own piety quickened to new heights under Bérulle's influence. Ominously for the future of Jansenism, Saint-Cyran's friendship with Bérulle thrust him into conflict with the Jesuits, who begrudged the growth of Bérulle's Oratorian movement. Saint-Cyran sprang to his friend's defence; in 1632, for example, he wrote a series of pamphlets under the pseudonym "Petrus Aurelius", attacking the Jesuits comprehensively. Collected into a book, the Petrus Aurelius won the enthusiastic approval of all critics of the Jesuits in France; in 1642, the French Assembly of the Clergy ordered it to be printed afresh and presented to every bishop and cathedral in the kingdom.

Despite being the titular head of the abbey that bore his name, SaintCyran settled in Paris and established a growing influence there. Refusing all offers of bishoprics, he became the personal spiritual director of a large company of men and women prominent in the secular world. His direction of their consciences was rooted in his Augustinian theology; in particular, he taught them a demanding doctrine of contrition. This was a technical term, meaning that in repentance, the fear of hell ("attrition") was an insufficient motive; true repentance must involve a genuine love for God

("contrition"). This again was aimed against the Jesuits, who taught the sufficiency of attrition.

The spark that finally ignited Jansenism—other, of course, than Jansen's Augustinus—was the association of Saint-Cyran with the Cistercian convent of Port-Royal. Port-Royal had been founded in 1204, in the depths of a slender valley some sixteen miles from Paris. By the sixteenth century it had become very worldly, and would probably have remained unknown but for a truly extraordinary abbess, Mother Angélique (1591–1661), real name Jacqueline Arnauld. Placed in the convent at the mere age of seven, she became its nominal abbess in 1602 aged 10. Things took a suddenly serious turn, however, when in 1608 the sermon of a visiting preacher deeply moved the thoughtless young abbess. She reformed her own life, gathered an inner circle of like-minded nuns, and exercised her authority to impose a rigorous observance of the original Benedictine rule on PortRoyal. In 1609, she enforced "strict enclosure" on the convent—banished outsiders from the precincts and locked the doors against the world, including her family.

Mother Angélique's illustrious family, the Arnaulds, were of Huguenot stock. Her grandfather had reconverted to Rome after the infamous St Bartholomew massacre in 1572 during the French wars of religion. It was a family of lawyers; Angélique's father Antoine was legendary for lawsuits against the Jesuits on behalf of Paris University. Antoine at first violently opposed the enclosure of Port-Royal by his newly serious-minded daughter, but afterwards relented and became her warmest supporter.

Under Angélique's leadership, Port-Royal became a magnetic centre of French Catholic piety; many of the nation's distinguished preachers and counsellors were active there, including Cardinal de Bérulle and Francis de

Sales (see section 3, above). Angélique now had spiritual star status. She was especially devoted to Francis de Sales; after his death in 1622 she sought a new mentor in vain, till at last she met Saint-Cyran. He and Angélique had an instant and profound rapport, and she yielded herself entirely to his guidance. The first spiritual director of the Port-Royal nuns had been Sébastien Zamet (1587–1655), Bishop of Langres and disciple of Bérulle. Fatefully in 1633, Zamet handed the task over to his friend SaintCyran, who was soon the intensely admired father-confessor of all the nuns.

So was formed the axis that would make Port-Royal the pulsing heart of Jansenism for two generations.

A sign of Port-Royal's mushrooming celebrity was its relocation to the outskirts of Paris (the unhealthy conditions in the valley had led to too many premature deaths). Nestling now on the borders of France's capital, the convent scaled new heights of fame. It broke away from the Cistercian order and took an independent identity as the "Institute of the Holy

Sacrament". The nuns adopted a new garb—a white scapular distinguished by a red cross. Soon they were the spiritual heroines of all Paris. It became the highest ambition of young girls to join Port-Royal. Unknown to most, however, Saint-Cyran was quietly nurturing an Augustinian spirituality in these eminent nuns, paving the way in their minds and hearts for the great book his friend Jansen was writing, which would be God's instrument in restoring the true doctrine of grace to His true Church.

5. Jansenist spirituality What was the pattern of spirituality that was growing up under the fostering hand of Saint-Cyran, soon to be identified (by its foes) as "Jansenism"? At the risk of over-simplification, we can perhaps pick out the following as prominent elements: i. Jansenists were serious-minded people. Their whole religion was marked by an earnestness and intensity that could be rather disturbing to other French Catholics who wore their faith more lightly. This seriousness found a focus in Saint-Cyran's doctrine of contrition (see above), which broadened out into an insistence that love for God was the only truly ethical motive. Even natural affection was suspect: one should not be too concerned about the death of a loved one. For Jansenists, the Creator was an all-absorbing object of devotion. Any attachment to created things or persons was regarded as sinful, unless they were loved for God's sake. ii. Related to this was a profound feeling of tension and discord between the Christian and the world. Jansenists distanced themselves as far as possible from the culture of their society, especially its amusements; fiction and the theatre were particular targets of criticism. The Augustinian sense of the fallenness of life led to an extreme pessimism about this world, and an other-worldly preoccupation with the next.

Jansenists tended to think that the only worthwhile use of life on earth was to prepare oneself for life in heaven. The light of eternity was their sole illumination amid the darkness of a fallen existence. iii. The Bible became uniquely central in Jansenist spirituality. In its sacred pages, God spoke the truth of salvation to His elect. Jansenists stressed that every devout Christian, not just priests or theologians, should read the Bible. This spilled over into an enthusiasm for translating the Bible into French (or other languages, in other countries affected by Jansenism). A negative counterpart to this biblical emphasis was a general Jansenist distaste for mysticism, on the grounds that it was too subjective, drawing people away from the objective word of the Bible into a maze of dubious experiences.

iv. Jansenists had a reforming mindset. They saw themselves as having a divine mission to call their Church back to the true doctrine of grace, taught in the Bible and classically formulated by Augustine. For philosophy and scholastic theology they had little or no time. They took up this stance in a quite uncompromising manner: the Church had been infected by Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian error, and it was the calling of Jansenists to engage in a life-and-death struggle for the Church's soul. Had it not been for this reforming militancy, the popes would probably have been content to leave Jansenism alone as a viable school of thought within the wide embrace of Rome. It was the determination of Jansenists to capture the Church for their own view exclusively that projected them into fateful conflict with the Jesuits and collision with the papacy.

From this crude outline, we can understand why some have compared the Jansenists with the Puritans. In some ways, we could indeed say that Jansenism was a sort of French Catholic Puritanism.10

However, we could also ask why, given all the troubles they were to bring upon themselves from the papacy, Jansenists did not just leave the Roman Catholic Church and become Protestants.11 The answer is that they combined their Augustinian theology of grace with equally strong convictions about the Bishop of Rome as the divinely ordained visible head of the Church, transubstantiation as the true doctrine of the eucharist, the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints, the apostolic succession of the priesthood, and the superior worth of celibacy and the monastic life. Since most Jansenists were unwilling to part with these cherished convictions, becoming Protestant was not a live option. Their only choice was the attempt to conquer their own Church and make it a citadel for their

Augustinian theology.

Thus the stage was set for a prolonged and painful struggle, by turns heroic, hilarious, and heart-rending, which was to leave enduring scars on the body of the Roman Catholic Church.

6. The Augustinus and the Great Arnauld: Jansenism becomes a movement In 1638, Saint-Cyran was arrested by Cardinal Richelieu, all-powerful chief minister of King Louis XIII during the latter part of his reign. Complicated political factors were driving Richelieu to annul the marriage of the king's brother, Gaston d'Orléans; Richelieu needed the support of the theologians, and sought that of the influential Saint-Cyran, offering him a bishopric. But Saint-Cyran refused, declaring the annulment to be a moral scandal.

Richelieu was incensed and decided to make an example of the uncooperative cleric. Consequently Saint-Cyran was kept in prison for the next five years, a living martyr in the eyes of his many spiritual devotees.

His detention, however, was not overly restrictive, and he was allowed to receive visitors and write to correspondents. He also penned his classic

Christian and Spiritual Letters, to be published in 1645.

It was during Saint-Cyran's imprisonment that Jansen's life-work, Augustinus, finally appeared in print, in 1640 at Louvain (Jansen having died in 1638). Here was the theological masterpiece on which Saint-Cyran was pinning his hopes, under God, for the revival of the true doctrine of grace in the Roman Catholic Church. And things went well, at first;

Augustinus proved hugely popular in France—it was reprinted in Paris in 1641. In the Dutch Republic, too, the Reformed sang the praises of Augustinus. It seemed to vindicate everything they had established at the Synod of Dort.12 Although the book purported to be a historical commentary on Augustine's arguments against Pelagianism and SemiPelagianism, there could be little disguising Jansen's underlying intent to win over his readers to Augustine's point of view. Jansen made it fairly clear that he understood Augustine to be teaching as divine truth a doctrinal scheme we could summarize thus:

1. Eternal life can be attained only through God's grace.

2. Before the fall, even Adam needed sufficient grace in order to obey.

3. After the fall, sinners need efficacious grace, which sovereignly inclines the will.

4. Outside of grace, all efforts of will are sinful, and hence no effort of the unregenerate sinner can secure grace.

5. Only those predestined to life receive grace, the rest being justly passed by in their sin.

Further, Jansen named and condemned the opponents of this true Augustinianism, especially Jesuit theologians. Jesuits accordingly tried to suppress the book, but this merely aroused all their many enemies to rush to its defence. Saint-Cyran of course encouraged the nuns of Port-Royal and his other disciples to take a positive stance towards Jansen's teaching; after all, he had been instilling an Augustinian spirituality into them for years.

