Jansenism

The Jansenism is an inspired religious doctrine on the ideas of a bishop of Ypres , Cornelius Jansen .

As a movement it has a dogmatic , moral and disciplinary character, which also assumed political contours , and developed mainly in France and Belgium , in the 17th and 18th centuries, within the Catholic Church and whose theories ended up being considered controversial by it, since 16 October 1656, through the bull Ad sacram signed by Pope Alexander VII .

It defends an interpretation of the theories of Augustine of Hippo on predestination against the Thomist theses of Aristotelianism and free will .

Doctrine and practice of Jansenism

We can distinguish three different aspects in Jansenism, each represented by an important personality in the history of Jansenism.

• the dogmatic, represented by the work Augustinus , by Jansen, and which focused mainly on the doctrine on grace and sin;
• morality, which mainly concerned the sacraments , namely the Eucharist and Penance , and in which we find in Antoine Arnauld the main promoter;
• the disciplinary, related mainly to the relationship with the ecclesiastical authorities, and which derived in a political sense, whose main defender was Jean Duvergier de Hauranne , Abbot de Saint-Cyran.

Dogmatic Jansenism

The dogmatic aspects of Jansenism are of great importance, insofar as they give rise and support to the other dimensions. Many of the moral and disciplinary prescriptions of Jansenism are a consequence of its dogmatic positions.

The Jansenist doctrine is based on a critical reading of the theology of Augustine of Hippo and on the proposals of the theologian Miguel Bayo , and is clearly related to the Augustinian doctrines that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation , especially in the Calvinist doctrines , on grace , nature human and predestination .

The central and essential point is a pessimistic anthropology , which sees in the original sin the corruption of human nature, henceforth incapable of any good and fatally inclined work for evil .

Intrinsically corrupted by sin , man becomes a plaything of two antagonistic forces: lust and grace . Each of these exercises an internal determination over man that he cannot resist. That is, just as the man who receives grace necessarily acts according to that grace, so also the one to whom grace is not given inevitably follows lust. The freedom of man would be safeguarded by the fact that both grace and lust only determine man internally, leaving him free from external coercion. This is the difference in relation to Protestantism .

Grace, therefore, is so decisive that, once received, man cannot resist it.

The implications of this doctrine are diverse. On the one hand, personal sin necessarily means a deprivation of grace: whoever sins, it is because it is not funny, because if he had it, he would act according to it. On the other hand, man has no merit in good works, because they are the fruit of the grace that determines inwardly, and not of his freedom. Furthermore, the man deprived of grace infallibly sins and is incapable of any good work, for he always follows lust. Hence the works of the unbelievers are always sin, for they are deprived of the effective grace that comes from the redemption of Christ .

Another implication arises from this doctrine: man does good works only by virtue of effective grace. Now, such grace is not always granted, but it is God who with absolute freedom determines who grants it. Therefore, it is God who determines who are those who do good works and, consequently, those who are saved and those who are condemned. The logical consequence of Jansenism is the doctrine of predestination. Here we have another strong point of contact with Calvinism .

Consequently, Christ did not die for all men, but only for those who are saved, the elect, and only these receive grace. Basically, with Jansenism we see a reaction to the Soteriology of the Council of Trent through the attempt to restore Augustinian doctrines within the Roman Church.

All of these doctrines are present in Augustinus , and have been condemned several times by several popes.

Moral Jansenism

It was not the dogmatic aspect of Jansenism that gave rise to its widespread and popularity. It was rather his moral doctrine .

We can find an eloquent example of Jansenist morality in Arnauld and in his book De la fréquente communion . But we must also look for the moral doctrine of Jansenism in the previous sources, starting with Augustinus .

In this work, in volume II, we find the foundations of Jansenist morality. According to the author, ignorance , although invincible, does not excuse sin, because such ignorance is precisely the consequence of original sin. Furthermore, man, without grace, necessarily sins, his nature always draws him irresistibly to sin, in such a way that, if man, by his forces, intends to escape one sin, he inevitably falls into another. In other words, sin is inevitable in human life. Hence all the Jansenist pessimism in relation to human nature, which both leads to contempt for all works, albeit apparently meritorious, of sinners and infidels, as well as leading to extreme rigorism with regard to any possible “yielding to nature” .

Saint-Cyran was the initiator of the Jansenist moral practice. The penance , for him, was treated with a rigor immense. Thus, he said that absolution did not properly forgive sins, but declared that they had been forgiven by God. Thus, perfect contrition was necessary for absolution to be valid. The practical consequence of this was the refusal of absolution to repeat sinners and to those in whom perfect contrition was not certain.

Regarding communion , the conditions required were also quite strict. Perfection was demanded, so that the desire to receive communion, or “spiritual communion”, was considered more meritorious than Eucharistic communion itself. Hence, one of the effects of Jansenism, through the ages, has been precisely the withdrawal of the sacraments .

