Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns

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Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism chronicles seventy years of Jansenist conflict and its complex intersection with power struggles between Gallican bishops, parlementaires, the Crown, and the pope. Daniella Kostroun focuses on the nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs, whose community was disbanded by Louis XIV in 1709 as a threat to the state. Paradoxically, it was the nuns’ adherence to their strict religious rule and the ideal of pious, innocent, and politically disinterested behavior that allowed them to challenge absolutism effectively. Adopting methods from cultural studies, feminism, and the Cambridge School of political thought, Kostroun examines how these nuns placed gender at the heart of the Jansenist challenge to the patriarchal and religious foundations of absolutism. They responded to royal persecution with a feminist defense of women’s spiritual and rational equality and of the autonomy of the individual subject, thereby offering a bold challenge to the patriarchal and religious foundations of absolutism. Daniella Kostroun is currently Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis. She is the coeditor (with Lisa Vollendorf) of Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600– 1800) and the author of “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,” which appeared in the Journal of Modern History and won the 2004 Chester Penn Higby Prize by the Modern European History section of the American Historical Association.

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns

DANIELLA KOSTROUN Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao ˜ Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107000452  C Daniella Kostroun 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Kostroun, Daniella J., 1970– Feminism, absolutism, and Jansenism : Louis XIV and the Port-Royal nuns / Daniella Kostroun. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-00045-2 (hardback) 1. Cistercian nuns – France – History – 17th century. 2. Port-Royal des Champs (Abbey) – History – 17th century. 3. Louis XIV, King of France, 1638–1715 – Political and social views. 4. Jansenists – France – History – 17th century. 5. Patriarchy – France – History – 17th century. 6. Feminism – France – History – 17th century. 7. Despotism – France – History – 17th century. 8. Religious absolutism – France – History – 17th century. 9. France – Politics and government – 1643–1715. 10. France – Religion – 17th century. I. Title. bx4328.z9p64 2011 2010031629 273 .7–dc22 isbn 978-1-107-00045-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Johnny

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations

page ix xiii

1

Introduction Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

1 18

2

Controversy and Reform at Port-Royal

51

3

Jansenism’s Political Turn, 1652–1661

78

4

The Limits to Obedience, 1661–1664

104

5

A Feminist Response to Absolutism, 1664–1669

141

6 7

The Unsettled Peace, 1669–1679 A Royal Victory, 1679–1709

182 206

Conclusion

239

Bibliography Index

247 263

vii

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible had I not received support and encouragement from many institutions and individuals over the years. I am forever grateful to my undergraduate mentor, the late Nan Karwan-Cutting, for initially sparking my interest in French history. Steven Kaplan, another undergraduate mentor, was the one to suggest that I study Jansenist women in the first place. In graduate school, William Reddy and Kristen Neuschel were my thesis advisors. Both have remained valued mentors and friends over the years. I also want to thank the other members of my thesis committee, Donald Reid, Jay Smith, and Susan Thorne, for all of their help and advice. This project could not have been completed without the financial support I received from the two schools where I have taught, Stonehill College and Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). In addition, funding from the Duke University–University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for European Studies; the Center for International Studies at Duke University; the Erasmus Institute of Notre Dame; the Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the Mellon Foundation (via the Gutenberg-e project) supported research for this project. While conducting research, I received invaluable help from the staff and librarians at the Cornell University Kroch Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Ithaca, New York; the Interlibrary Loan Department at Stonehill College MacPhaidin Library in Easton, Massachusetts; the Biblioth`eque Nationale in Paris; the Archives Nationales in Paris; and the Rijksarchief in Utrecht, Holland. I owe a special thank you to Valerie and Fabien Vandermarcq at the ´ Guitienne-Murger ¨ ix

x

Acknowledgments

Biblioth`eque de la Societ ´ e´ de Port-Royal in Paris for sharing their knowledge and expertise with me, for facilitating my access to large numbers of documents during short research trips to France, and for their hospitality over afternoon tea. I have presented portions of the research and ideas that appear in this book on earlier occasions and am grateful for the thoughtful feedback I received from my colleagues. In addition to thanking my colleagues who provided feedback at annual meetings for the Society of French Historical Studies, the Western Society for French History, and the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, I also want to thank the members of the Triangle French Studies Group, the Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies at UCLA, the Women and Culture in Early Modern Europe Seminar at the Humanities Center of Harvard University, and the Religious Studies Department at IUPUI. The people in these groups read drafts of my research and provided me with useful and often in-depth comments. I do not know how I can ever thank enough my most assiduous readers who read entire drafts of this manuscript multiple times: Thomas Carr Jr., William Reddy, Susan Rosa, and the anonymous readers at Cambridge University Press. Others who read my work and helped me to clarify my ideas in important ways are Johnny Goldfinger, Mich`ele Longino, John Lyons, Sarah Maza, Edward Muir, Malina Stefanovska, Philip Stewart, Dale Van Kley, Ellen Weaver-Laporte, and Rebecca Wilkin. Stephanie O’Hara not only lent her critical eye to the text, but she also helped me with many of my translations. Others who have helped me, inspired me, and encouraged me as I worked on this project are my colleagues, past and present, in the history departments at Stonehill College and at IUPUI, Michael Breen, Mita Choudhury, Katie Conboy, Kirsten Delegard, Barbara Diefendorf, Cecile Dubois, Eliza Ferguson, Natalie Goss, Janine ´ Lanza, Anthony LaVopa, Marina Leslie, Linda Lierheimer, Elie Lobel, Shari Lowin, Keith Luria, Wendy Peek, Jennifer Perlmutter, Amy Smith, Sara Spaulding, Courtney Spikes, Lisa Vollendorf, Sydney Watts, and Rafia Zakaria. This book has been improved and enriched by the insight of all the people here mentioned. I am responsible for the imperfections that remain. I want to thank my editor at Cambridge University Press, Beatrice Rehl, for believing in this project. I also am grateful for the help I received in producing the manuscript from Emily Spangler at Cambridge University Press and Brigitte Coulton of the Aptara Corporation. Before finding a home for this manuscript at Cambridge, I received invaluable guidance

Acknowledgments

xi

and advice from Kate Wittenberg, editor of the Gutenberg-e series at Columbia University Press/Epic; Elizabeth Fairhead of the American Historical Association; and Alisa Plant of Louisiana State University Press. As every working mother knows, you are only as good as your childcare. For this reason, I want to thank the Early Childhood Program at Fairview Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, as well as Evelyn Hovee, Amy Hovee, Indhu Raghavan, and Sindhu Raghavan for providing reliable, loving care for my children over the years. I owe a special thanks to Dorothy Delegard and Danielle Houser who traveled to France with me to care for my children as I worked in the archives. Finally, I want to thank those who saw me through this project on a day-to-day basis. This includes the members of my Active Researchers Group: Terri Carney, Tamara Leech, Kristy Sheeler, and Jennifer Thorington-Springer. For more than two years now, I have met on a weekly basis with these remarkable women from Butler University and IUPUI to set my writing goals and to report on my progress. They have consistently encouraged me, goaded me, coached me, and kept me focused on my project over this time. I also want to thank Hel` ´ ene and Jean-Pierre Briand, dear family friends, who have treated me like one of their own ever since I was in grade school. I do not think I could ever have balanced the demands of my family life and my career as a French historian had they not always welcomed me and my children to stay with them in Paris and kept us fortified with incomparable French meals. I owe eternal gratitude to my parents, Val and Winnie Kostroun who have always encouraged me and believed in me. And last but not least, I want to thank my husband Johnny Goldfinger, my mother-in-law Myrtle Goldfinger, and my children Kenny and Cody Goldfinger. These are the people who make my daily life joyful. Parts of the introduction, conclusion, and Chapter Five were published in “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,” The Journal of Modern History 75 (September): 483–522. Permission to reproduce that material here is gratefully acknowledged.

Abbreviations

AN Ars. BN BPR Ms. Mss. Ff. UPR

Archives nationales de France Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal Biblioth`eque nationale de France Biblioth`eque de la Societ ´ e´ de Port-Royal Manuscript Manuscrits fonds franc¸ais Port Royal Collection, Rijksarchief, Utrecht, Holland

xiii

Introduction

On October 29, 1709, King Louis XIV sent his royal lieutenant of police, along with 200 troops, into the valley of the Chevreuse, twelve miles west of Paris, to shut down the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs. Sixty years earlier, Port-Royal had been a flourishing community containing more than 150 nuns. By 1709 there were only twenty-two left, all over the age of fifty and several of them infirm. On arrival, the lieutenant assembled the nuns in the convent’s parlor and read them an order from the royal council stating that they were to be removed from the convent “for the good of the state.” He then presented them with lettres de cachet (special royal warrants signed by the king) sentencing each nun to exile in separate convents across France. They had only three hours to pack their belongings, eat a final meal, and say good-bye to one another. He then loaded them into carriages and drove them away. Shortly after that, Louis XIV’s men exhumed Port-Royal’s cemetery, dumped the remains in a mass grave, and razed the buildings to the ground. How can we account for this episode in which Louis XIV personally ordered the destruction of a convent containing so few nuns? How could these women pose a threat to the state? Port-Royal’s destruction becomes even more mysterious when we consider that it occurred at a time of political and domestic crisis for the French Crown. The war with Spain and a series of bad harvests made the first decade of the eighteenth century one of the more difficult periods in Louis XIV’s long reign.1 The king’s administrative correspondence reveals that he took a personal interest in 1

Andrew Lossky, Louis XIV and the French Monarchy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 271.

1

2

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

suppressing Port-Royal in spite of these other pressing crises.2 Indeed, the matter was so urgent to him that his lettres de cachet and his order to close the convent circumvented a judicial review of the convent’s status in a blatant exercise of absolute authority. Why, then, did Louis XIV destroy Port-Royal? To answer this question, this book explores the role of women and gender in the French Jansenist conflict from its origins in 1640 to Port-Royal’s destruction in 1709. Founded in 1215 as a Cistercian convent,3 PortRoyal is best known as the center of Jansenism, the famous seventeenthcentury heresy named after the Flemish bishop Cornelius Jansen (1585– 1638) that Louis XIV persecuted throughout his reign. Although scholars are familiar with Jansenist resistance by men such as Antoine Arnauld,4 Blaise Pascal,5 and Pierre Nicole6 – all of whom have had a lasting influence on French philosophy, literature, and pedagogy – much less is known about Port-Royal’s cloistered women and the powerful role they played in the Jansenist controversy. Many of these women were the sisters and nieces of Jansen’s most illustrious defenders, and like their male kin, they were highly educated and fully invested in defending the theological and ecclesiastical values Jansen promoted in his writings. By uncovering their actions, this book not only explains the convent’s destruction but also reveals a forgotten episode of female political activism in Old Regime France. 2 3

4

5

6

Albert Le Roy, La France et Rome de 1700 a` 1715 (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1976), 235–94. The words “convent” and ‘monastery” technically denote religious communities of either sex. In this work, I use the term “convent” according to its popular sense as a community of women. See article “convent” in the Catholic Encyclopedia Online: http://www. newadvent.org/cathen/04340c.htm. Antoine Arnauld (1612–94), known as “le grand” Arnauld, was a doctor of the Sorbonne and priest. He is best known for writing the Port-Royal Logic and for his numerous apologetic works on Jansen. His sister Jacqueline (Marie-Angelique de Sainte Madeleine ´ in religion) reformed Port-Royal by enforcing enclosure in 1609. Many of his female relatives, including his mother, became nuns at Port-Royal. Blaise Pascal (1623–62), born in Clermont (Auvergne), was Port-Royal’s most famous adherent. He was a noted mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and writer. He became closely connected to Port-Royal after his sister Jacqueline joined the convent as a nun in 1646. Pierre Nicole (1625–95) was a theologian and writer who originally had ties to Port-Royal through female cousins who were nuns there. In 1654 he became Antoine Arnauld’s principal collaborator and worked with him on many of Port-Royal’s most significant texts, including the Port-Royal Logic. He also wrote several treatises of note on his own. The most famous of these are his Moral Essays (1671–8), three of which were translated into English by John Locke.

Introduction

3

Creating Separate Spheres: Port-Royal and Jansenism It is surprising that we pay so little attention today to the nuns’ resistance to Louis XIV, considering that they left abundant sources documenting their opposition in the form of journals, memoirs, and letters. Then again, this oversight makes sense when we consider the deliberate efforts by the nuns and their supporters to downplay and cover up their actions in these same sources. These efforts had their roots in the earliest polemical exchanges in France in the 1640s in which critics denounced Jansenism as a heresy by exploiting a traditional association of heresy with “unruly” women.7 The Port-Royal nuns had been connected to Jansen through their confessor, Jean-Ambroise Duvergier de Hauranne, the abbe´ of SaintCyran (henceforth Saint-Cyran), who was also Jansen’s closest friend and supporter in France. Jansen’s critics exploited his connection to the nuns in their sermons and pamphlets to make the case that he had founded a new heresy. To counter these accusations, Jansen’s defenders insisted on the nuns’ disinterest in the theological controversy and on their exacting obedience to the Benedictine Rule (the monastic rule governing Cistercian convents such as Port-Royal). Thus began a tradition among Jansen’s male supporters of distancing the nuns from the conflict as much as possible. However, this tradition involved a delicate balancing act for Jansen’s supporters, because as self-proclaimed “disciples” of Augustine of Hippo, these men believed that they were defending fundamental truths about the Christian religion, ones that all members of the faith (even “disinterested” nuns) needed to know and understand. Specifically, they were defending the doctrine of efficacious grace, meaning they believed that human beings are completely helpless in securing their own salvation. They wrote in opposition to Molinists (most of whom were Jesuits supporting the writings of their fellow priest, Luis de Molina), who espoused a doctrine of sufficient grace, meaning they believed that humans can participate in their salvation through the exercise of free will.8 Because the Jansenist debates raged over such a core issue of faith, and because critics were denouncing the Port-Royal nuns for meddling in theological 7

8

The symbol of the heretical woman first became a common polemical trope in the fourth century. Virginia Burrus, “The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome,” Harvard Theological Review 84, no. 3 (July 1991): 229–48. Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal’s Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3–5, 24–30.