Saint-Cyran was finally released from prison in February 1643 shortly after Richelieu's death (December 1642), by his successor Cardinal

Mazarin. (Louis XIII died soon after Richelieu, in May 1643; his son Louis XIV was only five years old, and political power lay with Mazarin.) On Saint-Cyran's release, he was thronged with acclamations by the nuns of Port-Royal and his many other supporters. The Jansenist martyr died, however, a few months later. His body was treated as a holy relic; people treasured napkins dipped in his blood. Among those who venerated SaintCyran was the illustrious Vincent de Paul, who had often visited and comforted him during his imprisonnment, and was now the first to sprinkle his body with holy water. (Vincent, however, was no Jansenist, and would oppose the movement. His regard for Saint-Cyran was purely personal. See section 3.4 above for more about Vincent.)

With the death of Saint-Cyran, leadership of the budding Jansenist movement passed to Antoine Arnauld (1612–94), youngest son of the Arnauld clan, nicknamed "the Great Arnauld" for his intellectual genius.

Antoine Arnauld was an ardent disciple of Saint-Cyran, converted under his influence, and virtually anointed by him as his successor. A gawky young man physically, Arnauld nonetheless had the most brilliantly glowing eyes that seemed to penetrate to the heart of any onlooker, and his literary skill as an advocate for any cause in which he believed was formidable. His output was astonishing; the first edition of his collected works filled 45 volumes.

Having been ordained to the priesthood in 1641, Arnauld wrote in 1643 (under Saint-Cyran's supervision, just before his death) his first major treatise, destined to become a Jansenist classic—On Frequent Communion.

Arnauld's treatise was provoked by the case of a Jesuit confessor allowing a fashionable lady of the French court to attend a mixed dance13 immediately after taking part in holy communion. Many were outraged, and

Arnauld both articulated their indignation and gave it a theological framework. He argued that over-familiarity with the eucharist degraded the sacrament itself and the person partaking; true penitents must approach the altar thoughtfully, not rush to it and from it. Arnauld also maintained, as Saint-Cyran had, the necessity of contrition (repentance flowing from love for God) to a fruitful participation in the sacrament; mere attrition

(repentance flowing from fear of hell) was not enough. He further criticized hasty absolutions and superficial penances.

On Frequent Communion was written in French rather than Latin, to reach a wider audience. It struck a chord with many devout French

Catholics, and numerous bishops and theologians endorsed it. Jesuits, however, condemned it fiercely; Arnauld was denounced from their pulpits as "a scorpion, a serpent, and a lunatic". This misfired—it just made people more eager to read the book. When Arnauld's Jesuit enemies proposed to send him to Rome to face papal interrogation, he was saved by the protests of his fellow theologians at the Sorbonne, and also the protests of Paris's parlement. Gallican sentiment did not like seeing French theologians dispatched to Rome for discipline. This background of Gallicanism would be a crucial factor in allowing Jansenism to survive and flourish in France.

7. The Five Propositions Unfortunately for Arnauld, the Jesuits had been straining every nerve in Rome to crush everything he held dear ever since the publication of Augustinus. As early as 1641, they had pressurized Pope Urban VIII into signing a bull, In Eminenti, which condemned Augustinus for reviving

Michael Baius' views; it also renewed the De Auxiliis prohibition on all discussion of these matters. Urban, a conciliatory man, managed to delay publication for two years, but in 1643 the bull was at length promulgated.

Arnauld's response, however, the following year was to publish an Apology for Jansen. The treatise was anonymous, but everyone knew Arnauld was the author. Like On Frequent Communion, it was written in popular French, not scholarly Latin, and the result was a more widespread diffusion of Jansenist ideas.

Anti-Jansenist forces in France were galvanized into frantic life. A famous preacher of the day, Father Véron, denounced the Jansenist publicly as "Calvinists". The Jesuits now began speaking in alarmist tones of a "Jansenist party" which threatened to seize control of the French Church.

(The Jansenists never called themselves Jansenists; they called themselves "disciples of Saint Augustine". The name "Jansenist" was invented by the Jesuits.) The Jesuit accusation was not really true; Jansenism was not an organized party. A witty cardinal once said, "A Jansenist is a Catholic who does not like Jesuits", which despite its sarcasm captures a genuine aspect of the situation. To the extent that Jansenism really existed as a distinctive entity, it was a network of relationships whose focus was the eminent and numerous Arnauld family, and whose visible symbol was Port-Royal, welded together by a vision of the Christian life as a supernatural product of grace which set the converted in opposition to the standards of a corrupt world. Those who had caught this vision could, however, sometimes seem like a self-conscious sect, especially in the way they often referred to themselves, not only as "disciples of Saint Augustine", but also as "Friends of the Truth".

Still, there can be no doubt that Jansenism, in the sense of a spiritual outlook rooted in the life and ministry of Saint-Cyran, underwent spectacular growth in the 1640s. Port-Royal in particular was reaching new heights of influence, especially in Paris. There was now a body of eminent male solitaries living on the grounds, giving basic education to considerable

numbers of children in their celebrated and highly successful "Little Schools". And Port-Royal had powerful patrons at court.

Jansenists responded to Jesuit accusations of heresy by demanding that the Sorbonne vindicate them. The matter was taken up by Nicolas Cornet

(1572–1663), doctor of the Faculty of Theology and devotee of the Jesuits.

He read the Augustinus and extracted a number of propositions which he thought summed up Jansenism. On 1st July 1649 he submitted these propositions to the Sorbonne. There were originally seven propositions, but it was five that were ultimately condemned and which are remembered today. They are:

1. It is impossible for the righteous, with the forces at their disposal, to obey some of God's commands, despite their will and effort, because they lack the grace that would make such obedience possible.

2. In the state of fallen nature, interior grace is never resisted.

3. In the state of fallen nature, in order to acquire merit or lose it, it is sufficient that human beings have freedom from compulsion, but not freedom from necessity.

4. The Semi-Pelagians acknowledged the need for prevenient grace for all particular acts, including the beginning of faith, but erred in holding that this grace might be either resisted or obeyed by the human will.

5. It is a Semi-Pelagian error to say that Christ died or shed His blood for all people in general.

At this stage, Arnauld and his fellow Jansenists became uneasy, and persuaded the parlement to prohibit the Sorbonne from examining the propositions. Clearly Arnauld feared a negative outcome, which could shipwreck the grand plan of the Jansenists—how could Augustinus be an instrument of renewal in the Church if its theology was condemned? The Sorbonne angrily referred the propositions to the Assembly of the Clergy, the ecclesiastical equivalent of parlement. Anti-Jansenists drafted a petition for all bishops to sign, asking the pope to judge the propositions.

Ominously, the great Vincent de Paul swung his influential weight behind this; he was anxious about the practical effects of Jansenism in driving folk away from holy communion (which had, in fact, been one consequence of Arnauld's On Frequent Communion—its emphasis on the necessity of

serious spiritual preparation had led to a very visible drop in the numbers attending mass). Eighty-five bishops signed the petition; eleven Jansenist bishops drew up a counter-petition. Pope Innocent X (1644–55), however, accepted the majority petition, and in 1651 appointed a commission to assess the propositions.

The commission sat for two years, and was plagued by pressure groups and political manoeuvring. But at length, on 31st May 1653, Pope Innocent condemned the Five Propositions (as they were now known) in the bull

Cum Occasione. All five were "heretical", and some were "blasphemous, ungodly, and an insult to divine mercy".

8. Law and fact Cum Occasione seemed like a catastrophe for the Jansenists. But their foes had reckoned without the resourceful subtlety of Arnauld. He wrong-footed them completely, and gave Jansenism much-needed breathing room, by employing a distinction that was to become famous or infamous: the distinction between law and fact. The pope, he admitted, had authority to pronounce on points of law in the Church (e.g. doctrine); but the pope had no special authority about matters of ordinary fact. He could, for example, declare that this or that doctrine was erroneous, but there was no God-given guarantee he would quote accurately from another man's treatise. In other words, papal authority covered theological doctrines, not the facts of history. Based on this law-fact distinction, Arnauld conceded that the Five

Propositions were erroneous, but denied that they were to be found in the pages of Augustinus.