All this rigorism appeared as a counterpoint to the laxism that the Jansenists personified in the Jesuits . And, in fact, one of the merits of Jansenism was precisely the denunciation of that laxism that prevailed in the Christian life of many. The mistake, however, was to condemn, along with him, all pastoral concern, in favor of a theoretical and disincarnated rigor.

Disciplinary Jansenism

At the disciplinary level, Jansenism advocates a reform of the Church that eliminates the pernicious novelties introduced since the time of the old priests and the deviations operated by scholastics and Jesuits. This is based on the conception of the Church as an immutable society, of divine origin, and as such exempt from any change.

What happens, as a result of successive condemnations of which Jansenism was a victim, is that an increase in the authority of the local hierarchy is advocated, to the detriment of that of the Pope . Over time, still, in the face of persecution, Jansenism seeks to form alliances with civil authorities, in order to better resist, and in this aspect it assumes political significance. Especially from the 18th century onwards , Jansenism is related to the claim of independence from the Church of Rome and is confused with the creation of national Churches.

Causes and antecedents of Jansenism

Controversies over grace

An old issue, revived by reformers

The nature of divine grace and its relationship to human freedom is a subject that has entertained many Christian thinkers from an early age. A reading of St. Augustine’s position, which exalts the primacy of grace over human merit, in contrast to the Pelagians , who defended the opposite, influenced the reformers in the first place and played an important role in the genesis and development of Jansenism.

One of Luther’s most decisive doctrines has to do precisely with his view of the role of grace in man’s salvation. For this reformer, man, after original sin, lost all ability to choose God. His freedom was wiped out by sin, so we cannot speak of free will . Because of sin, therefore, man can only follow the path of good through the grace of God, without which he remains totally incapable. Salvation, for Luther, is thus the exclusive work of divine grace, with no place for any human collaboration. Hence Luther defends the principle that only faith it is necessary for salvation: human works come only from divine determination, without meaning as a human welcoming of salvation.

The other reformers defended positions similar to Luther’s. The Jansenists, although they denied it, suffered considerable influence from the positions taken by them.

The Catholic Church’s position was one of disapproval of this doctrine. The Council of Trent , however, was unable to fully resolve the issue, so it was left to safeguard the two essential elements, the grace of God and the freedom of man. The way in which they relate was not rigorously determined, so the discussion was open, and several proposals emerged.

Miguel Baio

It was in this context, from the discussion about the reconciliation between freedom and grace, from wanting to reconcile the retired with the Catholics, that the position of Miguel Baio (Michel du Bay) († 1589) professor of Biblical Exegesis at the University of Louvain emerged . In reading St. Augustine’s doctrine on grace, (marked by controversy against the Pelagians), Baio concluded in his own way that in Adam , while he was still in Paradise , sanctifying grace and integrity were part of human nature, and were not supernatural gifts. Now, due to original sin , all this is lost, and the human will is enslaved by lustand incapable of any meritorious work, nor is it capable of doing good. When saved by Christ, man receives from God the grace to do good works. However, unlike the primitive state, now the capacity for good works is of a totally supernatural origin, it is pure grace.

The similarity of this doctrine with Lutheran pessimism is evident. Baio, however, intended to escape the charge of Lutheranism while safeguarding, in human freedom, the absence of external coercion (but not internal coercion …).

Baio’s theses were censored by several European Universities , including Paris and Salamanca .

However, the dispute continued so that Rome was asked to intervene. It happened in 1567, with bula papal Ex omnibus afflictionibus of Pius V , which condemned 79 propositions. Baio declared to submit, and did so effectively, abjuring his mistakes and swearing allegiance to the Council of Trent. The discussion, however, was far from over. Baio continued to defend some ideas, justifying his origins in the Sacred Scriptures and the Church Fathers , which led to new lawsuits and condemnations.

Báñez and Molina

Another discussion about the nature of grace and human freedom broke out shortly afterwards. Dominican Báñez explained the effectiveness of grace by its nature and by the physical determination that it implied. The Jesuit Luís de Molina , in a work published in Lisbon in 1588, criticized this system, denouncing its similarities with Calvinism , and defending, instead, a conception that sought to reconcile human free will with the prior knowledge that God has of human acts, which he distinguished from predestination . The discussion between these two authors quickly turned into a dispute between the respective religious orders, so the pope decided to refer the matter to a commission ofcardinals who, after condemnations and protests by one and another party, ended up not fully deciding the issue, but forbade the interveners to attack each other, remaining free to teach each one their doctrine.

This context, of controversy and, at the same time, a certain theological freedom, contributed to the appearance and development of Jansenism.