4

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

matters prohibited to them by the Pauline interdictions,9 Jansen’s defenders found themselves in the delicate position of arguing for the nuns’ right to know theological truths about grace while denying that this knowledge was rooted in Jansen’s text and the debates it generated. This dilemma became a crisis in 1661 once Louis XIV demanded the signatures of all members of the Church, male and female, to a formulary denouncing five propositions from Jansen’s text according to the terms set by two anti-Jansenist papal bulls. Jansen’s defenders saw in the king’s formulary a trap – their choice was either to condemn Jansen (and by extension Augustine, they believed) or to refuse to sign the oath and become criminals in the eyes of their king. Neither solution was desirable as they considered themselves to be both good Catholics and loyal subjects. They believed that the only reason they faced this dilemma was because of the machinations of the king’s corrupt (Jesuit) confessors. In their search for a solution, many of Jansen’s defenders signed the formulary with mental reservations that they explained in supplementary clauses inserted above their signatures. Antoine Arnauld crafted the most famous of these clauses, which tacitly argued that the heretical doctrine in the five propositions did not appear in Jansen’s text. Those who signed the formulary with Arnauld’s clause condemned the heretical doctrine contained within the propositions with “heart and mouth,” but remained “respectfully silent” on the pope’s attribution of the doctrinal errors to Jansen. Arnauld’s compromise, known as the “right/fact distinction,” upheld the Church’s right to demand belief in matters of doctrine, but denied its authority to demand belief in matters of empirical fact. Arnauld encouraged the nuns to sign the formulary with his distinction, believing that the Pauline interdictions justified his call for silence on the factual question of whether Jansen authored the heretical doctrine contained in the propositions. A faction of nuns challenged him by asserting that female ignorance of a theological text was no excuse for the distinction, which they believed was a compromise. They argued instead that the Church’s command for female silence demanded the more radical response of rejecting the formulary altogether on the grounds that it 9

The “Pauline interdictions” were the traditions that prevented women from teaching and studying theology in the Church. They were based on passages from Paul of Tarsus’ epistles in which he ordered female silence. Thomas M. Carr Jr. cites the relevant passages from Paul and discusses how their legacy shaped women’s spiritual leadership in medieval and early modern monastic communities in Voix des abbesses du Grand Si`ecle: La Pr´edication au f´eminin a` Port-Royal (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006), 38–42. ¨

Introduction

5

violated all reason by asking women to testify to the contents of a book that the Church forbade them from reading. The debate over female knowledge at the time of the formulary created deep divisions within the Port-Royal community. Blaise Pascal, who had originally collaborated with Arnauld in promoting the right/fact distinction, now rejected his colleague’s arguments in favor of those forwarded by his sister Jacqueline, Arnauld’s leading critic among the nuns. This embarrassing split between Jansen’s most famous defenders explains why Jansenist apologists, who were already inclined to downplay the nuns’ participation to deflect accusations that they were unruly women, now actively sought to erase their initiatives from the record. By insisting on the nuns’ female innocence and ignorance and by glossing over these events, seventeenth-century apologists removed the evidence of a highly charged and fractious moment in the history of Port-Royal. When a new generation of historians began chronicling the Jansenist debates in the eighteenth century, they insisted on the nuns’ perfect innocence and ignorance for their own reasons. By this time, both Louis XIV and the last of the Port-Royal nuns were deceased, and a new Jansenist conflict had erupted under the regency government over the papal bull Unigenitus (1713). During the Unigenitus controversy, Jansenist historians stressed the nuns’ innocence to promote a myth of Port-Royal in which the convent symbolized all that was religiously pure about Jansen’s defenders.10 By insisting on Port-Royal’s religious purity and complete disinterest in the world, these historians sought not only to contrast the convent’s legacy against the moral depravities of the Crown but also to uphold it as a new incarnation of the ancient temple of Jerusalem and to cast its male supporters in the role of the Maccabees – the Biblical family of priests chosen by God to defend the purity of the Jewish religion.11 Port-Royal thus became part of a political drama in which Jansen’s eighteenth-century defenders invested their struggles against Unigenitus with theological significance as a divine reenactment of a prefigured struggle from the Old Testament to preserve the integrity of the Church from wordly corruption.12 In his six-volume work titled Port-Royal (1840), literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve adopts the myth of Port-Royal’s worldly

10 11 12

Catherine Maire, De la cause de dieu a` la cause de la nation: Le jans´enisme au XVIIIe si`ecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 191. Ibid., 185, 191. Ibid., 194.

6

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

indifference to transform the convent into a cornerstone of France’s classical heritage. At the beginning of this study, Sainte-Beuve argues that historians of Jansenism and historians of Port-Royal fall into two distinct camps. One deals with the progress of a dogmatic dispute surrounding Jansen’s text in the universities, clerical assemblies, and Rome. This dispute was noisy, punctuated by “stubborn debates,” “intrigue,” and “outcries” between Jesuit priests and university theologians.13 The second camp focuses on the Port-Royal convent, the reform established there by its abbess Marie-Angelique de Sainte Madeleine Arnauld (henceforth ´ Angelique Arnauld), the penitential practices of the nuns and the solitaires ´ (a pious community of male recluses who congregated at Port-Royal), and the scholarly and literary output of the solitaires. In contrast to the Jansenist debates, Sainte-Beuve characterizes Port-Royal by the silence of the cloister, the simplicity of its rural setting, and the inner calm of the soul its inhabitants achieved through private study and contemplation. He acknowledges that the Jansenist debates disturbed Port-Royal with an unfortunate frequency, but he dismisses these disruptions as anomalies, thus keeping the community of nuns and pious men living there intact and inviolable.14 Sainte-Beuve’s highly influential study set the pattern for future studies, which continued to reinforce the divide between studies of Jansenism and of Port-Royal. Historians have helped promote this division by conceding the spiritual, literary, and philosophical legacy of Port-Royal to the seventeenth century and by orienting their studies of Jansenism and its “noisy” politics toward the eighteenth century. Edmund Preclin’s Les ´ Jans´enistes du XVIIIe si`ecle et la Constitution civil du Clerg´e (1929) set this course by drawing a connection between the ecclesiastical reforms promoted by the syndic of the Sorbonne, Edmond Richer (1560–1631), and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of the French Revolution.15 Dale Van Kley’s The Religious Origins of the French Revolution (1996), establishes Jansenism as an eighteenth-century phenomenon that rivals the Enlightenment as an intellectual and cultural origin of the French Revolution.16 In both cases, even though these authors locate the roots 13 14 15 16

Charles Augustin de Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal (Paris: Gallimard, 1954–5), 1:114. Ibid., 1:114–15. Edmund Preclin, Les Jans´enistes du XVIII si`ecle et la Constitution civile du Clerg´e (Paris: ´ Libraire Universitaire J. Gamber, 1929). Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975). For the concept of origins

Introduction

7

of the Jansenist conflict at the turn of the seventeenth century, they limit their discussions of that period to one chapter and pick up their stories in earnest in the eighteenth century. The result from these studies is that we now have detailed narratives of the eighteenth-century Jansenist debates as they wended their way in and out of various educational, legal, and political institutions leading up to the French Revolution. However, no such narrative exists for the seventeenth century. Instead, we have separate histories for various institutions (the Sorbonne, the General Assembly of the Clergy, the monarchy, etc.) in which the topic of Jansenism arises on occasion. Without a comprehensive narrative of how politics and Jansenism intersected across the seventeenth century, it is difficult to explain why Louis XIV persecuted the Port-Royal nuns for heresy with such urgency and why they, in turn, resisted. Thus, to uncover the nuns’ resistance to the king, we must also reconstruct the history of seventeenth-century Jansenist politics. Both tasks entail shunting aside the myth of Port-Royal. Port-Royal and Jansenism: An Integrated View To unpack the myth of Port-Royal and return the nuns to the historical record as agents in a struggle against their king, this book begins with three assertions. First, anxiety over women’s leadership in reforming the French Church following the Wars of Religion gave rise to a unique preoccupation with heretical plots in the French Jansenist debates. Second, the Port-Royal nuns were politically conscious at the same time that they were religious in their behavior. Third, the French monarchy laid the foundation for its claims to divine right rule through the persecution of Port-Royal. These three factors set the stage for Louis XIV’s conflict with the Port-Royal nuns. Chapter 1 examines how social anxieties triggered by women’s initiatives to rebuild the French Church following the Wars of Religion17 contributed to the outbreak of the Jansenist debates in France. The theological debates originated in Belgium, but France was where polemicists accused one another of heresy and plotting to destroy the Church. Jansen’s

17

and the French Revolution see Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Transl. Lydia Cochrane (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 4–7. Elizabeth Rapley, The D´evotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990) 23–41. Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

8

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

critics bolstered their accusations by drawing on the traditional polemical trope associating women with heresy. They found a convenient opportunity to use this trope in the case of Saint-Cyran. Yet this opportunity only existed because Angelique Arnauld was a prominent reformer in her own ´ right whose initiatives had already generated considerable controversy and anxiety in French society. By linking Angelique to Jansen, polemi´ cists infused their anti-Jansenist discourses with these contemporary fears and anxieties stemming from her leadership. This overlap between antiJansenism and anxiety over female leadership at Port-Royal became an enduring feature of the Jansenist debates. Chapter 2 explains how the accusations of heresy leveled against the Port-Royal nuns generated among them a new political consciousness. By “political consciousness” I mean that the nuns became more sensitive to relationships of influence both inside and outside the convent, and they engaged in power struggles to shape the character and policies of the institutions to which they belonged. The nuns’ approach to politics was rooted in the ideas of Augustine, who believed in a close relationship between human politics and faith.18 For Augustine, Christians were disinterested in politics in the sense that, unlike Judaism or Islam, which carried their own legal codes, the form of government and laws to which Christians adhered did not matter.19 What did matter was whether politics created occasions for “impiety and sin.”20 He argued that Christians – both men and women – had a duty to prevent sin both in their own actions and in the actions of others.21 Augustine emphasized this communal responsibility to avoid sin in his work City of God, defending Christianity from accusations that it had caused the fall of Rome.22 Rather than weakening the polity, he maintained that Christianity created model patriots because Christians were vigilant against vice and corruption, the true causes of the decline of cities and nations. Therefore, Christians were “a great benefit for the republic” because their religious duty to combat sin overlapped 18 19

20 21

22

Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 35. Ernest Fortin, “Introduction.” In Augustine: Political Writings, ed. Ernest L. Fortin and Douglas Kries, trans. Michael W. Tkacz and Douglas Kries (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), viii. Ibid., vii. The quote comes from City of God, V 17. Augustine of Hippo, City of God (425), book 19, chapter 16. Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120119.htm.: “To be innocent, we must not only do harm to no man, but also restrain him from sin or punish his sin.” On the equality of men and women in the potential for sin, see Augustine, On the Trinity. Fortin, “Introduction,” ix.

Introduction

9

with the needs of their polity.23 This imperative to combat sin was the justification for and motivation behind the nuns’ political behavior. Other political ideas that the nuns took from Augustine included the assumption that political authority, regardless of its form (monarchy, republic, oligarchy, etc.), is patriarchal by nature.24 They also subscribed to Augustine’s position that political authority could be used to discipline heterodox Christians to bring them back to orthodoxy. Augustine argued this position during the Donatist controversy, in which he justified the use of fear and coercion against Donatists as a “softening up process” or a “teaching by inconveniences” that would make them more receptive to true religion.25 His support for the use of force against Donatists is the corollary to his belief that Christians must accept oppression and suffering as natural consequences of the human condition. Using the metaphor of the olive press, Augustine argued that the pressurae mundi (the calamities inflicted on the human community) always had a positive result on the spirit: “The world reels under crushing blows; the old man is shaken out, the flesh is pressed, the spirit turns to clear flowing oil.”26 He counseled Christians to embrace their suffering, be it the result of political or natural forces, as a form of positive discipline designed to purify their spirit. Augustine’s ideas, which posit an intimate relationship between personal faith and human politics, formed the basis of the nuns’ political consciousness and explain why they engaged in the Jansenist controversy. When polemicists first began accusing the Port-Royal nuns of heresy, Saint-Cyran counseled Angelique to view these attacks as pres´ surae mundi, ultimately sent to her by the grace of God to purify her spirit and her reforms. From then on, whenever the convent came under attack Angelique prompted the Port-Royal nuns to turn inward and redouble ´ their efforts to combat sin within themselves and in the cloister. As they focused their energies inward, they also believed that their personal battles to combat sin were consistent with the needs to combat sin within the polity, and that they might even produce real results in this outside battle. 23 24

25 26

Ibid., xii. The quote comes from Augustine’s Letter 138, 2. Augustine, City of God, book 19, ch. 16. Peter Brown argues that the paternalism he suggests as the ideal form of government was based on his own experiences as bishop. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 324. Ibid., 233. Serm, 6; cf. Ep. 111, 2. Cited in Ibid., 232.

10

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

Chapter 3 introduces the notion that the French Crown persecuted Jansenism – and by extension the Port-Royal nuns – as a strategy to combat the loyal opposition of noble elites who saw themselves as protecting the Crown from Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-61), the powerful royal minister that they considered to be a foreign “usurper.”27 Mazarin developed this strategy during the Fronde (1648–53) when he threw his weight behind a clerical faction demanding a papal bull against Jansen in the hopes that it would help him dispose of Jean-Franc¸ois Paul de Gondi, the Cardinal de Retz (1613–79), archlorshop or Paris, and leader of a rebellious faction of nobles. Mazarin attacked Port-Royal, then the largest convent under Retz’s jurisdiction, as part of this campaign to undermine his rival’s authority. However, this meddling in the Jansenist debates ignited opposition from bishops and members of Parlement who argued that Mazarin’s request for the bull favored papal authority at the expense of the traditional liberties of the French, or “Gallican,” Church. Mazarin responded to this Gallican resistance by accusing these recalcitrant bishops and parlementaires of Jansenism. Accusations of Jansenism – which implied threats of incarceration and excommunication – thus became Mazarin’s tool for intimidating those who opposed him in the name of defending the liberties of the Gallican Church. When Louis XIV came to power in 1661, he further intimidated Gallican bishops and magistrates by declaring the campaign against Jansenism a matter of personal conscience. Within a decade, therefore, Mazarin’s strategy of persecuting Jansenism became an institutionalized royal policy used to bolster the Crown’s authority vis-`a-vis elites in the French Church and Parlement. Agency and Feminism at Port-Royal The first three chapters outline the necessary preconditions for the conflict between the king and nuns that led to Port-Royal’s destruction. In the remaining chapters, I describe how these developments interacted under Louis XIV’s reign. To explain how the conflict between king and nuns developed over time, I have found particularly useful the methods of J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, and others whose works are associated with the Cambridge School for the study of early modern political thought. These scholars share a concern for how human agents employed language 27

Jay Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 119–23.