With all the delicacy of a skilful surgeon's scalpel, Arnauld dissected the Five Propositions, and argued that Jansen's teaching in Augustinus was different from each of them, and therefore not affected by the condemnation of Cum Occasione. We may briefly examine how he dealt with the Second

Proposition to see how he constructed his defence. The Second Proposition, condemned as error, was: "In the state of fallen nature, interior grace is never resisted." This was indeed an error, Arnauld conceded. After all, faith, hope, and love were interior graces, but they could be resisted in the sense that every Christian sometimes acted against faith, hope, and love. Jansen's

Augustinus, however, nowhere taught that a Christian never resisted faith, hope, and love, for it was integral to the teaching of Augustinus that even the best Christian fell short of perfection. Therefore the pope was right to condemn the Second Proposition as an error (here was the matter of law), but wrong to say that this Proposition could be found in the pages of Augustinus (here was the matter of fact). Arnauld dealt in the same fashion with the other four Propositions. In every case he found a plausible nonAugustinian meaning in the Propositions, agreed that this was an error, and denied that it was taught in Augustinus. Jansen's treatise, therefore, had not been condemned.

There has been much discussion about Arnauld's honesty in putting forward the law-fact distinction. Did he really believe it? Or was it just a cunning tactical device to save himself and his friends from being convicted

as heretics? Perhaps there were elements of both. On the one hand, Arnauld did not invent the law-fact distinction (it had been around for some time), and it could be defended within a Roman Catholic framework as both plausible and useful in understanding the nature and extent of papal authority. It is also true that the Five Propositions will nowhere be found in Augustinus in the precise phraseology used by Innocent X in the Cum

Occasione bull, and that the Propositions are worded loosely enough to bear a non-Augustinian meaning. On the other hand, Arnauld occasionally came close to admitting that his real motive in suggesting the distinction was basically pragmatic: to create living space for Jansenism in the Church. At any rate, the Jansenists embraced the law-fact distinction from now onward as their typical response to Cum Occasione.

Anti-Jansenists seized on Cum Occasione and did their best to enforce it.

Before giving absolution, some priests would now demand that penitents give assurance that they accepted the bull. One priest, Father Picoté, refused absolution in 1655 to an important Jansenist noble, the duc de Liancourt, because he denied that the Five Propositions could be found in the pages of Augustinus. In de Liancourt's defence, Arnauld published two long and flaming letters, in which he denounced Picoté and audaciously reiterated the Jansenist doctrine of grace. This act of boldness or impudence, however, provoked the government into putting overwhelming pressure on the Sorbonne to condemn Arnauld, reject the law-fact distinction, and demand that Arnauld submit on pain of having his doctorate of theology removed.

Arnauld would not submit, and so the Sorbonne had no choice but to vote on his expulsion.

On the eve of the vote, the first of a series of Jansenist pamphlets appeared. They were in the form of anonymous letters, defending Jansenist theology and attacking the Jesuits in a biting theological satire unequalled in Christian literary history. The letters took France, especially Paris, by storm, and had people weeping tears of laughter at this merciless lampooning of the Jesuits. Overnight, it seemed, everyone sympathized with the Jansenists, and hated their Jesuit foes as malignant persecutors and enemies of Christian morality. Who could have written these masterpieces of polemic and wit—the Provincial Letters, as they are called? For two years no one knew, as the letters continued to pour from the press, eighteen in all (the first was dated January 23rd 1656, the last March 24th 1657).

Then in 1659 the secret was out: they had been written by a young Jansenist scientist named Blaise Pascal (1623–62).

9. Blaise Pascal and the Pensées Pascal was one of the greatest intellects of the 17th Century. The history of science knows him for his seminal contributions to geometry and mathematics (especially probability theory); he was also the first to demonstrate experimentally the truth of Torricelli's theory of atmospheric pressure, and the inventor of an early calculating machine. In his own lifetime Pascal achieved international recognition as a scientist. Our interest in him, however, is as a spiritual thinker.

Pascal's family had been won over to Jansenism in 1646. Pascal himself fell under the spell of Arnauld, but his sister Jacqueline was more deeply influenced, becoming a nun at Port-Royal in 1652. Pascal was rather in awe of Jacqueline's spirituality, and felt himself to be very worldly by contrast.

However, a near escape from death precipitated Pascal's "second conversion" in 1654. He was riding in a carriage drawn by four horses when it swerved off the road and plunged down a steep river bank. Pascal himself was left dangling on the wall. His nerves shattered, he lost the ability to sleep, and would lay awake at nights reading his Bible, fearing nightmares about the accident. On the night of November 23rd 1654, Pascal was overpowered by a sense of the presence of God. This experience (the "night of fire") lasted for two hours, and he recorded it in a document (the "Memorial") which thereafter he always carried about with him.14

Pascal's experience brought him into a new harmony with the Jansenist circles of Port-Royal and the Arnauld family. When the Sorbonne threatened to expel the Great Arnauld, Pascal was galvanized into writing in his defence—hence the series of Provincial Letters that so effectively portrayed Jansenists as victims of Jesuit spite. The earlier letters defended the Jansenist understanding of grace; the later letters mounted a far-reaching and devastating critique of the Jesuits as a malevolent force for evil that threatened to eat away the moral heart of Church and society. The Jesuits as an organisation never really recovered from the damage Pascal inflicted on them in the eyes of French public opinion; in that sense, the Provincial

Letters paved the way for the ultimate suppression of the Jesuit order in France in 1764.

In particular, Pascal mocked and attacked the then popular system of Jesuit ethical thinking, "Laxism". This system tried to solve difficult moral cases through a calculus of probabilities about what were right and wrong

actions, measured by the number of recognized authorities (theologians, moralists) who recommended one or other option. Some Jesuits were employing the system to permit actions regarded by many as outrageous, by the expedient of finding perhaps just one authority who spoke in favour of the action (although everyone else was against it), and on that slender basis granting the action a "probable" status among permissible choices. One example Pascal gave was killing someone for slapping your face, or even killing him to stop him delivering the slap. Some few authorities had justified this (Jesuit authorities, as Pascal pointed out), and therefore it was permissible, said Laxist Jesuits, despite the vast weight of Christian moral opinion against it. Pascal's ruthless exposure of Laxism led to its downfall; in 1665 and 1666, Pope Alexander VII condemned the system, and in 1679

Pope Innocent XI condemned sixty-five propositions extracted from Laxist writings.

Pascal's other great literary contribution was his Pensées (thoughts). He intended this to be an apologetic treatise commending Christianity, especially against the budding forces of atheism and materialism that were beginning to make themselves felt in connection with the new scientific and philosophical thought of the 17th century. Pascal died before he could finish the treatise, but the fragments of his writing were gathered together by his friends and published posthumously in 1670. The Pensées has, since then, occupied the front rank in works of Christian apologetics.

We can sketch the main themes of the Pensées thus. Human nature is corrupt (Pascal's Augustinianism was much in evidence here); humanity finds itself suspended between potential greatness because of our capacity for understanding the universe, and actual weakness and futility, notably in our bondage to passions and inability to experience true happiness. Pascal emphasized the insufficiency of reason to grasp spiritual and eternal truth.

He proposed a threefold view of knowledge: i. the senses, which put us in touch with material realities; ii. reason, which he defined as logical reflection on the knowledge supplied by the senses; iii. the heart, which Pascal took to be different from and deeper than reason—a power of grasping by intuition those first principles that form the basis of all true knowledge. Not reason but the heart was the seat of aesthetic experience (the perception of beauty) and spiritual life

(the perception of God). Thought 110 in the Pensées helps us to understand Pascal's meaning:

It is not through reason alone that we know the truth, but through the heart also. It is through the heart that we know first principles. Reason, which has no part to play here, tries in vain to disprove these principles. Sceptics are always trying to do this, but their efforts are wasted. We know we are not dreaming; we may be unable to prove this rationally, but our inability proves only how weak reason is. It does not prove (as sceptics claim) that all our knowledge is uncertain. The knowledge of first principles—space, time, motion, number—is as assured as anything derived from reason. In fact, reason has to depend on these first principles, and base all its arguments on them—and these principles come from the heart and from intuition. The heart knows intuitively that there are three dimensions of space and an infinite series of numbers; reason then demonstrates that there exist no two square numbers of which one is twice the other.

Principles are sensed; propositions are proved. Both have certainty, although by different means.

It is futile and ridiculous for reason to demand that the heart offer proof of first principles before reason will consent to accept them—just as ridiculous as if the heart were to demand an intuitive sense of all the propositions proved by reason, before the heart would consent to accept them.

Given these views, Pascal was sceptical about the role of reason in knowing God, especially philosophical arguments for God's existence. These arguments are so complicated, he complained, that they can only convince us while we are actually thinking them through; but an hour later, we start wondering whether we made a mistake! Part of Pascal's apologetic, therefore, was to put reason in its place, and to elevate the heart as the true organ of spiritual knowledge. "It is the heart, not the reason, that perceives

God. This is faith: to perceive God by the heart, not by the reason" (thought 424). Not that Pascal rejected reason entirely, but he gave it a different area to work in—namely, the historical evidence of Christianity, especially the prophecies of the Old Testament and the miracles of Christ, where God had manifested Himself in the world of the senses.