Laxism

With the attention given, since the Council of Trent , to the healing of souls, the casuistry was developed , the analysis of concrete cases in the field of morals. Many authors, however, considered casuistry in the sense of studying the conditions under which a certain act, in itself objectionable, could become acceptable or even lawful. In an attempt to show their reasoning, many casuists dedicated themselves to considering not concrete cases, but bold and even crazy hypotheses, with which they were able to justify actions that the common sense of Christians disapproved of.

The consequence of this was the consolidation of theoretical laxism, which greatly reduced the list of sins and theoretically allowed a life filled with abuses and condemnable actions. Historian Giacomo Martina remarks, with humor, that “some theologians of the 16th century deserved the praise they received: Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi … “, for their ability to drastically reduce possible sins.

With these systems, which spread, despite the condemnations of the Church, Christian duties were reduced to a minimum, allowing an authentic life of lies and hypocrisy. But in this respect, theoretical laxism often only confirmed the practical state of things in those times.

The emergence of Jansenism, especially in its moral aspect, can be explained in large part as a reaction to this theoretical and practical laxism.

Beginning and development of Jansenism

Cornelius Jansen

The first great figure of Jansenism, in such a way that gave the movement its name, was the Dutchman Cornelius Jansen .

Described as a man of study, with a great memory, perseverance and tenacity, but also as having a hard, dry, cold, ambitious and timid spirit, Jansen was born in 1585, in Acquoy , in the south of the Netherlands. He studied at the universities of Utrecht and Leuven , where, listening to the lessons of Master Janson, he came into contact with Baio’s doctrines and was oriented towards Augustinianism. Later, he continued his studies in Paris. It was in this city that he met his great friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne , better known as Saint-Cyran .

From 1611 to 1617, both remained in Bayonne , where Duvergier owned a home, to dedicate themselves to the study of Christian antiquity. It was around this time that Jansen would have read the works of St. Augustine ten times and thirty times the writings of this saint on grace and Pelagianism, as he later boasted.

In 1638, thanks to a work written against the French , Jansen was promoted to bishop of Ypres , where he died two years later, not without having completed, corrected and delivered to his friends for publication the great work of his life and the matrix of Jansenism: Augustinus .

The Augustinus

Since he came into contact with St. Augustine and his doctrine on grace (very marked by the controversy against Pelagianism ), Jansen thought of writing a work where he clearly exposed and defended the doctrine of the great Doctor. For years he worked on the composition of this work, which has never ceased to revise and correct, over the years, including as bishop of Ypres. This work, intensely refined, was delivered, after the death of its author, by his friends, to be published. Despite the opposition of the Jesuits , the work was actually published in Holland in 1640, spreading quickly to Germanyand to other countries. It achieved a lot of success and was praised even by the Calvinists, in such a way that some came to see in this work the basis of a union between Calvinism and Catholicism .

Cornelius Jansen’s work is entitled Augustinus, his doctrine Sancti Augustini de humanae naturae, sanitate, aegritudine, medicine adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses , and is divided into three volumes. It had a total of about 1300 pages, in two small print columns.

In the first volume, which consists of eight books, the history of Pelagianism and Semi- Pelagianism is exposed , carefully refuting, in detail, all its points (and surreptitiously making a parallel between the Semi-Pelagians and the Jesuits …).

In the nine books of tome II, after analyzing the relationship between philosophy and theology and harshly criticizing the scholastics and Aristotelian philosophy extolling the authority of St. Augustine, a fundamental part of his theological method, the author describes the state of grace and the freedom of the original man, as well as the essence of original sin and its consequences, namely the lust and the diminution of free will . Then he denies the possibility of the state of pure nature and declares the impossibility of man being able to love God naturally.

Volume III, in its ten books, contains the main part of the work. Jansen now reflects on how to heal human nature and how to regain freedom through Christ’s redemption . In this regard, Jansen’s thesis is that grace is infallibly active and effective, without, however, destroying man’s freedom. It also denies the universal salvific will and the possibility of observing certain commandments. It also deals with free will, the reconciliation between freedom and grace, predestination and the differences between the doctrine of St. Augustine and that of Calvin . It ends with a synthesis of the errors of several modern theologians, particularly Jesuits, establishing a parallel between these and the Massillian heretics.

Abbot of Saint-Cyran

Jean Duvergier de Hauranne became friends with Jansen in Paris , and they both spent a few years in Bayonne . In 1620, Duvergier became abbot commendator of Saint-Cyran, from where the name by which he became known comes from.

Opinions about your personality are mixed. Basically, they reveal a complex and not very linear character. On the one hand, he was faithful and generous to his friends, cordial and simple. He appeared as a great Christian director, imbued with a strong moral authority, which could only come from a solid spirituality. He was endowed with great austerity, which further underlined his authority. However, others who knew him in some way also qualified him as neurotic and megalomaniac, disturbed, with a certain imprudence, unbalanced, and whose main talent was to appropriate the souls of those who listened to him, enslaving them.