Introduction

11

to suit their political purposes in the premodern era. They acknowledge that human agents receive language in a preexisting form, which contains meanings, discourses, and conventions beyond one’s control. Nevertheless, they reject the notion that set language forms determine and define human consciousness. Instead, they argue that individual agents find ways to create new meanings of language by using it selectively in specific political and social contexts.28 This ability to create new meanings of language in turn opens the possibility for new ideological contexts and new forms of political behavior. Political actors thus both create and perpetuate a dynamic relationship between linguistic meaning and its context. Skinner’s work, which employs the speech act theory of J. L. Austen to recover authorial intention in the writings of early modern authors, has been particularly influential to this study.29 Skinner calls for a reading of texts that takes both their “locutionary” and “illocutionary” meanings into consideration. “Locutionary meaning” refers to the sense of the words within the utterance itself, and “illocutionary meaning” refers to the performative action and force intended by the author in uttering those words. Skinner argues that, to fully understand the meaning of historical texts, we must consider both the linguistic content and the linguistic force intended by their authors when writing these texts.30 The religious debates over Jansenism evolved into a political conflict between king and nuns because of how human agents invested the debates with new meanings by situating them strategically within new linguistic and ideological contexts. When tracing male polemicists’ agency in this development, the method is straightforward. For instance, one can clearly detect the moment when French controversialists tied the problem of Jansen to anxieties over women by locating the passages where they first mentioned women in their published polemical works. In contrast, detecting the nuns’ agency is more difficult because of the way gender – via the Pauline interdictions – shaped their relationship with language. The Pauline interdictions established the tradition of female silence in the Church on the basis of ancient assumptions about women’s natural inferiority and vulnerability to corruption. Because of a fear that women were more vulnerable to sin, the Church commanded silence so 28 29 30

Anthony Pagden, “Introduction.” In The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1–2. J. L. Austen, How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Volume I: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), preface.

12

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

that they would be more obedient (the verb “to obey” is rooted in the Greek word “to listen”). For the nuns, this tradition of silence and obedience meant that they could not openly adopt or manipulate discourses the way men did. Instead, they had to approach language using what scholars of Teresa of Avila have identified as a “rhetoric” for women.31 This rhetoric is a strategy of persuasion appropriate for both women writers and readers because it transmits knowledge about faith and the Church without using the vocabulary or terminology of trained theologians. Early modern women developed a remarkable variety of rhetorical strategies to circumvent the restrictions placed on their sex, ranging from the self-deprecating “rhetoric of femininity” used by Teresa of Avila,32 the “psychological automatism”33 of the mystical revelations of Barbe of Acarie, to the audacious refashioning of the “perfect nun” by Juana Ines ´ de la Cruz.34 In the case of the Port-Royal nuns, I call their rhetorical strategy the “science of saints,” which I define according to how Saint-Cyran used the term. Saint-Cyran described the science of saints as the opposite of scholasticism. Whereas scholasticism involved discovering the truth through conscious reflection and reasoning over sacred texts, the science of saints involved receiving wisdom in ways that were “above [human] nature . . . [and] seemingly in contradiction with reason.”35 Although people received this wisdom without using reason, Saint-Cyran believed that they internalized it alongside reason to the point that one could hardly distinguish between the two sources of knowledge. It was no accident that all of the Church’s greatest theologians were also saints who led exemplary lives.36 This aspect of the science of saints overlaps with the medieval ideal of concordia, or complete harmony between one’s beliefs with one’s actions.37 Concordia meant that whatever these great theologians taught in words they also taught through example. For Saint-Cyran, 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 10–11. Ibid., 11. Linda Timmermans, L’Acc`es des femmes a` la culture (1597–1715) (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 1993), 521. Kathleen Ann Myers, Neither Saints nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 93–115. Jean Orcibal, La spiritualit´e de Saint-Cyran avec ses e´ crits de pi´et´e in´edits (Paris: Vrin, 1962), 110. Ibid., 111. John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,” American Historical Review 102 (Dec. 1997): 1309–42.

Introduction

13

this ideal was what excluded his Jesuit opponents from the tradition of saints. He noted that, of all the saintly theologians, only two from the scholastic tradition (the tradition championed by his Jesuit opponents) had ever been canonized. The problem with the scholastics was that their emphasis on reason derived from a human appetite for wisdom, the libido sciendi, and not from a true inner desire to submit to God’s grace.38 The human origins of their search for knowledge meant that they could never achieve the perfection of concordia. Saint-Cyran’s science of saints had special significance for the nuns. If a Christian could read the scholarship of saintly theologians or contemplate their exemplary lives to equal benefit, then the Pauline interdictions in no way disadvantaged women because even though they could not read theological texts, the nuns still had full access to these men’s theological insights by observing their pious examples. Conversely, when it came to the Jansenist debates, the notion that saints’ exemplary lives were legitimate expressions of their theological truth meant that these women could uphold these truths figuratively by modeling themselves after these saints.39 The concept of the “science of saints” allows us to see that the PortRoyal nuns too strategically manipulated discourses within the shifting theological and political contexts of the Jansenist debates, but in their case, they communicated figuratively by modeling the exemplary and pious behaviors valued by Jansen’s apologists. Because their writings always had locutionary meanings that were grounded in the concerns and actions of pious Christians, these texts took on political significance only at the illocutionary level. In other words, to detect the nuns’ agency in the Jansenist debates, we must focus on the performative force of their pious discourses and on how they implicitly supported or discredited the more overt theological and political discourses of male polemicists. The Pauline restrictions are only one reason it is harder to detect the nuns’ agency in these debates. Another reason has to do with the Augustinian roots of their ideas about politics. Augustine’s most political work,City of God, rarely mentions the word politics. He remains silent on the subject because he forwards a political theory that paradoxically denies its political nature because in his view Christians should engage 38 39

Jean Orcibal, La spiritualit´e de Saint-Cyran, 110. Angelique Arnauld’s older brother Antoine Arnauld d’Andilly (1589–1674) published ´ several translations of books of saint’s lives for Port-Royal, including the complete works of Teresa of Avila. His published works are listed in his entry in the Dictionnaire de PortRoyal.

14

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

in politics only to avoid sin. Even though Christians act politically in the sense that they try to persuade others in the decision-making process, Augustine defines these actions as religious and not political because they are motivated by divine grace and not by human volition and its will to power. Therefore, as in the case of their language, the nuns’ political actions are more difficult to detect because they remain grounded in discourses of religion that deny any human interest or agency behind their acts. Although the nuns’ complex relationship to language and politics has deep roots in the Christian tradition, these women remain elusive to us because of the way social scientists have defined agency to privilege traditionally “masculine” and humanistic behaviors in the Western tradition.40 Nevertheless, once we consider the nuns’ behavior according to their own principles about language and politics – principles that caused them to deny their own agency at the very moment they sought to influence others – we see that they, too, strategically moved discourses within different contexts to create new meanings and ideological contexts. Their actions also shaped the course of the Jansenist debates and prompted Louis XIV to see them as a threat to his authority. Limits to Absolutism and Early Modern Feminism The methods of the Cambridge School help explain how the Jansenist debates evolved over time. These methods also help us see how Jansenism relates to the histories of absolutism and feminism. In the case of absolutism, Dale Van Kley credits Jansenism for limiting absolute authority in ways that contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution. His explanation for why Jansenism brought absolutism “to its knees” has to do with the way it reflected and opposed the foundations of divine right monarchy.41 As the French Crown tried to raise itself above the confessional fray following the Wars of Religion, Jansenism synthesized the two poles of religious opposition that had challenged its authority during the civil wars: “What marched under the banner of Jansenism somehow united some of the biblical, doctrinal, and presbyterian ecclesiastical tendencies of the Protestant Reformation with the apologetical miracles

40

41

Webb Keane, “From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and Their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (1997): 676. Van Kley, Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 12.

Introduction

15

and some of the chief social constituencies of the Catholic League.”42 Catherine Maire similarly describes Jansenism as a polar opposite to absolutism: [Jansenism] was [absolutism’s] . . . religious mirror, its phantom. . . . Against the political religion of reason of State, Jansenism opposed a religious politics, that of an absolute God.”43 Whereas historians have found this reflexive relationship useful for explaining why Jansenism successfully limited absolute authority, the question of how this movement “somehow united” these different religious factions, or how it became absolutism’s “religious mirror” in the first place remains unanswered. This study argues that this reflexive and oppositional relationship between absolutism and Jansenism derived from the Port-Royal nuns’ resistance to persecution. This persecution originated in the general disorder and turbulent political climate following the Wars of Religion. In these years, Angelique unwittingly sparked controversy through ´ her reform efforts and allied herself with Saint-Cyran – one of Richelieu’s devout critics – out of circumstance and necessity. Later, once the Crown began persecuting Port-Royal as part of its campaign to suppress Gallican resistance among French bishops and parlementaires, the nuns resisted strategically by moving their discourses about their observance of the Benedictine Rule into the new ideological context created by the Crown so that when they defended their reform, their arguments had the force of supporting the Gallican cause. The mirror opposition between Jansenism and absolutism by this point was no accident; it was the product of the cumulative layers of meaning that became attached to Port-Royal’s reform as the nuns defended it within different ideological contexts. Attention to the dynamic relationship between meaning and context, a central notion of the Cambridge School, helps explain how Jansenism became the mirror opposite to absolutism. Another central concept from this school – that all speech acts contain both locutionary and illocutionary meanings – helps us situate the nuns’ resistance to the Crown within the history of feminism. One of the more persistent and contested issues among historians of women is how to define feminism in the past. Although nobody questions the modern origins of the term feminism in its ideological sense, there is debate over whether we can still call past instances of female agency and resistance against patriarchy 42 43

Ibid. Catherine Maire, “Port-Royal: La fracture janseniste.” In Les Lieux de m´emoire, vol 3, ´ Les France, book 1: conflits et partages, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 474.

16

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

feminism. Some historians have dealt with the problem by avoiding the term altogether in studies that consider the period before the late nineteenth century, which was when the word first came into use.44 Others, notably Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, have dealt with this problem by arguing that we should not consider instances of early modern feminism as isolated precursors to the “real” feminism of the modern period, but as instances of feminist activity that are specific to their historical context. To this end, Akkerman and Stuurman have identified six subperiods or “waves” of feminism starting with late medieval and Renaissance feminism (1400–1600) and ending with contemporary feminism (1960–present). According to their periodization, the Jansenist debates corresponded with the wave of rationalist feminism (1700–1800), the era when the long-standing querelle des femmes (a literary debate over the status of women that dated to the fifteenth century) became increasingly focused on the question of women’s capacity for reason and access to learning.45 Joan Scott has also argued that feminism must be viewed as contingent to its specific historical and cultural context, but she posits a different method for identifying its expression in her work, Only Paradoxes to Offer.46 Drawing from the words and example set by the eighteenthcentury feminist Olympe de Gouges, Scott argues that feminists are those who raise and confront the paradoxes of an ideological system that espouses universal equality (in de Gouges’ case, the liberal ideology of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ) while it upholds sexual difference as a natural fact and basis for social differentiation. Scott maintains that de Gouges’ strategy of exposing paradoxes is a fundamental element of feminism: “The paradoxes I refer to are not the strategies of opposition, but the constitutive elements of feminism itself.”47 By defining feminism as “paradoxical in expression,” Scott creates the possibility for a comparative approach that “subordinates ideological differences among women to a structure of agency.”48

44 45

46 47 48

Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History (London: Routledge, 1998), 2. Ibid., 12. Joan Kelly, “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes.” In Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, 65–109. Timmermans, L’Acc`es des femmes a` la culture, 20. Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Ibid., 5. Ibid., 16.

Introduction

17

The advantage of Scott’s method for this study is that she essentially defines feminism as a speech act that uses gender paradoxes to create an illocutionary force of asserting female equality. The Port-Royal nuns performed this type of speech act for a brief moment in 1664 after the archbishop of Paris ordered them to sign the formulary condemning Jansen out of “human and ecclesiastical faith.” The notion of human faith was an old one used to denote the component of faith that is based on credible human authorities and reason. From the nuns’ perspective, the archbishop relegated their consciences to second-class status by asserting that they should make their oath out of human faith, not out of a fully divine faith. The nuns’ sense of mistreatment was further reinforced when the archbishop met with them individually to pressure them to sign through threats and intimidation. When the nuns resisted as they had before with gender-based arguments that highlighted the contradictions between the Church’s command for silence and the king’s command for their judgment against Jansen, their resistance took on the force of asserting female equality in matters of faith and conscience. In this way, the nuns’ feminism went beyond that of most secular feminists of the day, for although their focus on the contradictions of Louis XIV’s policies were tacit assertions of women’s capacity for reason, their defense of female reason entailed a demand for equal rights (in this case, the right to conscience). This brief moment of feminism reveals how discourses over religion, gender, and reason combined under pressure from absolutism in the seventeenth century to pry open a space for the more radical language of individual equality that came to dominate the eighteenth century. The Port-Royal nuns became part of this moment of rupture because of their belief in the Augustinian notion that both men and women shared the same potential for sin.49 Thus their defense of reason was not oriented toward an Enlightenment belief in human progress but toward a Christian imperative of protecting one’s soul from eternal damnation. Nevertheless, by staying committed to a particular worldview and set of beliefs in the face of the new invasion of conscience by Louis XIV, their struggle opened a door in which individual equality could be articulated. 49

Michael Moriarty, Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 40.