Ultimately Pascal's apologetic was aimed at leading the seeker to find God, not simply as Creator, but as Saviour, a knowledge accessible only in Jesus Christ. "Knowing God without knowing our own poverty produces pride. Knowing our poverty without knowing God produces despair.

Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the true balance, because in Him we know both God and our own poverty" (thought 192). Perhaps Pascal's whole method is best summed up in thought 12:

People despise Christianity. They hate it, fearing that it may be true. The remedy is first, to demonstrate that Christianity is not contrary to reason, but is entitled to reverence and respect.

Next, make it attractive: make good people wish that it were true. And then show them it is true!

Entitled to reverence, because it has a real understanding of human nature. Attractive, because it promises real blessing.

From 1659 Pascal, who had never enjoyed good health, was increasingly sick from an unknown cause. His long, drawn-out death was made worse by incompetent medical procedures. Before he died in 1662, aged 39, he made an unconditional submission to Rome, which has often been interpreted as Pascal's final repudiation of Jansenism. Its true intent may have been to suspend his judgment on controversies that now seemed remote and redundant as he faced death and eternity, coupled with a yearning to die in full communion with the Church he had always believed was Christ's true body. His literary legacy, however, was certainly to work strongly and consistently in Jansenism's favour.

10. The Formulary of Alexander VII From this excursion into Pascal's thought, let us now return to the wider story of Jansenism. Despite the sensation created by the Provincial Letters, authority in Church and state continued to frown on the Jansenists. Soon after the first of the Letters, the Sorbonne voted to expel Arnauld and strip him of his doctorate (at the close of January 1656). Arnauld's supporters at the Sorbonne walked out in protest at the vote; Arnauld himself went into hiding for the next thirteen years. In the wake of Arnauld's condemnation, the government moved to disperse the male solitaries of Port-Royal and close down the Little Schools. They would have taken further repressive action, but were temporarily discouraged by the popular success of Pascal's

Letters, and by the celebrity of an alleged miracle at Port-Royal—the healing of a ten year old girl (Pascal's niece) by a thorn from Christ's crown.

In October 1656, Pope Alexander VII issued the bull Ad Sacram, ratifying an anti-Jansenist "Formulary" which had been submitted to him by the French Assembly of the Clergy. The Formulary stated: "With heart and mouth I condemn the doctrine in the Five Propositions of Cornelius Jansen contained in his book Augustinus." The wording skilfully disposed of Arnauld's law-fact distinction. It created a crisis of conscience for Jansenists: should they subscribe to the Formulary? Some counselled submission, others that one could subscribe to the Formulary with mental reservations, others that one should openly defy it. Among the defiers were

Pascal, his sister Jacqueline, and Mother Angélique. Pascal commented, "there is no difference between condemning Jansen's teaching on the Five

Propositions and condemning effectual grace, Saint Augustine, and Saint Paul." Within five months, Pascal had to bring an end to his Provincial

Letters—it had now become too dangerous to carry on such public opposition to the political and religious establishment. In September 1657, the Inquisition placed the Provincial Letters on the Index of Forbidden

Books.

The next few years saw only half-hearted attempts by Cardinal Mazarin's government to impose the Formulary on clergy and monastics. Gallican sentiment disliked having to compel French citizens to submit to a papal decree, and the popular impact of Pascal's Letters and the miracle of healing at Port-Royal both acted as a deterrent to persecution of Jansenists.

After the death of Cardinal Mazarin in March 1661, however, the young French King Louis XIV (aged twenty-two) took the reins of power into his own hands; and Louis was a decided opponent of Jansenism. Almost immediately, in April 1661 he forcibly removed from Port-Royal all its

"novices" (nuns in training) and all its boarders (many of whom were not intending a monastic life, but lodged at Port-Royal to benefit from its spirituality). Mother Angélique is said to have died of a broken heart in August; Jacqueline Pascal, also grief-stricken, died shortly thereafter. The new head of the convent was Mother Angélique de Saint-Jean (1624–84), the niece of Mother Angélique Arnauld. The new Angélique became the mainspring of hard-line Jansenist defiance, emboldening the other nuns to refuse to sign the Formulary unless they could express their reservation on the question of fact (whether the Five Propositions were really in Augustinus).

A quarrel between Louis XIV and Pope Alexander VII gave the Jansenists a respite for the next few years. In 1664, however, king and pope were reconciled, and a new determined effort was made to impose the Formulary on all French clergy and monastics. The Archbishop of Paris,

Hardouin de Péréfixe, exasperated by the Jansenist tenacity of the PortRoyal nuns ("as pure as angels and as proud as demons", he called them), resorted to force. Armed officers arrested twelve of the nuns, including

Mother Angélique, and dispersed them to other convents. The dispersed maintained their Jansenism in their new convents and wrote accounts of their sufferings. A new pliable Mother Superior, Mother Eugénie, was appointed to Port-Royal from the religious order of Francis de Sales, the Visitandines, along with other nuns from the same order to assist her. But they were unable to secure submission from the remaining Jansenist nuns.

At length these impenitent Augustinians were taken back to the old rural site of Port-Royal, cut off from all contact with the outside world, and barred from holy communion. Port-Royal itself, the visible soul of Jansenist piety, seemed to have been extinguished.

Another problem Louis XIV had to deal with was the small minority of Jansenist bishops. In the spring of 1664, he ordered parlement to register a decree that all parish priests must sign the Formulary or else be deprived of their livings. Four bishops—Pavillon of Alet, Caulet of Pamiers, de

Buzenval of Beauvais, and Henri Arnauld of Angers—protested, arguing that the king, as a secular ruler, had no right to legislate for the Church. But

Louis appealed to Pope Alexander VII, who issued the bull Regiminis Apostolici, making it obligatory for the first time to sign the Formulary on direct papal authority. The Jansenist community was shaken to the core: should they submit or defy? The four Jansenist bishops told their flocks to submit to the Formulary in regard to law (the heretical nature of the Five

Propositions), but maintain a "respectful silence" in regard to fact (whether the Five Propositions were truly in Augustinus). This quibbling manoeuvre prompted pope and king to set up a special commission to pass judgment on the refractory bishops. Matters had clearly reached boiling point in the French Church; but everything was suddenly defused by the death of Pope

Alexander VII in 1667.

11. The Clementine Peace The new pope, Clement IX (1667–9), was a conciliatory man, and the Gallicans now rallied to the Jansenists (they did not like direct papal intervention in French affairs). Hence, after secret negotiations, Clement announced in 1669 a sort of amnesty for Jansenists—the "Clementine peace", as it became known. Clement died at the end of 1669, but his

"peace" endured for the next ten years. The contentious Formulary was now understood to mean, not that the Five Propositions were necessarily found in the pages of Augustinus, but that they were to be regarded as heretical in whatever book they in fact appeared. On these terms, even Arnauld and the Port-Royal nuns finally submitted. Arnauld came out of his 13 year concealment; the Sorbonne restored his doctorate, and he was received at court by Loius XIV and hailed by the crowds as a hero. "Jansenism is dead!" was suddenly the prevailing view—in other words, no longer a live issue. The French Catholic Church could now bury the squalid quarrel, and get on with its real business: preaching and teaching, fostering the holy life, winning over the Protestants.

Jansenism, however, was far from dead. It was merely no longer a convulsive agent in the body of French Catholicism. The Clementine peace of 1669–79 proved a golden decade for the Jansenists, initiating their period of greatest growth. Port-Royal opened for business again and became hugely fashionable, both with upper and lower classes of society. Pilgrims flocked there, girls were educated there, the dying wanted to be buried there.

At the same time, another brilliant new Jansenist leader emerged onto the centre stage, Pierre Nicole (1625–95). He was the brother of a Port-Royal nun and a Sorbonne divinity graduate. Nicole initially made his mark collaborating with Pascal on the Provincial Letters (including a Latin translation for the international market), but then went independent, producing a steady stream of writings on behalf of Jansenism (or "the Truth", as he called it) for the rest of his life. His writing style had a captivating beauty, and he mitigated the severity of Jansenist morality by a strong dose of common sense. Nicole finally had a reputation equal to that of the Great Arnauld. Indeed the two great Jansenist leaders worked together on a lengthy and significant work against Calvinism, The Perpetuity of the Catholic Faith regarding the Eucharist (1669–74). Despite

his prolific Jansenist output, Nicole at the very end of his life underwent a change of mind; in a posthumously published work, Treatise on Universal

Grace (1715), he signalled the abandonment of his exclusive allegiance to the Augustinian tenets of Jansenism, essentially by trying to construct a universal viewpoint in which the different views of grace (Jansenist,

Thomist, Molinist) could all be reconciled.