According to the historian Giacomo Martina , the personalities of the two friends were complementary, because while Jansen was the theorist, Saint-Cyran was oriented towards action, towards realization. Thus, if Jansen was the first great theorist of Jansenism, its first founder, Saint-Cyran was the true founder of French Jansenism and the great driver of the new doctrine.

Despite Jansen’s recommendation not to dedicate himself to the spiritual direction of religious women, which could distract him from his great task, Saint-Cyran realized that the intervention of religious women could, on the contrary, be quite useful. In this way, he became spiritual director of the monastery of Port-Royal , which had Mother Angélica Arnauld as superior. This, for some years, left, with other nuns, the convent of Port-Royal and directed the convent of the Daughters of the Blessed Sacrament, branch of that one, under the orientation of Saint-Cyran, and where the Jansenist ideas were spread.

However, Cardinal Richelieu , minister of King Louis XIII , concerned with the expansion of the same new ideas, intuiting that a group as fearsome and difficult to control as that of the French Calvinists (the so-called Huguenots ) could form, ordered the arrest of Saint-Cyran in the castle of Vincennes , in May 1638. The prison of Saint-Cyran, however, instead of stifling the new movement, ended up giving it greater vigor, by earning the reputation of martyr , victim for its diffuser. ecclesiastical arrogance and spirits opposed to the necessary reform of the Church.

Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642. Shortly thereafter, Saint-Cyran was freed, but he was to survive a little longer, dying in October 1643, three years after the publication of Augustinus . But, despite this early death in the history of Jansenism, its contribution was decisive in the spread of this new doctrine.

Saint-Cyran is credited with a statement that expresses Jansenism’s attitude towards the Church : “God gave me his light to know that the Church has not existed for five or six centuries. In the past, it was a river of clean, clear water. But today what exists in the Church is a swamp. The riverbed is the same, but the waters are different. ” Concerning the Council of Trent, he said that “it was, first of all, an assembly of scholastics, where there was nothing but intrigue, machinations and partialities”. And about Calvin he said “Calvinus bene sensit, male locutus est”. Hearing these things, S. Vicente de Paulo , who was his friend, decided to move away from him and recommended the same to those around him.

Antoine Arnauld

Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) was a disciple of Saint-Cyran and his great follower. For more than fifty years he defended Jansenism through his writings, full of great scholarship and a great deal of dialectical ability. In fact, he was the undisputed head of Jansenism during that period. He was an expert in the art of concealment, managing to spread his ideas without really committing himself. He had the intelligence to propagate ideas that were new, always with the appearance of being no more than the old ideas recovered. In fact, like the other defenders of the movement, Arnauld intended to be a faithful interpreter and disseminator of St. Augustine’s ideas.

With great tenacity and tireless obstinacy, he dedicated himself to responding to all attacks, intervening in all the controversies caused by Jansenism. Concealed, but at the same time shrewd, Arnauld had the art of getting his opponents to be considered masters of concealment.

However, in spite of all these defects, it is necessary to remember the good faith that Arnauld was endowed with, his conviction to render a good service to the Church, against his enemies. His love for the Church and his dedication earned him the respect of several people, including popes.

Due to his persistence and art, Arnauld became one of the essential figures of Jansenism, with a decisive contribution to its history. He wrote 43 works, of which the most famous is De la fréquente communion .

Frequent Communion

Regarding the convenience or not of frequent communion , Antoine Arnauld decided to enter the scene with a book on this subject aimed at the general public. It was his first work, published in 1643, and was entitled De la frequente communion, où les sentiments des Pères, des Papes et des Conciles, touchant l’usage des sacrements de Pénitence et d’Eucharistie, sont fidèlement exposés .

In the first part of the work, the author explains the practice of the early Church. According to him, the first Christians only communed daily while keeping the baptismal grace intact . On the contrary, penitents left the Eucharistic celebration and those who committed mortal sin stayed away from communion for many days or even years. Before taking communion, therefore, it was necessary to go away for a while and purify oneself by prayer and penance. Weekly communion required unusual conditions, so it was best to stay away from the Eucharist , with a great desire to be worthy of receiving it.

In the second part, the form of penance prior to communion is exposed . While the Jesuits argued that confession was enough , with fellowship right away, without further penance and purification, Arnauld argued the opposite, recalling that, although the Church had tolerated a different practice, the rule of the Holy Fathers was maintained, which should be taken into account by all spiritual directors and shepherds of souls. Penitents should be required to have genuine contrition prior to communion. The logical consequence of all this is that the Church was wrong in its present practice of penance.

The third part of the work speaks of the fruits of communion. Receiving the Eucharist must always result in a more perfect union with God . Thus Arnauld affirms that “it is necessary to be possessed by a strange blindness, in order not to feel for the experience itself, and not to fall at least in some fear, that all our communions are not so many sacrileges , when we see sensibly that they never produced any amendment in our lives”. Communion is not the medicine of the weak and sinners, food to preserve the life of the soul, but a reward for a holy life. Frequent communion, therefore, was the source of great evils, of which the Jesuits were largely responsible .