1 Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

Jansenism was the product of a theological debate that erupted at the University of Louvain shortly after the posthumous publication of Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinus in 1640.1 Augustinus not only revived theological debates over efficacious versus sufficient grace within the Catholic Church but it also exacerbated tensions between members of the regular and secular clergy when Jansen, a bishop, attacked the Jesuit order by likening the theses of recent Jesuit theologians to the heretical doctrine of ancient Pelagian authors.2 The Jesuits of Louvain countered with the charge that Jansen was the one who was reviving doctrinal errors by repeating the mistakes of Michael Baius, who preceded him on the faculty at Louvain and whose writings had been censored by Pope Pius V in 1567.3 Even though these debates over Augustinus originated in Belgium, they became most volatile in France and resulted in bitter factional struggles involving public denunciations and arrests for heresy. Among the reasons for this vehemence was a pervasive anxiety over the social readjustments taking place among the French nobility in the years following the Wars of Religion. These readjustments involved an increase in the number of new “robe” nobles who, in contrast to the traditional “sword” nobles, gained their title through professional and administrative service rather 1

2 3

Jean Orcibal, Jans´enius d’Ypres (1585–1638) (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1989), 15– 56. Leopold Willaert, S.J., Les origines du jans´enisme dans les Pays-Bas Catholiques ´ (Brussels: 1948). Lucien Ceyssens, “Que penser finalement de l’histoire du jansenisme et de l’antijan´ senisme?” Revue d’histoire eccl´esiastiques 88 (Jan–Mar 1993): 108–30. Antoine Adam. ´ Franc¸ois de Cleyn, Histoire de la controverse jans´eniste (1645), trans. Leon ´ Wuillaume (Rome: Institutum Historicum, 2001), 165.

18

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

19

than military service to the Crown.4 The integration of these new families into the nobility – most notably through the 1604 edict of the paulette making most venal offices fully inheritable – gave rise to a debate over to what extent individual talent, merit, and virtue could be legitimate criteria for ennoblement.5 As Carolyn Lougee has demonstrated, anxiety over the social mobility of new nobles was expressed in a revival of the querelle des femmes in the first half of the seventeenth century because of women’s important role in integrating new families into noble society in their salons.6 In the seventeenth century, this long-standing literary debate over the inherent nature of women became more narrowly focused on whether women asserted a positive or negative influence on French society.7 Those who supported the new social mobility within the nobility forwarded pro-women or feminist positions lauding women’s moral and intellectual contributions to society, whereas those opposed to this change adopted traditional misogynist discourses tying women to social unrest and disorder.8 This anxiety among the nobility and the accompanying querelle des femmes became integral to Jansenism through the case of Port-Royal’s reforming abbess, Angelique Arnauld. Angelique’s story reveals how the ´ ´ same social tensions and cultural arguments found in Parisian salons were also taking place in the Church. Angelique was the third child and ´ second daughter of Antoine Arnauld Sr. and Catherine Marion, both of whom came from families that had been recently ennobled through administrative service to the Crown.9 When Angelique was eight years ´ old, her family had her named coadjutor to the abbess of Port-Royal-desChamps, a thirteenth-century Cistercian convent that traditionally had been governed by daughters from the noble families that controlled PortRoyal’s neighboring estates. She became abbess in 1602 at the age of ten. Then, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she reformed Port-Royal to a strict obedience of the Benedictine Rule. 4 5

6 7 8 9

Jay Smith, The Culture of Merit, 13. Carolyn Lougee, Le paradis des femmes: Women, salons, and social stratification in seventeenth-century France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 42–33. Smith, The Culture of Merit, 84–5. Lougee, Le paradis des femmes, 6. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Alexander Sedgwick, The Travails of Conscience: The Arnauld Family and the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Angelique’s father is com´ monly referred to as Antoine Arnauld Sr. to distinguish him from his more famous son who shares his name.

20

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

At first, the male Cistercian leadership applauded her reform and commissioned her to reform other convents. But when it became clear that her strict obedience to the Benedictine Rule led her to go so far as to promote women to leadership positions based on their merit alone and, in some cases, at the expense of women from more prestigious families, these leaders withdrew their support. Anxiety over Angelique’s commit´ ment to social mobility eventually led to a querelle des femmes in a controversy known as the Secret Chaplet affair in 1633. In this querelle, (which erupted seven years before the publication of Jansen’s Augustinus) Angelique’s critics forwarded the misogynist argument that as a ´ disorderly woman, Angelique was naturally susceptible to heresy. Her ´ supporters adopted the feminist position that women were equal to men in their capacity to sin, and that it was her critics, and not Angelique, ´ who were causing disorder. Angelique was not the only woman in the French Church to spark ´ a querelle des femmes. Catholic thinkers began debating the “woman problem” after numerous women, both lay and religious, distinguished themselves as enthusiastic, dedicated, and self-disciplined revitalizers of the Church in the years following the Wars of Religion.10 However, in Angelique’s case, the querelle des femmes at Port-Royal transformed into ´ a larger controversy when Catholic polemicists exploited her association with Jansen’s close friend and ally, Saint-Cyran, to argue that Augustinus was part of a heretical plot to undermine the French Church. When these polemicists appropriated misogynist discourses associating women with heresy to enhance their anti-Jansenist positions, they gave new meaning to Jansenism. In France, Jansenism grew to become something more than a theological debate among clerics. It became a “woman problem” that reflected pervasive anxieties over readjustments and cultural changes within French society. Port-Royal’s Reform and Early Controversies Angelique Arnauld was one of several important female reformers who ´ reshaped the Church in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The story of her reform – especially the dramatic journ´ee du guichet (day of the wicket gate)11 on which she reestablished enclosure at Port-Royal against 10 11

Linda Timmermans, L’Acc`es des femmes a` la culture, 399–405. The wicket gate is a small window set within the convent door through which people on either side can communicate.

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

21

her father’s will – is famous in France. Her filial disobedience has come to represent the independent spirit associated with Jansenist resistance conflicts had to despotism.12 Yet at the time of her reform, Angelique’s ´ nothing to do with Jansenism and were instead rooted in challenges she faced to her authority as abbess because of her family’s relative low social status among nobles. Her response to those challenges was to reform PortRoyal in a way that aligned the values associated with the robe nobility with the Benedictine Rule. Just as these nobles relied on the new value for individual merit, social mobility, and dutiful service to royal office as criteria for their promotions, Angelique emphasized the Benedictine ´ Rule’s call for selecting members based on religious vocation, its position against dowries as a necessary condition for entry to the religious life, and its repeated call for obedience to its tenets to secure her authority as abbess. However, her synthesis of robe and Benedictine values proved to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, her reform bolstered her authority as abbess, secured her family’s endowment at Port-Royal, and increased her family’s prestige among other nobles. On the other hand, her reform created turmoil within her family, put her at odds with other reformers, and eventually sparked a debate over heresy at Port-Royal. Angelique first developed her synthesis of robe and monastic values at ´ a time of fervent reform in France. After the Wars of Religion, many people embraced more ascetic and disciplined forms of Catholic worship.13 Within the Cistercian order this trend took the form of the strict observance movement that developed at the abbeys of Citeaux and Clairvaux.14 Angelique developed close ties with the leaders of this movement and ´ adopted many of its practices, including the controversial abstinence from eating meat.15 Although her reform strategy fit into these broader trends in the French Church, the exact timing of the reform of the Port-Royal convent in 1609 had significant consequences for her and her family. In fact, Angelique’s reform secured her family’s endowment at Port-Royal ´ at the very moment it faced the possibility of losing it. The family’s hold on Port-Royal was tenuous from the beginning because it had lied about her age – as well as that of her younger sister Agn`es – when petitioning to have them named coadjutor to the abbesses 12 13 14 15

Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 1:176–77. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 6–8. Louis J. Lekai, The Rise of the Cistercian Strict Observance in Seventeenth-Century France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). ´ Louis Cognet, La r´eforme de Port-Royal, 1591–1618 (Paris: Editions Sulliver, 1950), 192–4.

22

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

of Port-Royal and Saint-Cyr, respectively, in 1598. The girls were only eight and five years old at the time, well below the age of consent for the Church, which was sixteen, and even further below the required age of eighteen to hold office as an abbess.16 In Angelique’s memoirs, com´ posed many years after the fact in 1655, she attributed her family’s lie to social ambition.17 Studies of families within the robe nobility and wealthy merchant classes support her assessment. These families actively sought to integrate themselves into the existing nobility through marriage, by purchasing landed estates, and by seeking Church benefices for younger offspring.18 Placing the girls at these two convents fits this pattern. Both convents were ancient institutions traditionally populated by daughters of local noble families with long lineages, and placing daughters among these older nobles was a way for a family to advance its prestige. These placements also fit into a common pattern in which older families accepted new elites within their ranks because they brought with them new money.19 For example, when Angelique became coadjutor to Port-Royal’s abbess, ´ her family contracted workers to renovate several of the convent’s dilapidated structures.20 These were repairs the families who traditionally placed daughters at Port-Royal could no longer afford to fund. Although the lie about the girls’ ages was a sign of ambition, it also reflected a sense of urgency within the family because of circumstance. When the Arnauld family began seeking positions for its daughters in convents, there were already six children – four of whom were girls. Because dowries to join convents were cheaper than marriage dowries, families with multiple daughters typically placed them in convents as an economizing measure. The family’s concern for securing its daughters’ futures was exacerbated by insecurities over its prospects for gaining royal patronage. Angelique’s father, the politique lawyer Antoine Arnauld Sr., ´ should have been a logical candidate for such patronage, as Henry IV 16 17

18

19

20

Cognet, La r´eforme, 18–19. Marie-Angelique de Sainte Madeleine Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie´ Ang´elique Arnauld de ce qui est arriv´e de plus consid´erable dans Port-Royal. Ed. Jean Lesaulnier. Chroniques de Port-Royal 41 (1992): 11. Robert Forster, Merchants, Landlords, Magistrates: The Dupont Family in EighteenthCentury France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 3–24. Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 49–58. Robert R. Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 160–8. Donna Bohanan, Crown and Nobility in Early Modern France (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 16. Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 12–13.

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

23

rewarded the loyalty of the politiques with the bulk of his patronage after father, however, was a controversial the Wars of Religion.21 Angelique’s ´ client because his claim to fame was the 1594 trial in which he argued before Parlement on behalf of the Sorbonne faculty to have Jesuit and Capuchin priests removed from its ranks. The family realized that, as the recently converted Henry IV tried to improve relations with Rome, Arnauld’s attack against the Jesuits and Capuchins – which ultimately led to their expulsion from France – would make him a difficult client to recommend to papal authorities. Recognizing that Antoine Arnauld Sr. was a weak candidate for royal patronage, the family put the girls’ grandfather Simon Marion in charge of soliciting their nominations to ecclesiastical offices. The well-connected Marion had no trouble receiving a royal brevet in 1598 naming the girls coadjutors to the abbesses of Port-Royal and Saint-Cyr. As for soliciting papal approval for these nominations, the family lied to papal authorities about the girls’ ages, making them appear older than they actually bull of confirmation listed her age at seventeen.23 were.22 Angelique’s ´ The bulls also stressed Marion’s piety and generosity as the rationale for the girl’s confirmations. For instance, Angelique’s bull cited the “extraor´ dinary piety of M. Marion” and described how he had already saved Port-Royal from certain ruin through his generous financial support.24 Such emphasis on Marion’s good qualities no doubt reflected the family’s efforts to deflect attention away from the controversial aspects of the Arnauld family’s reputation. According to Angelique’s memoirs, her family’s lie and all the ambition ´ it represented doomed her to a dangerous and unhappy childhood.25 It was dangerous because her family, caring more about social prestige than her religious education, did little to protect her from sin. For instance, during her novitiate, her parents put her under the care of Angelique ´ d’Estree, ´ the abbess of Maubuisson. Maubuisson was notorious for hosting concerts, balls and illicit rendezvous between Henry IV and his mistress Gabrielle d’Estree, ´ the abbess’s sister.26 In addition to exposing 21 22 23 24 25 26

Joseph Bergin, The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–1661 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 392. Cognet, La R´eforme, 28. Ibid., 29. Ibid. Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 14. Genevi`eve Reynes, Couvents de femmes: La vie des religieuses cloˆıtr´ees dans la France des XVIIe et XVIIIe si`ecles (Paris: Fayard, 1987), 92.

24

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

her to sin, the Arnaulds doomed their daughter to unhappiness because as a young girl she had no vocation for the religious life. When she returned to Port-Royal after her novitiate at Maubuisson, she described how she spent her days walking in the countryside to visit with neighbors or reading the Lives of Plutarch.27 Angelique’s negative attitude toward the religious life changed in 1608, ´ however, after a Capuchin monk delivered a sermon at Port-Royal. She described in her memoirs how, after hearing his sermon on the Beatitudes, she was suddenly struck with a desire to be a nun.28 Her conversion resulted in the journ´ee du guichet. In her memoirs, she described how, up to that day, her parents had treated Port-Royal as a personal country estate, entering the cloister at will to visit her and oversee the convent’s affairs. When they realized that she had locked them out in the name of religion, her parents – especially her father – started pounding at the doors, yelling at her, and denouncing her as a disobedient, patricidal, ungrateful daughter.29 Angelique’s niece Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ ´ described in a relation how her aunt suffered tremendously during this ordeal and was only able to hold her ground because of a higher force that propelled her to obey the Benedictine Rule over her father.30 Angelique’s embrace in her adolescent years of ascetic religious prac´ tices against her family’s wishes follows a pattern found in memoirs written by children of the robe nobility in the seventeenth century.31 Many memorialists described how they struggled to submit to their family’s demands before they found relief by embracing the religious life.32 At first glance, Angelique seems typical in her quest for autonomy within ´ a family that raised her to obey without question its decisions for her 27 28 29

30

31

32

Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 14. Ibid., 16. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Relation sur la vie de la R´ev´erende M`ere ´ Ang´elique de Sainte-Magdelaine Arnauld. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal et a` la vie de la R´ev´erende M`ere Marie Ang´elique de Sainte Magdeleine Arnauld, r´eformatrice de ce monast`ere, Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly ed., 3 vols. ´ (Utrecht, 1742), Vol. 1: 45–8. Ibid., 50. The painful detachment Angelique felt from the rupture with her father is ´ ´ similar to that described by Teresa of Avila in her writings. Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila, 57. Barbara Diefendorf, “Give Us Back Our Children: Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocations in Early Counter-Reformation France,” Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 266. Most of the children studied by Diefendorf came from elite and noble families. They joined religious orders such as the Jesuits, Capuchins, Carmelites, and Feuillantines. Ibid., 274.