The Clementine peace saw a great new wave of Jansenist publications.

The collected works of Saint-Cyran, Pascal's Pensées, Nicole's writings, and a translation of the Bible into beautiful French by Isaac le Maistre de

Sacy (1613–84, nephew of Arnauld and spiritual director of Port-Royal) all rolled off the press. So did one of the seminal works of scholarly church history, the Guide to the Church History of the First Six Centuries by Louis

Tillemont (1637–98), a treatise which to this day has not been surpassed for its blend of learning and comprehensiveness. The Jansenist educational system, formed in the Little Schools of Port-Royal, also now spread far and wide throughout France, commended by its intrinsic merits, especially its deliberate cultivation of the French language as a subject in its own right (a novelty at that time). At the heart of Jansenist education lay the influential treatise Logic, or the Art of Thinking (1662) by Arnauld and Nicole: an easy-to-read textbook on mental training which achieved huge popularity, and was translated into many other languages.

The Jansenist educational scheme operated in many French schools throughout the 18th Century. The most famous pupil thus educated was

Jean Racine (1639–99), one of France's greatest playwrights. His strict Jansenist upbringing did not save Racine from a rather disreputable life, but at the end he repented of his worldliness and embraced again the Jansenist piety of his youth. In this last phase, he wrote a favourable history of PortRoyal, while his 1689 play Esther (an allegory on the persecution of Jansenists) depicted Mordechai in terms of Arnauld, and Esther's maidens as Port-Royal nuns.

The Clementine peace was the period when Jansenism really began to get a grip on the wider French Catholic mind and heart. It was not so much the theology as the spirituality of the Jansenists that flowed out into the lives of parish priests and people, based on an ardent admiration for the monastics of Port-Royal—"angels on earth". The Jansenist spirit also penetrated other

French religious orders, notably the Benedictines and Visitandines. The

crucifix favoured by the Jansenists (Christ with His arms stretched taut above His head) now became universally popular.

12. Renewed controversy: Quesnel and the Reflections The Clementine Peace, however, was not to last longer than a decade. Louis

XIV began to become hostile again to Jansenists; he feared they were collaborating with the new Pope Innocent XI (1676–89) in the ongoing

Gallican controversy. Two Jansenist bishops (Pavillon and Caulet) were outspoken foes of Gallicanism, rejecting the right of the French monarchy to determine church affairs. Innocent himself was nicknamed "the Jansenist pope" for his leniency to the Jansenists. This unholy coalescence of Jansenists and the papacy against Louis' ambitions for a quasi-independent

French Church reawakened the king's suspicion and wrath.

The turning point came in 1679, when Port-Royal's greatest advocate in the French court died—the Duchesse de Longueville (1619–79). She had been one of the few people Louis allowed to speak to him candidly. Within weeks of her death, the new Archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Champvallon, took action against Port-Royal. He ordered all young boarders, priests, and candidates for monastic life to leave. Port-Royal was now forbidden to accept novices, and the number of nuns was restricted to a maximum of fifty. Essentially Port-Royal had been sentenced to extinction. A month later

Arnauld and Nicole fled to the safety of Belgium. Nicole returned to France in 1680, but Arnauld never—he continued to champion the Jansenist cause in exile until his death in 1694.

The third of Jansenism's great spiritual leaders was now beginning to emerge in succession to Saint-Cyran and the Great Arnauld: the Paris-born

Oratorian priest Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719). Quesnel was the spiritual director of the students of Saint-Magloire, the Paris Oratory, where he taught an Augustinian theology and tried to encourage a subversive attitude to the anti-Jansenist Formulary of 1656. Jansenism had many sympathizers at Saint-Magloire; it had even given secret shelter to Arnauld when he was under threat from the authorities.

Quesnel's own increasingly grand reputation, and ultimate position of spiritual leadership among Jansenists, rested on a book he first published in 1668 entitled Words of the Word Incarnate. In 1671 he changed the title to Moral Reflections on the New Testament, commonly known as Quesnel's

Reflections. This was an abridgment of the New Testament festooned with edifying comments; it stressed the unrivalled benefit of a careful reading and study of Scripture in the cultivation of a holy life. Many of its religious

ideas were akin to Pascal's Pensées; contemporaries deemed it an excellent work, and it found its way outside the boundaries of the Roman Catholic

Church into the library of many a Protestant preacher. The problem was that Quesnel kept revising the Reflections and reissuing it in new editions—and each new edition became more definitely Jansenist in outlook. As the teachings of the Reflections were criticized, the book also increasingly propounded the Gallican, conciliarist theories of Richer (see chapter 7, section 1).

None of this was so evident in the Reflections at this early stage. But Quesnel's own mind was clearly inclined to Jansenism, as shown in his dislike of the Formulary; and the fact was unexpectedly revealed to the world when someone published his private notes on the New Testament without his approval. They were undoubtedly Jansenist. When the General of the Oratory, Father Abel de Sainte-Marthe (1621–97), was forced to stand down 1681 because of his scandalous friendship with Arnauld,

Quesnel fell from favour too. He was relocated from Paris to Orleans. Three years later, in 1684, his ecclesiastical superiors enforced an anti-Jansenist formula; Quesnel refused to sign and fled to Brussels in Belgium, where he lived with Arnauld. By 1694, the Reflections had been denounced both by the Sorbonne and the Inquisition.

In the period 1682–93, there was an eleven year quarrel between Louis and the papacy, triggered by Gallican articles drafted by the lawyers of parlement (see chapter 7, section 1.4). In this rupture, Jansenists supported the pope. A great Jansenist network of secret correspondence spread across

France; in Rome, a body of Jansenist partisans established a powerful presence. Louis' wrangle with Rome, however, ended in 1693 with a concordat which struck a balance between Gallicanism and the claims of the papacy over the French Church. Louis rewarded bishops who had been loyal to him during the rupture with new levels of authority over the lower clergy, and he curtailed the capacity of parlement to intervene in the jurisdiction of bishops. Paradoxically, this had the ultimate effect of catapulting parlement itself into the role of Jansenist stronghold against episcopal persecution, on the back of the resentment of the legal magistrates at Louis' curbing of their traditional power over the bishops.

In 1695 there occurred an event of crucial significance for the future of Jansenism: the appointment of the Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, LouisAntoine de Noailles (1651–1729), as Archbishop of Paris—not a

committed Jansenist, but a fervent anti-Jesuit. His ecclesiastical stature increased further in 1700 when Pope Innocent XII made him a cardinal. Son of a duke, Noailles was a man of blameless life, stern and rigorous in personal morals but kind-hearted to others, especially the poor. He had, however, mediocre practical judgment which was often to get him in hot water. He also unfortunately boasted a large red nose which made him look rather ridiculous. Noailles' hostility to the Jesuits, coupled with his staunch

Gallicanism, soon entangled him in a strange alliance with the Jansenists in the final phase of the movement in France.

The whole controversy flared up again with a vengeance in 1702. It was rekindled by a Jansenist pamphlet, A Case of Conscience, which maintained

(in the aftermath of a debate in the Sorbonne) that a priest could absolve a penitent despite the penitent's maintaining a respectful silence on the "fact" of whether the notorious Five Propositions were in the Augustinus. The pamphlet reopened all the old wounds over the anti-Jansenist Formulary of 1656, and passions erupted.

13. The destruction of Port-Royal In 1700, Louis XIV's grandson Philip of Anjou had inherited the Spanish throne as King Philip V, which gave him sovereignty over the Spanish

Netherlands (modern Belgium). Louis now convinced Philip to take severe repressive measures against the Belgian Jansenists. In 1703, the "Friends of the Truth" in that previously safe haven were arrested en masse, including

Quesnel himself (although he managed a dramatic escape within three months to the safety of Amsterdam in the Calvinist Dutch Republic). As a result of the clamp-down, the Spanish authorities got their hands on a multitude of letters and other documents which exposed the huge Jansenist network of correspondence, including Jansenist sympathizers in Rome, and evidence that Jansenist books and pamphlets were published, not at random, but according to a coordinated plan. These documents were sent to Louis; the French king was aghast at what seemed irrefutable proof that Jansenism was a mighty living conspiracy, its tentacles extending both within and beyond France.

Louis wasted no time in arresting Quesnel's foremost French correspondents. Pope Clement XI (1700–1721) joined in the anti-Jansenist reaction, publishing the bull Vineam Domini in 1705, which declared that it was insufficient to subscribe the anti-Jansenist Formulary of 1656 without positively confessing Jansenism to be a heresy. This was the final annihilation of Arnauld's law-fact distinction. Surprisingly, one of the prime movers behind Vineam Domini was Archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai, often admired by Protestants as a truly spiritual man (see Chapter 7, section 2.3).