This work had a great success, being praised even by theologians and bishops. It had the merit of presenting in a language stripped of scholastic artifices a very topical topic, allowing everyone to learn about a subject that until then was reserved almost exclusively to theologians. However, many consider it a work without talent, exterior and empty, imbued with pious rhetoric .

Port-Royal

This monastery of Benedictine , at one point, was under the spiritual guidance of Saint-Cyran. The mother was the sister of Antoine Arnauld, Jacqueline (1591-1661), who took the name of Mother Angelica. The latter, at the age of eight, was appointed coadjutor to the abbess of Port-Royal-des-Champs , with the right of succession, and on the death of her predecessor she became an abbess at the age of eleven. Of course, the young Jacqueline did not have the slightest religious vocation, obliged that she had followed this path. Since six sisters from the Arnauld family, with six nieces, entered Port-Royal, the monastery was practically a kind of country house for the family. Religious life had no meaning there: no cloister or modesty in dress was observed..

But everything changed when, in 1608, one Capuchin made a preaching in the monastery, after which Mother Angelica felt inwardly transformed and converted. In the following years, he dedicated himself to reforming the community completely: the rude and modest habit , long prayer times, including the morning at 2:00 am, strict silence and cloister and all the austerity of the old Benedictine rule. With his example and his persistence, he achieved an effective reform of the monastery, and new vocations began to appear, thirsting for an authentic religious life. This success was achieved by being called to renovate other monasteries in the area. In one of them, Maubuisson, where he remained from 1618 to 1622, received spiritual direction from S. Francisco de Sales (a saint of a nature opposed to Jansenism), who sought to infuse him with the virtues of humility and sweetness, which he so lacked. However, after the saint’s death in 1622, he failed to receive his prudent advice and his pride reappeared. It is even said that something would have been offended by the saint calling him “my daughter”, instead of “Reverend Mother”.

With a big heart and a persistent spirit, however, he lacked humility and true balance.

Under the direction of Saint-Cyran, Port¬ Royal became the great center of Jansenism. The spiritual life of those women religious came to be dominated by anxieties and scruples. Some approached the sacrament of penance in terror, fearful of not being prepared, and did not dare to receive absolution . The same fears surrounded communion. The fear of the Divine Judge’s severity made them accustom to approaching communion more and more rarely.

Created by another religious in the monastery, it is a booklet dedicated to Eucharistic adoration and entitled Le chapelet secret du Saint-Sacrement . This work proposed to meditation 16 attributes of the Blessed Sacrament , among which holiness , eminence, inaccessibility, incomprehensibility, incommunicability, the reign: none of them is, in fact, love , kindness or mercy . This work, although it cannot be considered strictly Jansenist (it was written in 1633) and is not exactly an essential document of this movement, it reflects well the spirit that reigned in Port-Royal: the relationship with God based on fear, and not on love.

Associated with Port-Royal were also the so-called “loners”. It was a group of men who decided to live alone, next to the monastery, practicing a life of study and prayer, without religious vows, with freedom to enter and leave and to leave that way of life when they wanted to. They were great supporters of Saint-Cyran and Mother Angelica. Among them were Antoine Arnauld and, for a time, Blaise Pascal , whose intervention was important in the history of Jansenism.

An endless controversy

The first disputes and convictions

The publication of Augustinus was surrounded by an intense movement of the Jesuits in order to prevent it, having even been obtained a prohibition of the pope, who arrived, however, too late. But it is clear that the Jesuits, who in that year celebrated the centenary of the foundation, and feared that they would be discredited if the disputes over grace resurfaced, did not resign themselves and sought at all costs that the work be condemned. In those years there were publications from one and another part that discussed the doctrinal accuracy of Augustinus and his fidelity to Augustinian thought.

In 1641, a decree of the Holy Office condemned Augustinus , but also the Jesuits’ theses and many publications on both sides, but such a decree was not even published in Leuven . The following year, Pope Urban VIII wrote the pontifical bull In Eminenti , which was published only in 1643, in which he condemned Jansen’s work, for not respecting the order of silence imposed by Paul III and for supporting theses similar to those of Baio., already condemned by previous popes. However, due to the existence of variants and the publication of the package leaflet by the Jesuits before reaching the Dutch authorities, the authenticity of the document was called into question, and called Jesuit forgery, so it did not have much effect.

The five theses

However, Sorbonne prohibited bachelors and doctors from supporting the theses condemned by the bull. However, many ignored it, so in 1649, a professor submitted to the university five theses, which in his opinion summarized the content of Augustinus . Of course, the Jansenists, headed by Arnauld, protested loudly. The discussion, however, was immense, without reaching any agreement, so that an assembly of the clergy, gathered around the king, decided to send the five theses to Rome , so that the pope could make a decision.