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

25

future. Yet in her case, the conventional elements of her story cover up a deeper conflict in which she reformed Port-Royal to defend her position as abbess after her family experienced setbacks that made her authority vulnerable to outside challengers. The first of these setbacks was the publication in 1602 of her father’s Franc et v´eritable discours au Roy sur le r´etablissement qui luy est demand´e pour les J´esuites (A Plain and Sincere Discourse to the King Concerning the Reestablishment of the Jesuits), a pamphlet that repeated much of his 1594 anti-Jesuit speech, with special emphasis on the dangers inherent in the Jesuits’ position that the Pope has the power to excommunicate kings and to exempt subjects from their oaths of allegiance to the Crown.33 This publication, which appeared on the eve of an agreement between Henry IV and the pope to readmit Jesuit and Capuchin monks in France resulted in Antoine Arnauld Sr.’s disgrace after the king received it as an obstruction to his efforts to cooperate with Rome.34 Three years later, Simon Marion died. Because his merit had been the rationale for nominating Angelique and ´ Agn`es to their offices, his demise, in conjunction with their continuing minority, made their authority as abbess questionable and vulnerable to challenge. The family’s fear of losing control over its Church benefices was apparently realized in the case of Agn`es, who left Saint-Cyr in 1608 for Port-Royal shortly after a group of Capuchin priests began preaching there.35 This moment, when the family lost Saint-Cyr and when the same Capuchin monks were also preaching at Port-Royal, was when Ange´ lique – who was just a few months shy of the legal age for being an abbess – initiated her reform. At first, Angelique’s father vehemently ´ resisted this reform, believing that she was acting under the influence of Capuchin monks. He accused the Capuchins of being “hypocrites who used reform as a pretext to gain entry into the house and beg money off of it, which would take the place of having to run their own farm.”36 However, once M. Arnauld realized that Angelique was able to direct her ´ reform independently of the Capuchin monks, he supported her. In fact, as soon as Angelique turned eighteen, M. Arnauld sent a peti´ tion to Rome asking the pope to issue new bulls of confirmation for her nomination based on her merit as a reformer. In his petition, Angelique’s ´ 33 34 35 36

Antoine Arnauld, Franc et v´eritable discours au Roy sur le r´etablissement qui luy est demand´e pour les J´esuites (1602). Cognet, La R´eforme, 17. Ibid., 70–1. Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 18.

26

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

father admitted that she had entered the convent at too young an age, but stressed that God had favored her with “so much benediction that she had already established reform at [Port-Royal] at the age of seventeen and a half.”37 In the wake of the family’s many setbacks, Angelique’s reform ´ had become the best rationale for confirming her nomination. Thus the journ´ee du guichet conflict reflected more than teenage rebellion or a struggle for individual autonomy; it reflected an upheaval in the social order in which the daughter stepped forward to replace her grandfather as protector of the family’s financial interests and social ambitions at Port-Royal based on her merit as a reformer. The journ´ee du guichet was the first of three major conflicts Angelique ´ faced as a reformer in the years preceding the Jansenist debates. The remaining two conflicts similarly took place when others took advantage of her family’s relatively low social status among France’s elite to challenge her authority as an abbess. These conflicts occurred at Maubuisson in 1618 after the abbot of Citeaux commissioned her to reform the convent, and in Paris in 1635 after she moved there to establish the Institute of the Holy Sacrament. As in the journ´ee du guichet, Angelique defended ´ her position in these later conflicts by emphasizing her obedience to the Benedictine Rule and, by extension, her merit as a reformer. At Maubuisson, her plan for reform involved removing the convent’s leaders from their offices and replacing them with new nuns recruited by her. Angelique encountered considerable resistance in her first task ´ when the family of Angelique d’Estree ´ ´ – Maubuisson’s infamous abbess and Angelique Arnauld’s former mentor – launched an armed invasion ´ of Maubuisson to defend d’Estree’s authority over the convent against ´ Angelique Arnauld, whom they considered an illegitimate usurper. As ´ part of this invasion, they evicted Angelique Arnauld from the convent ´ 38 with their swords drawn. Her family defended her in their own fashion by issuing through Parlement arrest warrants for her attackers.39 The Cistercian leadership settled the conflict by appointing a new abbess to Maubuisson, Charlotte de Bourbon-Soissons, a daughter of the Bourbon and Conde´ families. With Soissons as abbess, Maubuisson came under 37 38

39

Cognet, La R´eforme, 109. Arnauld d’Andilly, Relation de plusieurs entretiens de la M`ere Ang´elique avec M. Le Maitre son neveu, qui les e´ crivoit sur le champ dans le dessein de s’en servir un jour pour son Histoire. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal, Arnauld d’Andilly ed., vol. 1: 286–7. Ibid., 288.

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

27

the protection of a family that exceeded Angelique d’Estrees’s in military ´ ´ might and reputation.40 Angelique returned to Maubuisson to continue her reform efforts there. ´ Although Charlotte de Soissons had helped Angelique with her first task of ´ removing Angelique d’Estrees, ´ ´ she balked at her second task of recruiting new nuns when she realized that Angelique was admitting them without ´ dowries. By accepting women from families that had neither the wealth nor the patronage connections to secure a dowry, Angelique’s recruiting ´ practices threatened Maubuisson’s social prestige. Soissons petitioned the abbot of Citeaux to remove Angelique from Maubuisson, and when ´ the abbot complied, Angelique returned to Port-Royal in 1623, taking ´ with her thirty nuns – including all of those whom she had admitted to Maubuisson without dowries.41 Port-Royal’s growth in membership after the Maubuisson incident helped set the stage for Angelique’s third major conflict in the years ´ before the Jansenist debates. This conflict erupted after she moved to Paris and partnered with Sebastien Zamet, the bishop of Langres, to found a ´ new religious order called the Institute of the Holy Sacrament. Angelique ´ decided to move Port-Royal from its original location at Port-Royal-desChamps (located twelve miles west of the capital) to a new location, Port-Royal-de-Paris, in the Faubourg St. Jacques in 1625. One reason for the move was the unhealthy living conditions at Port-Royal-des-Champs, which was situated in a valley surrounded by swamps. There the nuns suffered from malarial fevers, and twenty-seven out of the sixty nuns living there at the time died between 1623 and 1625.42 Another reason for the move was turmoil within the Cistercian order caused by a succession dispute after the death of Denis Largentier, the abbot of Clairvaux. Largentier had been a principal architect of the strict observance movement, and the dispute over his successor threatened a backlash against his adherents.43 Angelique petitioned authorities in Rome for permission to ´ 40 41 42

43

Louis Cognet, M`ere Ang´elique et St. Franc¸ois de Sales. (Paris: Editions Sulliver 1951), 167. Ibid., 169. William Ritchey Newton, “Port Royal and Jansenism: Social Experience, Group Formation and Religious Attitudes in Seventeenth Century France” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1974), 162, n218. Angelique reported that there were 60 women living ´ at Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1623. So the twenty-seven deaths represented 45% of the total population. Cognet, La R´eforme, 130. Lekai, The Rise of the Cistercian Strict Observance, 138–46. Joseph Bergin, Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld: Leadership and Reform in the French Church (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 222–47.

28

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

remove Port-Royal from the jurisdiction of Citeaux into that of the archdiocese of Paris. She cited the threat posed to the nuns by the convent’s unhealthy climate as the reason for her request.44 Angelique moved Port-Royal to Paris in 1626 with the help of Sebastien ´ ´ Zamet, the bishop of Langres.45 Zamet had experience with this type of transfer, having recently helped the nuns of Notre Dame de Tard transfer out from under the jurisdiction of Citeaux and into his own by moving them into Dijon, the urban center of his diocese.46 While discussing PortRoyal’s transfer, Angelique and Zamet decided to collaborate on a project ´ to found a new religious order based on the perpetual adoration of the Eucharist. They called their new order the Institute of the Holy Sacrament and envisioned it as the monastic counterpart to the Company of the Holy Sacrament, a secret lay society that was currently being formed at that time.47 They hoped that branches of their contemplative female institute would proliferate alongside male chapters of the company in cities across France and serve them as institutional centers for prayer and worship. To get started, they exchanged nuns between the convents of Tard and Port-Royal, with the goal of eventually combining the two communities to form their institute.48 With significant help from Angelique’s sister ´ Agn`es (who was also her coadjutor at Port-Royal) and from the abbess of Tard, they began putting their plans into action.49 Because the plan was for Angelique to serve as superior for the new ´ institute, she needed first to step down from her position as abbess of Port-Royal. To this end, she petitioned Louis XIII in 1628 to relinquish his right of nomination at Port-Royal in favor of the system of triennial elections as spelled out in the Benedictine Rule. When the king honored her request, Angelique was able to place the final capstone to her reform.50 ´ 44

45 46

47 48 49 50

Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 44. When Angelique moved to ´ Paris, she did not relinquish control over the property of Port-Royal-des-Champs and its revenues. Angelique learned about Zamet through Francis de Sales when she was at Maubuisson. ´ Cognet, Ang´elique Arnauld and Franc¸ois de Sales, 236. The nuns of Tard moved out from under the jurisdiction of the Cistercians and into his jurisdiction as the bishop of Langres. Louis Prunel, S´ebastien Zamet: e´ vˆeque-duc de Langres, pair de France (1588–1655) (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1912), 205. Ibid., 239. Raoul Allier, La Cabale des D´evots, 1627–1666 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1902), 160–1. Prunel, S´ebastien Zamet, 208. Ibid., 208, 229–30. She made this request on the heels of the king’s victory at La Rochelle against the Protestant rebellion. Jean Racine, Abr´eg´e de l’histoire de Port-Royal (Paris: Societ ´ e´ les Belles Lettres, 1933), 38.

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

29

The implementation of triennial elections at Port-Royal also allowed Angelique to fulfill her long-held desire to leave the convent, a recurring ´ theme in her memoirs. She attributed this desire to two sources. In her childhood the wish to leave stemmed from her forced vocation.51 Once she reached adulthood and had her spiritual conversion, she expressed this wish as a desire to free herself from the burden of her office.52 By turning Port-Royal over to the elective system, Angelique finally found ´ a way out. The king’s patent letters stipulated that the house could govern itself through elections for as long as her reform remained intact. Should the reform ever lapse, the house would revert to a daughter from the Arnauld family (at that time, there were four of them living in the convent) and by extension to the system of royal nomination.53 Thus, instituting the elective system at Port-Royal was a way for her to leave Port-Royal without jeopardizing the reform on which so much of her family’s spiritual, social, and financial legacy depended. As Angelique prepared to leave Port-Royal to lead the Institute of ´ the Holy Sacrament, she wrote to a fellow nun a letter expressing her extreme joy: “Is it possible that we are too happy to have found the real path to the Truth? For myself, I am ecstatic, M. de Langres is a true man of God.”54 She had many reasons to rejoice. She had finally freed herself from the yoke of her past to pursue an authentic religious life, one guided by her vocation and not by family obligation. She no longer had to adhere to the strict demands of the Benedictine Rule, which she described as “worthy of veneration but never made for women.”55 In contrast, the new institute adopted the Augustinian Rule, which followed the directives that the ancient bishop had outlined for a group of nuns within his diocese of Hippo. Like the nuns of Hippo, Angelique wanted ´ to be guided by a saintly bishop, and she believed she had found him in Zamet. 51 52 53 54

55

Cognet, La R´eforme, 50–1. Ibid., 162. Extrait des Registres du grand conseil du Roy, February 29, 1629, AN series L 1035 4. Angelique de Sainte-Agn`es Marle de la Falaire, Relation de la Soeur Ang´elique de Sainte´ Agn`es Marle de la Falaire: ou` elle rapporte tout ce qu’elle a remarqu´e dans les voyages qu’elle a faits avec la M`ere Ang´elique au Lys, a` Poissy et a` Paris. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal, Arnauld d’Andilly ed., vol. 1: 409. In a letter to M. Feron, the archdeacon of Chartres on March 25, 1627, Arnauld ´ explained that she wanted to place the new institute under the Augustinian Rule because the Benedictine Rule was never successfully applied by nuns: “Veritablement, mon P`ere, cette r`egle est digne de grande veneration, mais elle ne fut pour des filles.” ˆ jamais ecrite ´ Prunel, 222–3.

30

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism

Angelique’s spiritual good fortune spilled over into the material realm. ´ In spite of a slowing economy that was straining financial resources in most Parisian convents, she and Zamet found high-profile patrons to endow their new institute.56 With the support and enthusiasm of wealthy and powerful women such as the duchess of Longueville and the marquise de Maignelay (the sister to the archbishop of Paris), they purchased an expensive building in the center of Paris, just a few blocks away from the royal palace of the Louvre, to house their new institute. On the day of the ceremonial opening, Angelique led the procession of nuns from Port´ Royal-de-Paris across the city to the new institute, riding in a carriage with her noble patrons.57 This procession marked the height of her success as a reformer and underscored how far she had advanced since the day her parents sent her off to live “in the fields” in a dilapidated convent populated by impoverished gentry women. She now lived in Paris, just a few blocks from the royal palace, and in the orbit of the country’s most powerful and influential elites. Angelique’s happiness was brief, however, as the new institute quickly ´ became a site for turmoil and controversy. This turmoil had its roots in the rivalries between the three bishops of Langres, Paris, and Sens, all of whom had jurisdictional claims over the nuns. The pope had named all three bishops codirectors of the institute in its charter, hoping to establish cooperation among them.58 Yet the arrangement failed as their rivalries overlapped with other rivalries, such as that between the Institute of the Holy Sacrament and the French Carmelites, who saw in the new institute an unwanted competitor for patrons and members.59 These rivalries turned into a religious controversy when Octave de Bellegarde, the archbishop of Sens, submitted a copy of the Secret Chaplet, a devotional text 56 57

58

59

On the rapid rise in new foundations in Paris at this time, see Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 135–71. Madeleine de Sainte-Agn`es de Ligny, Relation de la conduite de la M`ere Ang´elique dans la premi`ere Maison du S. Sacrement, et de diverses choses qui ont rapport a cet e´ tablissement. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal, Arnauld d’Andilly ed., vol. 1: 508. Zamet held jurisdiction over the nuns at Tard, and Gondi had jurisdiction over PortRoyal-de-Paris. The archbishop of Sens, Octave de Bellegarde, was the Metropolitan of Paris. He had been bishop of Paris up to 1623, when the Crown upgraded the Parisian diocese to the level of archdiocese. Bellegarde was pursuing legal action against this upgrade at the time of the institute’s founding. Georges Dubois, Henri de Pardaillon de Gondrin, Archevˆeque de Sens (1646–1674) (Alenc¸on: Felix ´ Guy, 1902), chapter 2. Catherine Le Maitre, Relation de ce qui a pr´ec´ed´e l’´etablissement du Monast`ere du S. Sacrement depuis 1636. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal, Arnauld d’Andilly ed., vol. 1: 428.