Having been utterly defeated by Bishop Bossuet of Meaux in the Quietist controversy, this anti-Jansenist outburst was Fénelon's revenge, for Bossuet had always been ambivalent about Jansenism, and in recent times had even supported Quesnel's Reflections. Fénelon's diocese of Cambrai was swarming with Jansenists, and he detested their austere piety—"these socalled Augustinians".

In 1706, the nuns of Port-Royal were asked to subscribe to the Vineam Domini bull. They reluctantly signed, but added the phrase "without prejudice to the Clementine peace". Their obstinacy on this point was punished by denying them the sacraments, but not even this could break their spirit. The patience of Louis XIV finally snapped with these

stubbornly Jansenist nuns. He now asked Pope Clement XI to issue a bull suppressing Port-Royal. Clement hesitated long, but at last consented.

In October 1709, Louis' chief of police, the Marquis d'Argenson, entered Port-Royal with his men, and read out a royal decree, based on Clement's bull. The twenty-two surviving nuns were forcibly dispersed, each of them escorted by troops as if they were deadly threats to public well-being. Then in 1711, Port-Royal itself was destroyed—the convent, the houses, the church, even the cemetery, all pulverized to rubble. The corpses of around three thousand devotees of Port-Royal were disinterred from their graves in the cemetery; some rich families rescued the bodies of relatives and relocated them, but the bodies of the poor were simply thrown into a common pit. In this ignominious fashion ended the life and history of PortRoyal, the visible heart of Jansenist spirituality, once made illustrious by Mother Angélique, Saint-Cyran, the Great Arnauld, and Blaise Pascal.

Port-Royal was gone, but Jansenism as a movement was still alive in France. There were a number of Jansenist convents and bishops, and countless Jansenist sympathizers among the lower clergy. Further, there had by now developed a total convergence between Jansenism and Gallicanism.

Gallicans who regarded the 1693 concordat between Louis and Rome as a betrayal of the French Church now aligned themselves with the Jansenists as the victims of the new Louis-Rome axis. Hence many Gallican politicians and lawyers were enlisted on the Jansenist side.

14. The Unigenitus crisis A new round of conflict was sparked off by Quesnel. The Inquisition had promulgated a condemnation of the Reflections in 1707 after fourteen years of hesitant boggling. The implementation of this condemnation in France was also entrusted to the Inquisition, and on that ground was opposed by Gallican ministers in Louis' cabinet. This inspired Quesnel to issue yet another edition of the Reflections, much enlarged, to which he attached a commendatory preface of the celebrated Bossuet, France's greatest preacher, which he had written in private some years previously. (Bossuet had died in 1704.) As we have already noted, Bossuet was ambivalent about Jansenism. He disliked their insubordination and distinction of law and fact, but admired their moral integrity and opposition to Laxism.

The new edition of the Reflections, with Bossuet's preface, provoked a fierce reaction against Jansenists in France. An enraged Louis had a "directive" drawn up endorsing the Roman condemnation of the book.

Archbishop Fénelon, still crusading against Jansenism, was again highly active in this policy, as were the Jesuits. Any persons who had approved the Reflections were described in the royal directive as "abettors of heresy".

Based on this, Fénelon then got two bishops under his jurisdiction to publish pastoral letters condemning the Reflections. The letters were posted up on the palace walls of Archbishop Noailles of Paris, a well-known foe of the Jesuits and admirer of the Reflections who had recommended Quesnel's book to his clergy. Noailles retaliated with a scathing attack on the entire

Jesuit order, accusing them of being behind the whole business, and deprived all Jesuit priests in his diocese of the right to preach or hear confession.

King Louis and the anti-Jansenist faction now asked the pope to issue another formal condemnation of the Reflections, with the promise that Louis would force all French bishops to submit. In consequence, on 8th

September 1713, Clement XI issued one of the most famous bulls in Roman Catholic history, the bull Unigenitus. It was a comprehensive condemnation of the Reflections in particular and Jansenism in general. The ill-fated

Quesnel was described as "a ravening wolf, a false prophet, a teacher of lies, a knave, a hypocrite, and a poisoner of souls". Unigenitus condemned one hundred and one theological propositions, a few of them not Jansenist but Gallican. The Catholic faithful were prohibited not only from speaking

but even from thinking about the propositions! Embarrassingly, some of the condemned propositions turned out to be direct quotations from the writings of Augustine, prompting some to comment that the Church had now officially condemned its greatest patristic saint as a heretic.

Archbishop Fénelon made himself the champion of Unigenitus in France.

Taking charge of the Assembly of Clergy, he skilfully manoeuvred it into supporting the new anti-Jansenist campaign. Subsequently one hundred and seventeen French bishops submitted unequivocally to Unigenitus. Fifteen, however, only submitted with qualifications, while eight openly refused. An extraordinary theological uproar gripped the nation. In 1714 alone, some two hundred books and pamphlets were published about how French

Catholics should respond to Unigenitus. Those bishops who objected to the bull received the complete support of the Gallican party, and appealed over the pope's head to a general council of the Church. The Jansenist-leavened parlement saw the bull's condemnation of Gallicanism as intolerable, and bitterly resisted it; they declared that they would not register it legally, until or unless the bishops of France collectively accepted it. Meanwhile, disputes about Unigenitus unleashed an anarchy of verbal civil war in the Sorbonne.

But Louis was determined to force Unigenitus on Church and nation, and he menacingly overawed parlement by his personal presence into registering the bull (although with a qualifying clause preserving Gallican liberties). The Sorbonne was also cowed into submitting to the implacable king.

Louis' victory was not, however, complete. Archbishop Noailles of Paris stunned him by a devious move, issuing a pastoral letter in which he forbade all priests in his diocese to recognize Unigenitus, on pain of suspension, yet also condemned the Reflections! To compound matters, defences of Quesnel continued to be printed, and active sympathy for him among the lower clergy was substantial. Henri François d'Aguesseau

(1668–1751), Louis' procurator general, added to his king's misery by declaring that Unigenitus did not have the force of law in France, because parlement had registered it under duress:

No papal constitution in matters of doctrine may be invested with the king's authority, without a legitimate and sufficient acceptance by the Gallican Church; to do otherwise would be to recognize the pope as the infallible and sole judge of faith, against the fundamental maxims of our liberties.

Louis was now insane with rage, and his wrath spent itself on the hapless Noailles, who was banned from the Assembly of the Clergy, and prohibited from leaving France to argue his case in Rome.

Louis now tried to get parlement to register a decision that parlement itself adhered to Unigenitus, and that all bishops in France must sign a declaration submitting to the bull. This time there was stubborn opposition to the king's measures which he could not overcome. The police arrested some two thousand suspected Jansenists, and took in about ten thousand more for questioning. In the summer of 1715, Pope Clement finally surrendered to remorseless pressure from Louis, and agreed to summon a national French council for the purpose of deposing the still recalcitrant

Noailles, and enforcing Unigenitus once and for all on the French clergy.

15. The Regency: Jansenism breathes again At the height of the crisis, in September 1715 Louis died. His heir was his great-grandson, Louis XV (born 1710, reigned 1715–74), a mere baby, and so a Regency took power under the powerful noble Philippe d'Orléans

(1674–1723), nephew of the late king. To the joy of the Jansenists, Philippe overturned all the anti-Jansenist measures of the previous reign. All

Jansenist prisoners were set free; Father Le Tellier, the old king's Jesuit confessor, was dismissed from court, and bishops throughout France forbade Jesuits to preach in their dioceses. Noailles was restored to high favour. It was a remarkable turnabout.

Why this impressive swell of support for Jansenism under the new Regent? Among the secular clergy (those not belonging to a religious order), it has been suggested that Jansenist sympathy arose because a new generation had entered the priesthood. Proper pastoral seminary training (as mandated by Council of Trent) became effective in France only in the second half of the 17th Century. Between 1642 and 1698, no fewer than one hundred and four seminaries were established. Hence the secular clergy who faced Unigenitus were different from their predecessors. Their seminary training had instilled two principles into them: (i) the primary duty of pastoral care—and in that regard, Quesnel's Reflections was one of most helpful books around; (ii) the special role of parish priests in the life of church—a conviction that made them identify with the Gallican views condemned in Unigenitus. The Jansenism of this new generation of priests was driven less by theology, more by practical pastoral concerns. They saw in Jansenism a devout spirituality and an earnest morality that seemed the crying need of the hour, and the very thing priests should be trying to cultivate among their parishioners.

The regular clergy (those belonging to a religious order) were more theologically motivated in their Jansenism. Those orders that prized humanist scholarship, like the Benedictines, sympathized with the Jansenist appeal to the Bible and Augustine—it seemed part of the "ad fontes" (back to the sources) quest of all humanism. The Dominicans for their part, dedicated to Thomist theology, were increasingly appalled by Jesuit

Pelagianism, and so drew closer to Jansenists, especially since they thought they saw in the Jansenists a drawing closer to Aquinas.

Finally there was also by now a widespread antipathy to the Jesuits among the lower clergy. This produced a reactive sympathy for Jansenists as the victims of Jesuit persecution.