These were the five theses:

1. Some commandments of God are impossible for the righteous, with the strengths they have at present, although they want and strive, and they also lack the grace that makes them possible.
2. In the fallen state of nature, inner grace is never resisted.
3. To deserve and deserve, in the fallen state of nature, freedom from necessity is not required in man, but only freedom from coercion.
4. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of inward grace foreseeing for each of the acts, even for the beginning of faith ; and in this they were heretics , in wanting that grace to be such that the human will could resist or obey it
5. It is semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died and shed his blood for absolutely all men

The pope, Innocent X , wanted to accompany the work and appointed a commission of cardinals and theological consultants . Two years later, the commission came to a conclusion and condemned the five propositions as heretics, blasphemous or false. The pope, who had followed the process closely, formalized the conviction in the bull Cum oportione , May 31, 1653. This decision, however, also had strong political reasons.

The bull was accepted without difficulty in Flanders , because now the real center of Jansenism had ceased to be Leuven , to become Paris .

The reaction of the Jansenists

In the face of this great blow, it seemed that the Jansenists were defeated. But, lo and behold, they soon found an easy way out to continue defending their ideas without being considered heretics or disobedient to the pope. They claimed that, on the one hand, the Church was infallible in condemning certain propositions, such as those five, as heretics, and everyone agreed on that.

They argued, however, that the pope had been mistaken in declaring that the five propositions were in Augustinus and in the sense in which they had been condemned. With this distinction, they continued to propagate their doctrines, always insisting that the five propositions had never been taught by them in that sense.

The clergy form

Trying to put an end to the resistance, the successor of Innocent X , Alexandre VII , who as cardinal had been part of the commission that analyzed the five propositions, and was therefore profoundly aware of the issue, published in 1656 the constitution Ad Sanctam beati Petri sedem , in which he stated that the five propositions were in fact in Augustinus and that they had been condemned in the sense used by their author.

Upon learning of this document, the French clergy assembly decided to draft an oath of faith formula, against Jansenism, which was called the Form.

The Form should be signed by all rebels, and by all ecclesiastics and teachers in the country. The Jansenists protested, considering that they could not, in conscience, subscribe to the form.

The rebels’ attitude to this obligation was diverse. While some resigned themselves to signing the document, others flatly refused to give up their belief. Among those who offered the most resistance were the sisters of Port-Royal.

Among the Jansenists, several parties were established. Some decided to obey. Others, extremists, considered that the pontifical bull was equivalent to the condemnation of Augustinianism, reason why it was necessary to oppose it, even at the cost of a schism . Between the two tendencies, there was a kind of moderate party, represented by Arnauld, who defended the condemnation of the theses, but maintained that the pope had been mistaken in attributing them to Jansen. It was this trend that, thanks to Arnauld’s skill, ended up triumphing. Among the rebels there were even some bishops.

Blaise Pascal and the Provincials

But in the meantime, another character emerged, whose intervention in the Jansenist struggle was decisive. We refer to Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a great mathematician and philosopher , despite his short life.

In 1656, at the heart of the controversy motivated by the pontifical condemnations and the expulsion of Arnauld from the Sorbonne , Pascal met him in Port-Royal and accepted an invitation to put his literary talent at the service of the cause.

Thus, on January 23, 1656, the first of the Provincials appears , with the title Lettre écrite à un provincial par de ses amis sur le sujet des recentes récentes de la Sorbonne . They appear in the form of letters addressed to a friend who lives in the province, about the events in Paris .

Pascal wrote a total of 18 Provincial letters, the last of which was dated March 24, 1657. We can divide them into two types: letters 1-3 and 17-18 have dogmatic content and are directed against the Sorbonne and the condemnation of the five propositions; the rest are of moral content and elect the Jesuits as adversaries .

The Provincials were placed in the Index in 1657. However, as a protest of the Christian conscience against the abuses of laxism, they had their result: The Holy Office , under [[Pope Alexander VII] Alexander VII], in 1665-1666, and under Innocent X , in 1679, condemned a total of 110 lax proposals, 57 of which came indirectly from the Provincials.

The fragile clementine peace

Among the rebels were some bishops, who refused to sign the Form. In 1667, Pope Clement IX , who wished for peace and an end to strife, ascended the pontifical throne and worked to this end. After lengthy negotiations, in which controversies motivated by Galician freedoms were not absent, the bishops were able to sign, thus establishing an official reconciliation between the rebels and the Church, sealed in January 1669 by a brief from the pope. However, at the time of signing, the bishops did not publicly hide the fact that they signed with a mental reservation, remaining inwardly faithful to the ideas they had previously advocated. But even though they knew this, the pope, as well as the French bishops and authorities, did not want to prolong the controversies, so they preferred to accept that precarious reconciliation.