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31

by Agn`es Arnauld, to the Sorbonne for censure.60 Agn`es had composed this chaplet containing sixteen reflections on the crucifix (one for each century since the death of Jesus Christ) in 1627 while she was under the spiritual direction of Oratorian priest Charles de Condren, whom Zamet had asked to help with the spiritual direction of the nuns at Tard and Port-Royal at the time.61 Finding similarities between Agn`es’s chaplet and the writings of the Spanish illuminati recently condemned in Rome, Bellegarde submitted the text to the Sorbonne for review as a way to discredit Zamet’s work at the Institute of the Holy Sacrament. After eight doctors from the Sorbonne censured the Secret Chaplet for containing several “errors, blasphemies and impieties,” Bellegarde sent the text to Rome for further censure.62 A printed polemical exchange over the Secret Chaplet between Jesuit priest Etienne Binet, who condemned the text, and Jean Duvergier, the abbe´ of Saint-Cyran, who defended it, brought the scandal to the attention of the Parisian public. Zamet had asked Saint-Cyran to defend the Secret Chaplet because of his reputation as an effective polemicist and because he had recently defended mutual friends of theirs within the Congregation of the Oratory from Jesuit attacks.63 The exchange between Binet and Saint-Cyran ended when the pope ruled for silence on the matter in 1634 and ordered all copies of the Secret Chaplet and related polemical texts suppressed.64 Although the pope never officially condemned the chaplet, the damage had been done, and rumors spread in Paris that the Port-Royal nuns at the Institute of the Holy Sacrament were “heretics.”65 These external tensions took their toll on the relationship between Angelique and Zamet, who soon came to odds over the administration of ´ the institute.66 Their disagreements came to a head when she discovered that Zamet had tapped Anne de Foissy de Chamesson, a recent recruit to the institute, the daughter of a noble family from his diocese of Langres, and a favorite of the duchess of Longueville to replace her as the institute’s 60

61 62 63 64 65 66

Catherine Le Maitre attributed Bellegarde’s actions to his loyalty to the French Carmelites. Ibid., 430. Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Le Chapelet secret de M`ere Agn`es Arnauld.” XVIIe Si`ecle 70 (1991): 77–86. Jean Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps (1581– 1638). (Paris: Libraire Vrin, 1947), 310. Armogathe, “Le Chapelet secret,” 78. Ibid., 81–2. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps, 316. Ibid., 312. Prunel, 228–62. Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 52–3.

32

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superior.67 The choice of superior was probably an attempt to use noble connections and alliances to bolster his authority against Bellegarde’s attacks. Yet from Angelique’s perspective, his decision to replace her with ´ a new superior was a sign that he valued social standing above religious merit. In her memoir, Angelique described Zamet as catering to the tastes of ´ elite Parisian society through such actions as placing writing desks in all of the nuns’ cells and decorating the altar with perfumes and flowers.68 She opposed his plans for Mlle de Chamesson, stating that his proteg ´ ee ´ had neither the skills nor the vocation to lead other nuns.69 More generally, her memoir chronicles how the previously open communication between her and Zamet broke down as she realized he was more interested in filling the institute with “daughters of marquis or of counts” than with women of genuine religious vocation.70 Angelique’s crisis with Zamet represented the third time she had faced ´ the prospect of losing her position as superior of a convent. However, before Zamet had the chance to replace her, she preempted him by rededicating herself to a strict observance of the Benedictine Rule and by pushing him out of the institute. She did this with the help of Saint-Cyran, who had been confessor to the nuns on Zamet’s behalf so that the latter could travel to his diocese to take care of business there.71 During Zamet’s absence, Angelique began partnering with Saint-Cyran, and together they ´ made plans to return her to Port-Royal. They also charted a new direction for Port-Royal’s reform, one that fused her observance of the Benedictine Rule with his system of “renewals,” a penitential practice he had developed based on his study of St. Augustine. Saint-Cyran had recently deepened his interest in penitence through a correspondence with Cornelius Jansen, the bishop of Ypres and a former classmate from his school days in Paris. Saint-Cyran had already distinguished himself as a skillful polemicist and was a rising star within Parisian literary circles.72 Yet a combination of personal experiences and Jansen’s influence led him to embark on a study of penitential practices, particularly those that dealt with maintaining an intensity of faith after conversion experiences. Based on accounts of rituals of spiritual renewal 67 68 69 70 71 72

Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 455. Arnauld, Relation e´ crit par la M`ere Marie-Ang´elique, 53. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 53. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 427. Ibid., 167.

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33

in the primitive Church that he found in his readings, he developed his own system of renewals, in which he advised Christians to remove themselves temporarily from the world and its occasions of sin in the hopes of achieving a state of genuine contrition. He described this contritition as a silent lamentation (silence de g´emissement) that God would hear and reward with grace.73 In the eyes of his contemporaries, Saint-Cyran’s system of renewals was his most original contribution to moral theology.74 Saint-Cyran outlined his penitential system in a series of sermons that he delivered in the institute’s parlor before the nuns and a few of their relatives in 1635.75 He offered to lead the nuns through his system but only after they each made a general confession (i.e., a confession of sins from over the course of their entire lives). In her memoirs, Angelique ´ described how she struggled for months with the decision of whether to make this general confession, attributing her hesitation to spiritual inadequacy. She admitted that up to that point her religious decisions had been tainted by her human will and volitions and bemoaned this “wretchedness . . . for which I often felt much regret in my conscience.”76 This wretchedness made her fear what she desired most, which was “the strong, holy, true and enlightened direction of this servant of God.”77 Once she finally made her confession several weeks after Easter, however, she described the experience as one of intense relief and joy; she felt truly free for the first time in her life because God had severed her attachment to her human will through his grace.78 Angelique acted on her new spiritual release by extricating herself from ´ Zamet’s influence. She announced Saint-Cyran as her new confessor and forbade the other nuns, many of whom had also embarked on spiritual renewals with Saint-Cyran, to speak with Zamet. She sent a letter to the archbishop of Paris asking him to remove her from the institute, which, because of the Secret Chaplet affair and the economic crisis, had become a spiritual and financial disaster.79 She was ready to return to Port-Royal and the Benedictine Rule. With her soul newly fortified, she 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Ibid., 120–1. Ibid., 121. Ibid., 423. Arnauld, Relation e´ crite par la M`ere Ang´elique, 141. Ibid. Ibid., 144. The institute’s patrons never disbursed the promised funds according to Madeleine de Sainte-Agn`es de Ligny, Relation de la conduite de la M`ere Ang´elique, 514. Debt was a common problem for reformed convents at this time. Diefendorf, Penitence to Charity, 161–7.

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was determined to salvage what she could of her authority and family patrimony from the wreckage of the Institute of the Holy Sacrament and to dedicate herself to promoting spiritual renewal among the faithful. The Querelle des Femmes at Port-Royal Angelique may have left behind her spiritual burdens at the Institute of ´ the Holy Sacrament, but she could not escape the worldly controversies generated by the institute, which only increased after her return to PortRoyal. Part of her troubles stemmed from fundamental changes occurring in the religious climate of the 1630s. The economic crisis of those years coincided with a general shift from ascetic expressions of piety toward more active expressions of faith involving the provision of social services, such as teaching and nursing.80 Although Port-Royal participated in this trend by taking on pensioners and offering poor relief in this period, its character remained ascetic out of necessity. Angelique’s claim to the ´ convent had been based on a strict observance of the Benedictine Rule ever since 1609, and during the current crisis, in which she was trying to extricate herself from her connection to Zamet, she needed to reinforce her claim more than ever. Port-Royal’s strict asceticism now contrasted starkly to the prevailing trend toward public charity and helped reinforce the impression that the nuns who wrote the Secret Chaplet were deviant. However, most of her struggles stemmed from Cardinal Richelieu’s arrest of Saint-Cyran in 1638 for promoting dangerous religious and political views.81 This arrest gave authenticity to the rumors of heresy that had plagued Port-Royal during the Secret Chaplet affair; then Zamet confirmed these rumors. When Richelieu asked Saint-Cyran’s former associates to provide testimony of his wrongdoing, Zamet wrote a report that closely paralleled St. Paul’s description of the “characteristics of heretics of latter days” (2 Timothy 3:3–7).82 In this passage, St. Paul describes how heretics are false prophets who insinuate themselves within the Church by taking advantage of weak and ignorant women. Similarly, Zamet described how Saint-Cyran stole the direction of the Port-Royal nuns from him by deceiving him and preying on Angelique’s natural feminine ´ weakness. 80 81 82

Diefendorf, Penitence to Charity, 171. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 519–94. Ibid., 552–3.

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Zamet’s references to St. Paul began with this statement: “I have no aversion for the nuns of Port-Royal, nor for those of the SaintSacrement.”83 By vouching for his good faith toward the nuns, he sharpened the contrast between his actions and St. Paul’s claim that heretics are “without affection, without peace, slandered, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness” (2 Timothy 3:3). Zamet then turned to St. Paul’s description of heretics as “traitors” (2 Timothy 3:4–5) by describing how he introduced Saint-Cyran to the institute, “believing him capable of serving them in their spiritual life, but this was before knowing him better.”84 Then, just as St. Paul describes these traitors as those who “creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away with diverse desires” (2 Timothy 3:6), Zamet wrote, “Once he was established in this house, he gained power over their minds, which was easy for him given the disposition of the nuns, who naturally love change and novelty.”85 Zamet then singled out Angelique as Saint-Cyran’s primary victim ´ among the “naturally” fickle nuns. He stressed how she became captive to Saint-Cyran’s ideas by describing how she went to the extreme of avoiding communion for five months as a form of penance.86 She also became so “overcome” by his ideas that she “spoke of nothing else but of the early Church, the canons, the customs of the first Christians, the councils, and of the Church Fathers, principally St. Augustine.”87 Zamet explained how she tried to engage him in these conversations but that he found them frustrating because “she spoke with so much extravagance that it was easy to judge that she was talking only from hearsay, and with no foundation.”88 These observations followed St. Paul’s next assertion that “silly women” are those who were “ever learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). The direct parallel between Zamet’s report and St. Paul’s text ended with this discussion of Angelique’s lack of true knowledge. The rest of Zamet’s ´ report reinforced his argument that Saint-Cyran and Angelique acted like ´ heretics by describing how their uncharitable acts alienated him from the convent. 83 84 85 86 87 88

Sebastien Zamet, M´emoire reprinted in Albert de Meyer, Les premi`eres controverses jans´enistes en France (1640–1649) (Louvain: J. van Linthout, 1917), 493. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 493–4. Ibid., 494.

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Zamet’s report struck a blow to Angelique’s reputation because his ´ authority as an eyewitness to the internal workings of the Institute of the Holy Sacrament confirmed the rumors that the nuns there were guilty of heresy. In addition, by employing the traditional misogynist tropes found in St. Paul’s writings, he not only denounced Saint-Cyran as a false prophet but also extricated himself from the Secret Chaplet controversy by implying that the affair must have been due to Angelique’s natural ´ 89 weakness all along. Zamet modeled his report on St. Paul’s text strategically both to satisfy Richelieu’s request for damning evidence against Saint-Cyran and to rescue his own reputation from the Secret Chaplet controversy. At the same time as the report reflected Zamet’s personal political agenda, it also reflected a broader cultural trend in which men and women were increasingly debating contemporary conflicts through the lens of the querelle des femmes. In her study of the revival of this querelle in the early seventeenth century, Carolyn Lougee identifies a pattern in which those who were opposed to the new values promoted within Parisian salons by women of the up-and-coming robe nobility adopted traditional misogynist tropes, such as those found in St. Paul’s text. Zamet’s report fit this pattern; his falling out with Angelique coincided with disagreements between them ´ over the direction of their institute in which he sought the protection of established families of the sword nobility, while she defended her authority based on the value of merit associated with the robe nobility. Viewed in this light, Zamet’s report moved Angelique’s conflicts to a new level in ´ which his denunciation of her intersected with the broader querelle des femmes and the more general anxieties it reflected regarding social and cultural changes among the French elite. In turn Angelique’s apologists defended her by adopting traditionally ´ feminist arguments from the querelle des femmes. Her nephew Antoine Le Maistre responded to Zamet’s report with his own report that insisted on greater parity between women’s and men’s moral capabilities. The first half of Le Maistre’s report set the record straight on factual errors he found in Zamet’s report. Le Maistre drew on letters and a report of events provided to him by Angelique as his source for facts, in essence ´ allowing her to defend herself through him as her proxy.90 In the second 89

90

Zamet had already been spreading these ideas verbally at court. His report for Richelieu confirmed his views in print. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 458–61. Angelique Arnauld, Relation de la conduite que M. Zamet e´ vˆeque de Langres a tenue ´ a` l’´egard du Monast`ere de Port-Royal, de la Maison du S. Sacrement, de M. l’Abb´e de

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half of his report, he entered into the querelle des femmes by addressing Zamet’s attack on her feminine nature. Whereas Zamet described women negatively as “naturally loving change and novelty,” Le Maistre countered with the more positive claim that men and women had a shared capacity for unpredictability. He wrote that the insistence on “the flightiness of their sex” surprised him because Zamet’s own conduct in the house demonstrated that “all men are not constant, nor are all nuns capricious.”91 Le Maistre similarly argued for greater gender equality in his response to Zamet’s claim that Angelique spoke about theological matters “only ´ through hearsay and with no foundation.” Le Maistre countered that, if Angelique indeed learned ideas through hearsay, then that was exactly ´ how she was supposed to learn according to St. Bernard: “It belongs to theologians and prelates to spend their lives studying the councils and the Church Fathers at the source, and it belongs to nuns to reverently gather up the crumbs that fall from the theologians’ and prelates’ table, in St. Bernard’s words.”92 Le Maistre affirmed that, although such knowledge was a male privilege, women still had legitimate rights to it by vigilantly retaining the precious “crumbs” made available to them by theologians. Therefore the differences in moral strength and access to knowledge between men and women were a matter of access and degree and not innate competence according to Le Maistre. Le Maistre then stressed that both Saint-Cyran and Angelique had little ´ interest in theological study, preferring instead the “science of saints,” which involved “follow[ing] the example of certain saints who bore a profound reverence for God and for divine things.”93 Le Maistre argued ´ that chapter 6 of St. Teresa of Avila’s Book of Foundations provided Angelique with all of the justification she needed for her decision to delay ´ communion.94 In the querelle des femmes, some polemicists went so far as to argue that women’s lack of book learning gave them superior abilities in the “science of saints.”95 Le Maistre never went to this extreme in his

91

92 93 94 95

S. Cyran et de la M`ere Marie Ang´elique; pour servir d’´eclaircissement et de r´eponse a` un M´emoire de ce Prelat. In M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal, Arnauld d’Andilly ed., vol. 1: 474–95. Antoine Le Maistre, Apologie pour M. l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran (1645). In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, docteur de la maison et soci´et´e de Sorbonne (Brussels: Culture et Civilization, 1964–7), 29:348. Ibid., 29:364. Ibid., 29:361. Ibid., 29:356–7. Timmermans, 502–4.