Attitudes to Unigenitus changed overnight under the new Regency government. The Sorbonne declared it had submitted to Unigenitus only under duress. Twenty-five more bishops retracted their apparently full submission, stating that it had been conditional. By the end of 1716, parlement had withdrawn its submission. Dislike of Unigenitus, allied with strong Gallican feeling, was pushing significant sections of the French

Catholic Church towards openly contemplating some sort of formal break with the papacy. A key work published in 1716 which expressed much of this mood was Of the Overthrow of the Liberties of the Gallican Church in the Affair of the Constitution "Unigenitus", by Nicolas Le Gross (1675–

1751). Gross's treatise exalted the ordinary parish priest as essentially equal with the bishop in the government of the Church.

Four Jansenist bishops now appealed against Unigenitus to a general council of the whole Church (they were nicknamed the "appellants"). They were supported by a huge majority in Sorbonne and by twelve other bishops, including Archbishop Noailles. Pope Clement XI, fed up with Paris's troublesome prelate, wanted to strip him of his rank of cardinal, but the Regent resisted this move. In 1718, Clement condemned the four appellants in the bull Pastoralis Officii and excommunicated them. The bull required all the faithful to submit to Unigenitus or be likewise excommunicated. Noailles, however, appealed against the new bull. Ten thousand copies of his appeal were sold. This was the zenith of Jansenism's numerical strength: some ten per cent of all the French clergy, and seventyfive per cent of the parish clergy of Paris, declared themselves on Noailles' side.

But the Regent now drew back from the abyss. Philippe d'Orléans was a worldly-minded aristocrat who had no deep religious convictions and no stomach for the ultimate step of schism, with all the disorder it would inevitably bring. Pope Clement, too, had seen the wisdom of a more conciliatory approach. He therefore empowered Philippe's personal secretary Dubois to effect a compromise. On Dubois' advice, the Regent now browbeat the Jansenist intransigents by having Jansenist writings burned in public. Then he won over the bothersome Noailles to head up an episcopal committee, whose remit was to draft a vaguely worded

acceptance of Unigenitus that everyone could subscribe without violating their conscience. Noailles' committee produced the goods in 1720: a statement known as "the Accommodement", graced by Noailles' own signature.

16. The winter of Jansenism The year of the Accommodement, 1720, can be taken as a convenient marker for Jansenism's fourth and final phase. The distinguished French

Catholic historian, Daniel-Rops, compared the four phases of Jansenism to the four seasons: the springtime of Saint-Cyran, the high summer of Arnauld, the autumn of Quesnel, and now the winter, which lacked any dominating figure of spiritual stature. Quesnel had died in Amsterdam in December 1719, still refusing to accept Unigenitus, and appealing to a future general council of the Church to justify him. With his death came the onset of Jansenism's winter.

The Accommodement, despite bringing official peace, left the Jansenist movement still present and capable of causing major problems within French Catholicism. In December 1720, the four Jansenist bishops—the appellants—repeated their appeal over Pope Clement's head to a general council. Many parish priests subscribed the appeal. Clement died the following year, and his successor, Innocent XIII (1721–4), entered into diplomatic discussions with the Jansenists which can only be described as confused, if not anarchic. The next pope, Benedict XIII (1724–30), took a much harder line. He declared Unigenitus to be an article of faith for all loyal sons of the Church. This, however, created the backdrop for a new furore: in 1726, Bishop Jean Soanen of Sénez (1647–1740) published a pastoral letter withdrawing his submission to the Accommodement, condemning Unigenitus, extolling the appellant bishops as "sole defenders of the truth", advocating that the faithful read Quesnel, and virtually calling for schism along Gallican lines.

An incensed government ordered Soanen's archbishop, de Tencin of Embrun, to gather a provincial council to try Soanen. But thirty-one bishops declared their support for Soanen, and he managed to drag out the proceedings by endless appeals and legal quibbles. At length, however, in 1727, the council suspended him. Soanen was banished to the monastery of Chaise-Dieu, where he died in 1740, still defiant. For those last thirteen years he was a living Jansenist martyr. Why, we may ask, was Soanen was singled out for such persecution, while other Jansenist bishops were left undisciplined? Basically it was simply because Soanen was not of noble rank; he had no connections among the great families of France to protect

his interests—extremely unusual for a French bishop at that time. His martyrdom was as much a social class phenomenon as a theological one.

The Soanen case ignited the Jansenist flames again. Across the country, Jansenists acclaimed the bishop as a martyr for truth. During this fresh upsurge, a new Jansenist newspaper, the Ecclesiastical News, was founded, first appearing in February 1728. Printed and distributed secretly, it was read far outside Jansenist circles, and continued publication till 1803. Its achievement in defying the most efficient police force in Christian Europe

(the French authorities could never trace its writers or printers) gave the newspaper a high celebrity and a devoted readership. With journalistic invective, it kept up a steady stream of criticism aimed at clerical corruptions, the Jesuits, and anything else that offended Jansenist sensitivities.

Archbishop Noailles would have assumed leadership of this new manifestation of Jansenist feeling, but death cut him off in 1729. Under intense pressure from Cardinal André Hercule de Fleury (1653–1743), the new ruler of France during Louis XV's minority (Philippe d'Orléans had died in 1723), Noailles died professing complete submission to Rome and Unigenitus, and condemning Quesnel and the Reflections. The people of Paris were unimpressed, and sang mocking songs about the fickle archbishop. But Noailles had the last laugh. He had prepared a secret document recanting his submission, and it was published after his death!

The new Archbishop of Paris, de Vintimille, was no Jansenist. France's capital city had now lost the thirty-four years of episcopal protection for Jansenism it had enjoyed under Noailles. De Vintimille's instalment initiated a new fierce crack-down: the Sorbonne was purged of Jansenist sympathizers; suspect Parisian clergy were suspended; suspect seminaries were shut down, or put under new anti-Jansenist leadership. In 1730,

Cardinal Fleury issued a declaration that Unigenitus was both a binding judgment of the Catholic Church and a law of the French state. From now on, all clergy who did not submit to Unigenitus in the plainest terms would be deprived. Appeals to parlement were prohibited. This declaration was registered by parlement, but only under extreme duress, involving the intimidating personal presence in parlement of the young King Louis XV (now twenty years old). Even then some Jansenist magistrates were intrepid enough to try to hold things up. The declaration, however, was registered.

This scared most of the clergy into submitting.

But not all. Jansenism was bloodied but unbowed: a substantial minority of parish clergy remained defiant, along with many magistrates inspired by a mixture of Gallicanism and Jansenism. Parlement therefore rallied to the defence of the persecuted Jansenist clergy, despite Fleury's prohibition; and when the government refused to give heed, the entire legal profession went on strike in August 1731.

17. The Convulsionaries and the final transformation of Jansenism The strangest episode in the entire history of Jansenism now arrived on the scene: the movement entered a pentecostal-charismatic phase. The outburst was focused on the tomb of a young deacon, François de Paris, a divinity graduate of the Saint-Magloire seminary, distinguished by his devoutness and hostility to Unigenitus (he had cursed it on his deathbed). The Jansenist deacon had been buried in the Saint-Médard parish of Paris 1727.

Extraordinary religious events now began to occur at his tomb: healings, speaking in tongues, prophesyings, dancing in the Spirit, and convulsions.

From the last of these phenomena, those affected were nicknamed the "Convulsionaries". Many flocked to Saint-Médard to watch and take part.

The more sober Jansenists found it distasteful, but most gladly hailed it as divine intervention supporting the Jansenist cause. The miracles were popularized in the Ecclesiastical News. For a while, it seemed that the eyes of all France were on the charismatic antics of Saint-Médard, and Cardinal

Fleury's government was temporarily wrong-footed by this apparent heavenly vindication of Jansenism.

However, Fleury finally took action. First, he ended the damaging legal strike by an ambivalent formula that allowed the lawyers to claim they had won. Second, he shut down the Saint-Médard cemetery by resolute police action in January 1732. Someone put up a satirical placard on the gates of the forcibly closed cemetery:

God, take note: by royal command, Miracles are in this place banned.

The dispersed Convulsionaries carried on a separate life of their own to the end of the century, meeting in private houses to prophesy, speak in tongues, and convulse. Ultimately the majority of Jansenists disowned them, embarrassed by their perceived irrationalities.

In the aftermath of the Saint-Médard affair, Jansenism underwent its final transformation into a largely non-clerical movement. It was no longer led by priests or monastics like Saint-Cyran, Arnauld, Quesnel, or the nuns of Port-Royal, but by the middle class laity, which flexed its muscles through parlement. Jansenism's greatest figure in this last phase was the lawyer

Louis Adrien Le Paige (1712–1802). He was "bailiff of the Temple", a

feudal position which the great noble, the Prince de Conti, had in his power to bestow on whom he wished; the position was exempt from all the normal jurisdictions of French government. Le Paige transformed it into a nerve centre of Jansenist activity. His masterpiece was his treatise Historical

Letters on the Essential Functions of the Parlement (1753–4), which for the rest of the century supplied a battery of legal methods to French dissenters

(whether Jansenist or not) for resisting the demands of authority.