A similar reconciliation was done by Antoine Arnauld and the sisters of Port-Royal.

This agreement turned out to be for many a victory for the Jansenist party and a ruse by them very well achieved in order to avoid condemnation. Controversies were settled for almost thirty years, in which the monastery of Port-Royal enjoyed tranquility.

The peace treaty, so to speak, included a ban on publishing writings that would continue to fuel the controversy. Thus, the Jansenists devoted themselves to more peaceful themes. They published the works of some of his figures, which have since disappeared, including Pascal’s Thoughts and Saint-Cyran’s ancient writings. They published some original works in the field of spirituality and published translations of mystics such as S. Teresa de Jesus and S. João da Cruz . They also had the meritorious concern of making translations of the biblical texts available to the public. They also dedicated themselves to liturgical translations and to controversies with Calvinists .

This peace, of course, was, however, very weak, which was attested by several events. Louis XIV , knowing that the Jansenists continued to be a focus of resistance to his absolutism , and having now disappeared some of the protectors of Port-Royal, decided to end this monastery and removed its schools and some ecclesiastics and banned the religious from receive novices . Arnauld, sensing the danger, fled the country. Pope Innocent XI wanted to offer him a safe home and even the dignity of a cardinal , but Arnauld refused, as that would mean never returning to France , so he settled in Brussels .

The reignition and the end of the controversy

Arnauld died in 1694 and his remains, according to his will, were transferred to Port-Royal. However, in the meantime, the one who was to be his successor in front of the Jansenist resistance had already appeared and came to breathe new life into a controversy that had been going on for over 50 years: Pasquier Quesnel.

Pasquier Quesnel and the Moral Reflections

Pasquier Quesnel was born in 1634. After studying at Jesuit schools and at the Sorbonne , he was ordained a priest in the Congregation of the Oratorians . From that time on, its rigorous tendencies and prone to Jansenism began to be noticed. In 1685, he was received in Brussels by Arnauld, and remained until his death as his faithful companion. But in spite of leaning towards Augustinianism , he was quite familiar with the work of Thomas Aquinas , so he did not appreciate Jansen’s strict Augustinianism. In fact, given his low esteem for him, he did not really want to commit himself to his behalf. In addition to the Thomist formation , he also had a strong Galician orientation .

In all of this, he was much more political than Arnauld and he owes, in fact, the transformation of Jansenism into a firm and coherent party.

From 1666, Quesnel had started to compose a book entitled Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament , impregnated with Jansenist ideas. However, such ideas were well hidden in a fund of piety and devotion, so the work was publicized.

The Cas de Conscience , the bull Vineam Domini and to Port-Royal

In 1701, a publication was published that strongly rekindles the Jansenist controversy, entitled Un Cas de Conscience . For this reason, King Louis XIV asked Pope Clement XI for a condemnation. It happened in 1705, with the pontifical bull Vineam Domini . However, the bull touched sensitive points with respect to Galician freedoms, so it encountered some resistance in France. The main resistance, however, was in the monastery of Port-Royal, not for that reason, but because the religious women did not want to give up the rights obtained in the clementine peace.

The community, which had been prevented from receiving novices for years, was reduced to about twenty religious women of advanced age. After having banned him in 1707, Louis XIV decided to take a definitive resolution, and ordered the dissolution of the community. On October 20, 1709, the nuns were forcibly removed and dispersed by several convents. But as Port-Royal remained a place of pilgrimage for the Jansenists, the monastery was destroyed in 1711 and the bones of several personalities, including Pascal, were moved to other places.

The bull Unigenitus and the end of French Jansenism

The work Reflexions Morales , of Quesnel, was denounced in Rome as early as 1703. After analysis, it was soon condemned by the Universi Dominici Gregis . However, again because of Galician freedoms, the document was not accepted in France. Some bishops, however, decided to prohibit the work in their pastoral care, and had the idea of ​​a joint pastoral care. Other bishops, however, were opposed. Seeing the danger of a split in the episcopate, Louis XIV once again asked the pope for a definitive condemnation, which came to pass in 1713, with the bull Unigenitus , in which 101 propositions taken from the Réflexions Morales were condemned .

With Quesnel’s death in 1719, Jansenism was without a leader. With this death and the end of Port-Royal, we can say that French Jansenism has ended. There were still some rebel bishops, such as e de Auxerre and Montpellier , as well as priests and religious. Jansenism, from there, derives in two directions: dogmatic and moral Jansenism, henceforth deprived of the charismatic leaders that it had, degenerated into hysteria and pseudo-mystical phenomena; the other orientation was that of disciplinary and political Jansenism, which started with Saint-Cyran and with Quesnel’s decisive impulse. Jansenism thus became a political movement, closely linked to Galicianism .

But if in France, Jansenism ended, the same cannot be said for other countries.