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defense of Angelique, opting instead to stress gender equality by asserting ´ Saint-Cyran’s shared preference for the science of saints above all other paths to knowledge. The exchange between Zamet and Le Maistre was typical of the wider querelle des femmes of the seventeenth century on two accounts. First, these authors adhered to a pattern in which misogynist and feminist discourses correlated with the critique and defense of the values promoted by the emerging robe elite. Second, the debate focused on Angelique’s ´ access to theological knowledge. Whereas earlier manifestations of the querelle des femmes had focused primarily on women’s moral equality and on questions of whether women could act virtuously, the seventeenthcentury versions shifted toward women’s intellectual equality and questions regarding their access to scholarly texts, their capacity for understanding them, and their ability to reason.96 The debate over Angelique’s ´ ability to understand theology fit into this new pattern. Taken as a whole, the exchange between Zamet and Le Maistre reveals how the crisis Angelique faced in the 1630s intersected with wider social ´ and cultural anxieties of the decade. The problem of Port-Royal was no longer just a problem of individual women, but now fit into the larger “woman problem” through which French thinkers were debating fundamental issues about the order and values of their society.97 Port-Royal’s Early Controversies Recast into Jansenism The Jansenist debates erupted in France when Isaac Habert, doctor of the Sorbonne and theologian of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris,98 mounted the pulpit on November 30, 1642, to declare to his congregation that a new heresy was in their midst: “It is no longer the heretics of Charenton99 that we must deal with, they are already on their way to ruin. It is against the Church’s own children that we must fight, who like vipers rip through the breast of their mother.”100 Habert’s sermons, which he delivered two years after Jansen’s Augustinus was published in France, corresponded with two recent events. The first was a petition sent to Rome by the Jesuits of Louvain to condemn a set of propositions drawn from 96 97 98 99 100

Ibid. Lougee, 5. Lucien Ceyssens, “L’antijanseniste Isaac Habert (1598–1668),” Bulletin de l’Institute ´ historique belge de Rome 42 (1972): 237–305. Charenton was a Protestant enclave near Paris. M´emoires de Godefroi Hermant sur L’histoire eccl´esiastique du XVII si`ecle (1630– 1652) (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1905), 1:174.

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Jansen’s text. The second was the news that Saint-Cyran’s supporters were trying to negotiate his release from prison. Habert never named the heretics against whom he was railing, but it was easy to recognize SaintCyran as his target, because his depiction of these heretics drew on the charges Richelieu had compiled against Saint-Cyran on his arrest. Habert’s sermons initiated a practice among polemicists to use SaintCyran and Port-Royal’s reputation for heresy to add urgency to their anti-Jansenist positions. Habert laid the foundation for this practice by adopting the apologetic method of visual marks (via notarum) in his sermons, a method commonly used by anti-Protestant controversialists to denounce heresy. This method was based on the idea that the Catholic Church had conspicuous characteristics that marked it as the divinely ordained institution for human salvation. Because these characteristics were visible, apologists could use them as handy benchmarks to assess the extent to which others either adhered to or deviated from the Church without going into the details of doctrinal analysis.101 Habert used this method to synthesize the doctrinal complaints against Jansen with the charges against Saint-Cyran in a way that presented them as one cohesive phenomenon. Habert’s discussion of Jansen’s “singularity” – a mark of heresy that contrasted against the Catholic value of “unity” – illustrates how he used the via notarum to synthesize the alleged heresy found in Jansen’s text with that attributed to Saint-Cyran.102 Habert found several examples of singularity in Jansen’s theology. One expression of this tendency could be found in Jansen’s scholarly method and in the very title of his book: Augustinus. Habert argued that Jansen’s fixation on Augustine at the expense of other Church fathers led to distortions in his thinking about how humans receive divine grace.103 Such emphasis on one Church father was also dangerous because it threatened to divide the Church.104 Finally, Habert claimed that Jansen’s singular mindset led him to 101 102

103 104

Gustave Thils, Les notes de l’´eglise dans l’apolog´etique catholique depuis la r´eforme (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1937), 32. Christians could make false statements about the tenets of faith, but they could only become heretics if they continued to persist in their erroneous ideas after having been corrected by the Church. Thus, to demonstrate heresy, Habert had to focus on three features: (1) erroneous ideas, (2) people who espoused these ideas, and (3) a stubborn resistance of these people to renounce these ideas even after having been corrected. This definition of heresy comes from St. Thomas Aquinas’s discussion in Summa Theologica (II–II:11:1). Antoine Arnauld, Apologie pour M. Jans´enius (1644). In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 16: 83. Ibid., 92.

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misrepresent Augustine’s doctrine: “It is not the true St. Augustine, but a misunderstood St. Augustine, badly explained and badly argued.”105 Habert then connected the “singularity” of Jansen’s theology to the behavior of his friends by referring to a recent controversy surrounding the publication of Saint-Cyran’s catechism.106 Habert stated, “We also see a new catechism, printed not long ago, that contains their doctrine.”107 The catechism in question, published under the title Th´eologie famili`ere (Ordinary Theology) in January 1643, was written by Saint-Cyran at the request of Jerome Bignon, avocat g´en´eral (advocate general)108 in the Parlement, to provide a short lesson on the “principal mysteries of the Christian religion” for Bignon’s son.109 The original catechism circulated only in manuscript among Saint-Cyran’s followers. Habert pointed to it as evidence of the “singularity” of Jansen’s associates, who formed a secret sect that shared the “holy mysteries” only with “select individuals.”110 Antoine Arnauld, a talented theologian at the Sorbonne and Angelique ´ Arnauld’s younger brother, refuted Habert’s sermons. Antoine had taken on Saint-Cyran as his spiritual director in 1638.111 When Habert delivered his sermons, Saint-Cyran, who was still in prison at the time, sent Antoine a letter strongly urging him to refute Habert’s sermons immediately, stressing that he did not care if doing so jeopardized his own chances for release.112 However, Antoine did not 105 106

107 108 109 110

111

112

Ibid., 88. This controversy erupted in January 1643, just a few weeks before Habert delivered his second sermon. It stemmed from alterations to the catechism’s text that, according to Saint-Cyran’s supporters, “entirely disfigured” its message. When the archbishop of Paris drafted a pastoral letter condemning the catechism, Antoine Arnauld and Martin de Barcos were able to convince him that the text had been tampered with. The archbishop ended up removing his censure of the catechism from the published version of his pastoral letter. For a full description of the controversy, see Hermant, 1:185–8. Arnauld, Apologie pour M. Jans´enius, 109. Advocate Generals were members of Parlement who provided legal analyses and consultations for judges. Hermant, 1:186. Arnauld, Apologie pour M. Jans´enius, 109. Habert used these two different versions of the catechism to his advantage to argue that Jansen’s friends altered this text to hide their errors. Alexander Sedgwick, The Travails of Conscience, 124–7. Antoine was one of many people who took on Saint-Cyran as his confessor after his imprisonment. The arrest turned Saint-Cyran into a martyr in many people’s view. In this letter dated February 1, 1642, Saint-Cyran wrote that the time to speak out had come: “The time to speak has arrived.” He stressed that failure to respond to these sermons would be a crime in the eyes of God: “It would be a crime to keep silent and I do not doubt in any way that God would punish you for this crime through some visible and quite palpable physical pain.” Hermant, 1:183.

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publish anything for several months, during which time Richelieu died and Saint-Cyran was granted his release from prison on February 6, 1643.113 In April 1643, Antoine finally began publishing texts in support of Jansen and Saint-Cyran, with help from the growing number of SaintCyran’s male disciples, who had retreated to the farm at Port-Royal-desChamps to devote their time to prayer, study, and manual labor. Within a matter of months, these men – who called themselves the solitaires (solitary ones) – published the Th´eologie Morale des Jesuites (Moral Theology of the Jesuits), Apologie pour M. l’abb´e de St. Cyran (In Defense of Saint-Cyran), and several translated works of St. Augustine. They also published De la Fr´equente Communion (On Frequent Communion), a treatise describing Saint-Cyran’s penitential system, which, like the catechism, had circulated privately among his followers before the outbreak of the Jansenist debates. During this period of intense publication, SaintCyran’s health deteriorated. He died on October 11, 1643, just nine months after his release from prison. He never lived to see the publication of Arnauld’s Apologie de M. Jans´enius (In Defense of M. Jansen) in 1644, which was the response to Habert’s sermons that he had requested with such urgency from his prison cell. The Apologie followed the standard format for polemical treatises, with Antoine listing Habert’s theses point by point and following each with his refutations. He systematically attacked Habert’s arguments by defending Augustine as the preeminent authority on grace and by showing how Jansen described his doctrine accurately. As for Habert’s charge that there was a Jansenist plot at hand to undermine the Church, Arnauld charged that it was the Jesuits instead who were destroying the Church by attacking Augustine through Jansen by proxy. Habert’s sermons and Arnauld’s Apologie formed what scholars of religious polemic call the “primary chain” of debate because their texts sought to address the full range of items under dispute between the two parties.114 These primary texts then spawned several secondary chains of debate as their authors and others published texts that aimed to refute the opposing side by focusing on one or two items. As time passed, the secondary chains branched off even further as authors sought to articulate

113 114

Arnauld explained he did not publish out of respect to a call for silence by the archbishop of Paris at the time. Preface to the Apologie pour M. Jansen. Bernard Dompnier, Le venin de l’h´er´esie: image du protestantisme et combat catholique au XVIIe si`ecle (Paris: Le Centurion, 1985), 172.

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the essential point of their position by focusing on single topics with greater specialization and intensity.115 The most important of the subordinate chains of debate to develop in France was that over Saint-Cyran’s penitential methods. This chain sparked debates over the full range of issues associated with French Catholic moral theology at the time. These debates also drew the PortRoyal nuns into the spotlight of the Jansenist controversy, where they remained for the next seventy years. The text most responsible for bringing the nuns into the debate was the Sommaire de la th´eologie de M. Arnauld et des maximes de l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran (Summary of M. Arnauld’s Theology and of the Maxims of the Abbot of Saint-Cyran) published by the Jesuit priest Jer Seguin in the spring of 1644.116 ´ ome ˆ ´ Earlier in 1639, Seguin had published a list of Saint-Cyran’s dangerous ´ “maxims” that had been culled from the testimonies gathered against him.117 Now, by pointing out how the ideas in Antoine Arnauld’s On Frequent Communion were the same as Saint-Cyran’s, Seguin argued that ´ 118 Arnauld was reviving these dangerous maxims. To bolster his point that Arnauld was Saint-Cyran’s successor in heresy, Seguin revived the controversy around the Secret Chaplet. Accord´ ing to him, the Secret Chaplet contained the most perverse elements of Saint-Cyran’s teachings. Specifically, he claimed that it upheld the notion that it was “laudable” to deprive oneself of the Holy Sacrament at the hour of death to “imitate the despair of the son of God on the cross, when he was abandoned by his father.”119 He wrote, “Could it be the mouth of a man, or an organ animated by some demon that invented this practice and vomited this blasphemy? Even Calvin could never connever mentioned the nuns in ceive of something this horrible.”120 Seguin ´ this passage, but he implicated them because Agn`es Arnauld had already publicly claimed authorship of the text in the 1630s.121 Reviving the Secret Chaplet controversy was a strategic move for Seguin because it allowed him to tap into the compelling case for heresy ´ 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

Ibid. Jer Seguin (1607–55) was the brother of the queen’s doctor. Hermant, 1:245. ´ ome ˆ ´ Jer Seguin, Maximes de l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran extraites de son information (1639). ´ ome ˆ ´ Meyer, 496. Hermant, 1:245. Ibid., 1:243. Jer Seguin, Sommaire de la th´eologie de M. Arnauld et des maximes de l’abb´e de ´ ome ˆ ´ Saint-Cyran (1644). Quoted by Hermant, 1:243. Catherine Le Maitre, Relation de ce qui a pr´ec´ed´e l’´etablissement du Monast`ere du S. Sacrement, 438.