When Cardinal Fleury died in 1743, King Louis XV assumed personal government over the realm. A new mood of anti-Jansenist belligerence was now gripping many of the clergy, which Fleury had restrained because he did not wish to create martyrs (perhaps he was haunted by the spectacle of Soanen). With Fleury's restraining hand gone, anti-Jansenist clergy now began demanding that, as a condition of the last rites, the dying must produce a "letter of confession" signed by a properly authorized priest.

Convinced Jansenist laypeople could easily find themselves without such a letter—not being able to find an authorized priest who was himself a Jansenist and would sign the letter for them.

The new Archbishop of Paris (from 1746) Christophe de Beaumont, an aggressive opponent of Jansenism, pursued this policy in his diocese. It resulted in a great scandal in 1749—the funeral of Charles Coffin, former

Rector of Paris University and notorious Jansenist. Denied the last rites through not having a letter of confession, he had to be buried in unconsecrated ground. Four thousand people attended his funeral, demonstrating solidarity with him. This sparked a new outbreak of Jansenist-inspired militancy in parlement. It was in the wake of this controversy over the letters of confession that the anti-Christian French philosopher, Voltaire, made a famous remark:

Would it not be fair and reasonable to suggest that the whole matter would have been brought to a satisfactory end by strangling the last Jesuit with the intestines of the last Jansenist?

The magistrates of parlement, at any rate, intervened in the controversy and prohibited priests from demanding letters of confession, or even from attacking Jansenism in sermons. Further, they accused Archbishop

Beaumont of promoting schism through his persecution of Jansenists. Louis XV stepped in, and overruled parlement by decreeing that no priest could be legally prosecuted for refusing to administer the sacraments. Parlement, however, countered the king by issuing a defiant statement. The situation

was complicated by Archbishop Beaumont's attempt to purge Jansenists from the governing body of Paris's General Hospital (an association of charitable institutions for the care of the poor and destitute). The governors appealed to parlement, who championed their cause.

Two years of strife ensued between parlement and King Louis, from 1749 to 1751, culminating in another all-out strike by the legal profession. Louis forced the magistrates back to work by direct royal decree, only to see them take up a swathe of complaints by Jansenist laypeople who had been refused the sacraments by anti-Jansenist priests. Once again parlement defied all Louis' attempts to stop them. Early in 1753, a committee of Jansenist magistrates drafted a "Grand Remonstrance" against all the alleged crimes of the French bishops. This was then promulgated in the name of parlement. Louis reacted furiously by banishing all the magistrates of parlement in May 1753, and replaced parlement itself with a new royal chamber.

At length, after fifteen months of confrontation, Louis drew back and reached a compromise with the banished parlement, which he then recalled.

To settle the "letters of confession" controversy, Louis promulgated a law of silence: neither side in the dispute was henceforth to raise the matter. When

Archbishop Beaumont broke this law by supporting one of his priests who refused the last rites to a Jansenist woman, the king angrily exiled the Archbishop. Louis also persuaded Pope Benedict XIV to issue the bull Ex

Omnibus in 1756, which prohibited priests from refusing the last rites to any but notorious sinners, or any who openly avowed their rejection of Unigenitus. So moderation triumphed.

By the close of this series of controversies, Jansenism had been almost completely transformed from its originally clerical, monastic, doctrinalspiritual character into something like a lay political faction led by lawyers, whose overriding motive was to curb abuses of power by the French political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and to promote a more republican ethos. Its history as a spiritually driven movement was largely over.

Historians have discerned in this final politicized form of Jansenism one of the forces that would lead France to its earth-shaking revolution of 1789, when religion-sanctioned monarch and aristocracy were overthrown, and secular democracy established in their place.

18. Jansenism outside France Although France was the heartland of Jansenism, it penetrated into other countries too, notably Belgium and northern Italy. Its greatest success, however, was in the Dutch Republic. Here Roman Catholicism was a minority faith in a land where the Dutch Reformed Church commanded the allegiance of most. However, this worked in Jansenism's favour, as it meant that the Dutch Catholics were under no pressure from a Roman Catholic government to conform to papal decrees, especially Unigenitus. Their freedom from political entanglement also gave them an openness to nonconformist ideas that no state-connected church could afford. The great

Dutch city of Utrecht in particular became a Jansenist hotbed. Meanwhile Dutch Calvinists themselves encouraged Jansenism, because it seemed to them so close in spirit to their own Reformed theology.

The Dutch Catholics were governed by a "vicar apostolic". This figure was elected as Dutch Catholic archbishop by the priests attached to Utrecht

Cathedral (known as the "chapter" of the Cathedral), but he was thereafter accountable to the pope. A number of these vicars apostolic in the 17th

Century were sympathetic to Jansenism; the sympathy swelled to positive commitment in the case of Peter Codde (1648–1710), who in 1699 refused to sign the anti-Jansenist Formulary of Pope Alexander VII. In consequence he was suspended from office by Pope Innocent XII, who also dissolved the Cathedral chapter of Utrecht. In fact Codde ignored the suspension and carried on governing the Dutch Catholic community. This was made possible by the fact that the vast majority of Dutch Catholic priests were by now Jansenists. Their support was considerably augmented by Jansenists from Belgium, fleeing from persecution, especially in the aftermath of Unigenitus in 1713. When Codde died, the Dutch Catholics were without an archbishop, and could not elect a new one, since the Cathedral chapter had been dissolved. But they kept up a supply of new priests, ordained for them by French bishops sympathetic to Jansenism.

Finally in 1723, the Dutch Catholic clergy in Utrecht, firmly committed to Jansenism and hostile to Unigenitus, had clearly reached the parting of the ways with the papacy. On their own initiative, they re-established the Cathedral chapter of Utrecht, and elected a new archbishop, Cornelius

Steenhoven, who was consecrated in 1724 by an accommodating French bishop. So was born the Dutch Jansenist Church, no longer in communion

with Rome. It was numerically quite strong in the 18th Century, but dwindled in the 19th. The Dutch Jansenists found themselves an object of high regard from many Protestants and reform-minded Catholics outside their own country, owing to their plain style of worship, their practice of electing their clergy, and their use of a Dutch Bible and liturgy (i.e. not in Latin, but in the native language of their country—remarkable in Roman

Catholicism prior to the Second Vatican Council of 1962–5). They also printed and distributed a vast number of Jansenist writings, aided by the fact that Holland was then the centre of the European printing industry.

The Dutch Jansenist Church still maintains a small existence today as the Dutch "Old Catholics", in communion with the Anglican Church.

19. The long-term effects of Jansenism It is difficult to sum up the long-term effects of so complex a movement as Jansenism. Negatively, its defeat (especially through the Unigenitus bull of 1713) entailed the virtual obliteration of the Augustinian doctrine of grace within the Roman Catholic Church. In condemning Jansenism, Rome had unwittingly and indirectly condemned Augustine. The long-running controversy also served to poison the Church life of French Catholicism, helping to make it increasingly vulnerable to the attack of anti-Christian forces in the 18th century, culminating in the de-Christianization campaign of the 1789 revolution.

After Jansenism had ceased to be a significant spiritual force for reformation in the French Catholic Church, it nonetheless survived in other, less tangible ways. Generally it had succeeded in permeating large sections of French Catholicism with the leaven of a new seriousness about moral and religious life, even where the distinctive Jansenist theology was not understood or embraced. (In the France of today, the word "Jansenist" has persisted as a description of a person of unusual moral strictness and earnestness, much like the word "Puritan" in English.) A number of religious orders inspired by Port-Royal continued to function after its demolition in 1711, such as the Sisters of Saint Martha. Schools modelled on the Port-Royal "Little Schools", imbued with a Jansenist spirit, also lived on in France until the end of the 19th century.

The 19th century also witnessed the growth of a fascination (largely in France) with the history of Port-Royal, and the lives of its nuns and male solitaries, seen as spiritual heroes. This "cult" of Port-Royal has had a large dose of romanticism in it—admiration for rebels against authority, and sympathy for the persecuted. Even so, it has generated a colossal amount of literature, and helped keep alive the memory of Jansenism as it was in its springtime and summertime.

The greatest source of modern Jansenist influence, however, lies in the writings of Blaise Pascal, now widely accepted as an important philosopher

(a designation that would have surprised him, as all he wished to be was a Christian apologist). Pascal's Provincial Letters to a limited extent, but much more his Pensées, continue to introduce each new generation to the mind of Jansenism's greatest thinker. There may not be much overt

Jansenist theology in the Pensées, but it is pervaded by the typically

Jansenist sense of human frailty and corruption, and of the inadequacy of reason or morality as a basis for finding God. To that extent, it perpetuates the outlook fostered by Jansen and Saint-Cyran.

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