Jansenism in Holland and Italy

In Holland, Jansenism was viewed with a certain sympathy. He was close to Leuven , the movement’s first center, where Jansen had defended his ideas. It has hosted several of the great Jansenist names, such as Arnauld and Quesnel, as well as others. Since the beginning of the 17th century, Holland, a largely Protestant territory , was administered ecclesiastically by an Apostolic Vicar . At the height of the great Jansenist polemics, the vicar was Johan van Neercassel, who exercised this function from 1663 to 1686, who was also noted for a certain rigor. The Dutch clergy were more severe and demanding, which is why they looked with sympathy at Jansenism, so different from the lukewarmness seen in many Christians. YouProtestants looked at Catholics with suspicion but, on the contrary, they harbored a certain sympathy for the Jansenists.

Neercassel’s death came after him, as vicar, Pedro Codde, who sympathized with Jansenism and welcomed among his clergy several members of this fugitive group. Denounced to Rome , Codde was questioned by a commission, which demanded that he sign the Form. He refused, so he was suspended from his duties in 1703. However, Codde had won over the Dutch faithful and the civil authorities themselves, who refused to receive his successor. The Utrecht chapter , after ruling the Dutch Church for a while in vacant seat , elected Cornelius Steenhoven as bishop in 1722, in spite of the Holy See . A schism was established .

This schism continued and, after the First Vatican Council , the group of Old Catholics , in seeking to keep the apostolic succession for themselves , made an alliance with the Dutch Jansenist Church. Even today, this dissident group remains, having in 1994 around 12000 elements.

In Italy , Jansenism took on almost exclusively political significance. Note only the famous synod of Pistoia , held in this Tuscan city in 1786.

Under the direction of Bishop Scipione de Ricci, with the support of Dutch, French and Italian Jansenists, and with the presence of 234 priests , this synod intended to carry out reforms and give impetus to the creation of a national Church.

The first decrees reaffirmed Jansenist doctrines on grace , predestination and morals , reproving devotion to the Heart of Jesus , spiritual exercises and popular missions . The four Galician articles were recognized, in a view favorable to the control of the state over the Church. The tendency was also to increase the power of the bishops at the expense of the authority of the pope.

In the midst of these negative points, they also highlighted some meritorious proposals, related to the purification of worship and the participation of the faithful in the liturgy .

The condemnation of the Synod of Pistoia, carried out in 1794 with the bull Auctorem fidei , by Pius VI , is due to its dogmatic Jansenist context and its deviated ecclesiology , not to these salutary proposals, which were, moreover, substantially collected by the Vatican Council II .

Jansenism as seen by the Catholic Church

Jansenism, the greatest doctrinal controversy of the seventeenth century, exerted a large-scale influence on the lives of Christians, not so much in its dogmatic and disciplinary / political aspect, which ended up becoming extinct, but above all in its moral and sacramental aspect.

As seen by Roman Catholic apologists, rigid Jansenist morality is averse to questions of conscience that in some way lessen the responsibility of the moral subject, and this has long been present in many confessors and spiritual directors, perhaps unaware of it. According to Catholicism, Jansenism has a pessimistic anthropology, inclined to look with suspicion on all human actions not directly originated by a Christian nature.

Sacramental practice has also suffered from these influences over time. Rigorous morality, with regard to the conditions for approaching the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist , was responsible, many times, for an incorrect notion of these sacraments. The hardening of the conditions required for absolution , or the imposition of exaggerated penances, may end up transporting the faithful to a notion of the sacrament as a rigid divine court , and not a meeting of mercy and reconciliation .

As for the Eucharist, the truth is that the faithful have also become accustomed to communion more rarely, due to the requirement of strict conditions. For some, the existence of venial sins , or the simple breach of precepts, such as that of the Eucharistic fast, can be a cause of departure from Eucharistic communion, which contrasts with the constant teaching of the Church and the exhortations of pastors, especially since S . Pius X .

Also, the exaltation of spiritual communion, even placing it, at times, on the same level, or even beyond sacramental communion, is a typically Jansenist proposal. The same can be said of many other behaviors towards the Eucharist based on a feeling of unworthiness originating totally or mainly in the spiritual attitude based on terror.

However, it is important not to classify all manifestations of respect and veneration for the Eucharist as Jansenism.

References

External links

• Jansenism, Infopedia (Online), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2014 (Consult. 2014-04-29).
• Jansenism in Portugal, by Cândido dos Santos, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto, Department of History and Political and International Studies, Porto 2007
• French Jansenists and Ecclesiastical Studies at the Time of Pombal, by Cândido dos Santos, Máthesis 13 2004 67-104
• Jansenism and Church reform in Portuguese America, Evergton Sales Souza, Proceedings of the International Congress Atlantic Area of ​​Old Regime: powers and societies, Federal University of Bahia
• Baianism and Jansenism, by D. Estevão Bettencourt, OSB

Text translated by Acervo Lima from Wikipedia.
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