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at Port-Royal that Zamet had made in his report for Richelieu in 1638. In fact, Jansen’s critics published a new edition of this report in 1643 in conjunction with Seguin’s text. In reviving Zamet’s accusations against ´ Port-Royal, Jansen’s critics invested the Jansenist debates with new meaning. From this point on, the problem of Jansenism was also a problem with women. A second edition of the Apologie pour M. l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran in 1645 solidified this new relationship between women and Jansenism.122 It contained two new sections: a reprint of Le Maistre’s 1639 response to Zamet and a new treatise by Le Maistre titled “A General Response to Zamet’s M´emoire.” In the new treatise, Le Maistre discredited the M´emoire by accusing Zamet of blind passion. The charge that heretics were motivated by uncontrollable passion was a common one in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious polemic.123 Le Maistre leveled the charge against Zamet by saying he had attacked Port-Royal out of jealousy, which he described as “the most typical passion of underchurchmen.”124 For Le Maistre, Zamet’s attack on Angelique ´ scored just how blinding this passion had become: [Zamet] wants to make [Saint-Cyran] seem like an innovator and a schismatic . . . ; and, not content with leveling outrages at him personally, he persecutes him even more in the person of a nun whom he mockingly calls his disciple and his spiritual daughter, [emphasis in original] and whom he treats as an indiscreet and impertinent woman. M. de Langres’ passion spares neither condition nor sex.125

This passage represents the main point of Le Maistre’s treatise: The ruthless attack on innocent nuns reveals the full extent of Jesuit passion. Seguin’s revival of the Secret Chaplet affair and the reissue of Zamet’s ´ report in 1644 inserted the Port-Royal nuns into the Jansenst debates just two years after they erupted in France. These publications, and those refuting them, highlight how the old controversy surrounding Port-Royal took on new meaning in the ideological context of the Jansenist debates. For polemicists on both sides of the debate, the problem of women became a lens through which they denounced their opponents as heretics. By recycling these older texts, polemicists merged the Jansenist debates with 122 123 124 125

Apologie pour M. l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran (1645). In Arnauld, Œuvres, 29:325. Dompnier, 39–44. Apologie pour M. l’abb´e de Saint-Cyran (1645). In Arnauld, Œuvres, 29:325. Ibid., 29:337.

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the querelle des femmes in a way that aligned anti-Jansenist rhetoric with misogynistic attitudes toward women and pro-Jansenist rhetoric with more positive attitudes toward women. From this point on, the querelle des femmes at Port-Royal became one of the many chains of the Jansenist debates. Centering Port-Royal within Jansenism When Seguin revived the Secret Chaplet controversy in 1644, the debate ´ over the nuns was just one of many subordinate chains of the Jansenist debates. By 1651, however, the woman problem at Port-Royal became an important chain in its own right through a controversy known as the Brisacier Affair. This controversy began when Jean de Brisacier, a Jesuit priest in the town of Blois, delivered a pair of sermons attacking John Callaghan, a French-educated Irish priest with ties to Port-Royal. Callaghan had recently been appointed parish priest of Cour Cheverny – a small village near Blois – by its seigneurial lord, Anne Hurault de Cheverny, the marquise d’Aumont. Mme d’Aumont was a patron of the PortRoyal nuns and had appointed Callaghan to her domain to provide him with an income during his exile from Ireland and to promote Port-Royal’s penitential practices there. Shortly after Brisacier denounced Callaghan in the pulpit, he published a polemical treatise titled Le Jans´enisme confondu (Jansenism Confounded).126 Brisacier’s treatise brought together all of the negative rumors that had been spreading about the Port-Royal nuns and presented them in such a way that the convent now became a synecdoche for Jansenism. Thanks to Brisacier, “Port-Royal” became synonymous with “Jansenism.” Brisacier’s pretext for his attack on Callaghan was the Irishman’s ministry at the neighboring village of Cour Cheverny. Brisacier accused Callaghan of teaching doctrinal errors to the innocent villagers living 126

The full title of his pamphlet was Le Jans´enisme confondu dans l’avocat du sieur Callaghan par le P. Brisacier, de la compagnie de J´esus. Avec la defense de son sermon fait a` Blois le 29 mars 1651; Contre la d´efense de Port-Royal (Jansenism Confounded in M. Callaghan’s Lawyer, by Fr. Brisacier, of the Company of Jesus. With the Defense of his Sermon Delivered at Blois on March 29, 1651, against the Defense of Port-Royal). It was written in response to a pamphlet by Etienne Lombard, abbe´ of Trouillas, entitled Response a` un sermon prononc´e par le P. Brisacier Jesuite dans l’Eglise de Saint Sol`ene a` Blois le 29 mars, 1651 (Response to a Sermon Preached by the Jesuit Fr. Brisacier in the Church of St. Sol`ene in Blois on March 29, 1651). Arnauld, Œuvres, vol. 30, Pr´eface Historique et Critique, II. Trouillas was another priest who had accompanied Callaghan to Cour Cheverny to help him with his work there.

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there.127 But the larger reason behind Brisacier’s attack was Callaghan’s role in the ongoing Hibernian Affair. This affair broke out in 1650 when a potential benefactor for a group of exiled Irish priests required them to sign a statement denouncing a set of propositions attributed to Jansen as a precondition for receiving funds to set up their own congregation in Paris.128 Mme d’Aumont’s patronage of Callaghan gave him the financial independence to avoid the predicament his countrymen faced. Her support also allowed him to publish polemical treatises denouncing his fellow Irishmen for signing the statement against Jansen. Callaghan’s critique of the Irish priests was part of a wider campaign among Jansen’s supporters to unveil what they believed was the latest refinement in the Jesuit plot to undermine the Church. This campaign began in 1649 when Nicholas Cornet, the syndic of the faculty at the Sorbonne, submitted a set of propositions to the faculty for censure, claiming that they summarized the “dangerous ideas” recently found in the writings of some of the “younger members” of the faculty. Antoine Arnauld (who happened to be the youngest member of the faculty) responded that these propositions were almost identical to those attributed to Jansen by the Jesuits of Louvain. He then accused the syndic of participating in the Jesuit plot against Augustine. For Arnauld, the syndic’s attempt to pass off the“Jansenist” propositions as a composite of ideas from various dissertations marked a crafty evolution in the Jesuit plot against the Church. He explained in Consid´erations sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet (1649) that if the faculty condemned a list of propositions that had no identifiable author or context, they would be condemning propositions that had no fixed meaning. He said that the Jesuits would then take advantage of this ambiguity of origin to manipulate the propositions to mean whatever they wanted in any situation. He warned that they could confound “the simple and ignorant, who [are] the majority [of people],” while leaving a door open for themselves to “excuse themselves before intelligent men” by saying that they only meant to condemn “what was wrong in the propositions, without any intent to harm St. Augustine.”129 In Arnauld’s view, Cornet’s propositions made the Jesuits’ plot more dangerous because they did more than just denounce Jansen’s propositions as a way to condemn Augustine by 127 128

129

Brisacier, “Replique sur l’avis au lecteur.” In Le Jans´enisme confondu. ´ Ruth Clark, Strangers and Sojourners at Port Royal. Being an account of the connections between the British Isles and the Jansenists of France and Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 192. Arnauld, Consid´erations sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet. In Œuvres, 19:20–1.

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proxy. Now they obscured the meaning of these propositions, enabling the Jesuits to use them arbitrarily to oppress or seduce others as they pursued their goal of destroying Augustine’s legacy to the Church. Cornet’s proposal and Arnauld’s critique prompted a heated debate within the Sorbonne that ended only when Parlement stepped in and ordered silence. Two years later, Isaac Habert, who had since been promoted as bishop of Vabres, moved the debate into the General Assembly of the Clergy when he circulated a petition among his fellow bishops to have Cornet’s propositions – which Habert now attributed to Jansen – sent to Rome for censure. The Hibernian Affair coincided with Habert’s petition. Just when several French bishops were signing off on a letter asking the pope to condemn the propositions, the potential benefactor for the Irish priests (at the request of his Jesuit confessor) asked them to sign a statement condemning the propositions as a precondition for his patronage. He cited the Irish tendency toward Jansenism as the rationale for this request (two of Jansen’s earliest defenders had been Florent Conrius and John Sinnich, both Irish theologians). For Arnauld and his supporters, this incident confirmed their worst fears that the Jesuits were setting up their campaign against Jansen in a way that allowed them to use the threat of Jansenism to intimidate and seduce vulnerable groups within the Church. When the Irish priests signed the statement, Callaghan criticized them for entering this devil’s bargain with the Jesuits out of moral weakness. His critique stood out as the voice of an insider: He could claim special authority in his critique as an Irish priest who had escaped the Jesuit trap by recognizing it and finding an alternative. Brisacier, in defending his order, similarly drew on his insider position – this time as Callaghan’s neighbor – to provide eyewitness testimony that Callaghan’s penitential teachings at Cour Cheverny smacked of heresy. In the preface to Le Jans´enisme Confondu, where he described how Callaghan came to Cour Cheverny, Brisacier suggested that it was not the Irishmen in Paris who had entered a devil’s bargain but Callaghan who was guilty of such a transaction by attaching himself to the Port-Royal women: Simon Magus could have done nothing without Helen, who was more deadly to the world and more famous than Helen of Troy; nor could Apelles have done anything without Philomena, Donatus without Lucilla, Montanus without his two Apostlesses, Priscilla and Maximilla; all other heretics would never have had much success in their Gospel of Error without the help of women.130 130

Brisacier, “Replique sur l’avis au lecteur.” In Le Jans´enisme confondu. ´

Jansenism as a “Woman Problem”

47

By listing famous heretics with their female partners Brisacier took advantage of Callaghan’s debt to the Port-Royal nuns and their patrons for his livelihood to accuse him of heresy. Although earlier anti-Jansenist polemicists had used the link between Jansen and the Port-Royal nuns to exploit the traditional association between unruly women and heresy, Brisacier used Callaghan’s case to make this association a distinctive mark of the Jansenist heresy. He developed this argument in the main part of his text, which he divided into four parts corresponding with the four marks associated with the Nicene Creed: “unity, universality, a tradition of succession, and holiness.”131 He explained that if he could show that the teachings of Callaghan and his friends at Port-Royal conformed to these four marks, they were orthodox. Divergence from these marks would prove Callaghan and his associates to be false prophets or “seducers.”132 At several points, Brisacier used the rumors against the Port-Royal nuns as evidence that the Jansenists deviated from the four marks of the Church. For example, in part one (unity), he cited a report from an inspection of Port-Royal at the time of Saint-Cyran’s arrest, which claimed that the nuns did not properly venerate the Virgin Mary.133 Brisacier argued that the failure to emphasize Marian devotion was an example of how the nuns deviated from the rest of the Church. The early parts of Brisacier’s treatise contained several passages in which the nuns provided supporting evidence for marks of heresy. By part four of his text (holiness), however, he went further to suggest that the nuns were themselves de facto heretics by embodying within their female forms all that was wrong about Jansenism. He set up this argument by first challenging his critics to list the “illustrious witnesses” to Jansen’s holiness. He included in this list John Calvin: “Is it Master John Calvin your founder; will you find as many virtues and miracles in his 131 132 133

Ibid. Brisacier’s sermon reflected the trend by the mid-seventeenth century to reduce all of the marks previously used in anti-Protestant polemics to these four. Thils, 32. Brisacier, “Replique sur l’avis au lecteur.” In Le Jans´enisme confondu. ´ Brisacier, Le Jans´enisme confondu, part I, p. 16. The rumor that the Port-Royal nuns did not revere the Virgin Mary was a frequently repeated one in anti-Jansenist polemics. Angelique Arnauld and her supporters denied this rumor. See for example, her letter to ´ Marie Gonzaga, the queen of Poland, March 22, 1647. In Jacqueline-Marie Angelique ´ de Ste.-Madeleine Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, Reprinted with introduction by Jean Lesaulnier, 3 vols. (Utrecht, 1752; reprint, Paris: Phenix Editions, ´ 2003), 1:329. Angelique, however, did reject many mainstream practices in seventeenth´ century piety. F. Ellen Weaver, La Contre-R´eforme et les Constitutions de Port-Royal (Paris: Les Editions de Cerf, 2002), 44–8.

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life?”134 He then asked if the witness was Jean de Labadie135 or SaintCyran. He ended with the Port-Royal nuns: “Is it those beautiful virgins, who, in order to excuse their wanton behavior, never blame themselves when confessing, but blame God as the author of their licentiousness, and who come to us whispering in our ear, in order to modestly explain their oft-reiterated adulteries, which are that Grace has failed them several times?”136 Here, Brisacier not only listed the nuns (and Saint-Cyran) alongside Calvinists to suggest guilt by association but also went further to describe their behavior in a way that – for those familiar with the list of heretical propositions that Habert had just sent to Rome for condemnation – was an obvious reference to the first proposition. This proposition, which happens to be the only one found in Jansen’s text word for word, states, “Some commandments [of God] are impossible to the just, who may wish [to obey them] and may exert all their efforts in that direction; they lack the grace necessary to carry them out.” According to Jansen’s defenders, this proposition reflects Augustine’s belief that even the most just and sincere Christians experience moments of lapse during which they lack the ability to follow God’s commands.137 In his Apologie de M. Jansen, Arnauld explained that God deliberately withholds grace from these people on occasion to remind them that they must never stop seeking divine help to combat sin.138 In contrast, Jansen’s critics argued that this proposition upheld the Calvinist view that God will sometimes put humans in the cruel position of commanding them to do things of which they are incapable.139 Brisacier’s description of the “wanton behavior” of the nuns added a new, misogynistic interpretation to the Jesuit claim that the proposition reflected Calvinism. According to Brisacier, the proposition suited morally weak women because it allowed them to exult in their corrupt nature without taking any blame for their indulgences. By linking the first proposition to the immoral behavior of the nuns, he elevated their 134 135

136 137 138

139

Brisacier, Le Jans´enisme confondu, part 4, p. 1. Jean de Labadie (1610–74) was a Jesuit priest who became a friend of Port-Royal in the early 1640s and then converted to Calvinism in 1650. For Jansen’s critics, Labadie proved that Jansenism was a stepping-stone between Catholicism and Calvinism. Hermant 1:541–4. Brisacier, Le Jans´enisme confondu, part 4, p. 2. Arnauld, Consid´erations sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet. In Œuvres, 19:21. Ibid. He pointed to the testimonies of St. Paul and other saints who frequently suffered in their attempts to serve God faithfully as proof that this periodic lesson in humility was necessary. Ibid.

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significance to his rhetorical argument. They were no longer one source of evidence among many of the ways in which the Jansenists deviated from the Church. Instead, they now stood as a polar opposite to the holy Church as embodiments of the Jansenist heresy. For Brisacier, the nuns united the meaning of the Jansenist propositions with visible behavior, meaning that they were a visual mark of Jansenism in their own right. To underscore how the Port-Royal women embodied the Jansenist heresy, Brisacier described how the Jansenists would follow a new religion based on the Secret Chaplet and named after the nuns: The Jansenist devotees will make another rare and new religious vow, to never receive Holy Communion or absolution in all their life, not even on their deathbed, in order to imitate Jesus’ despair when he was abandoned on the Cross by his Father, so that all that Jesus Christ is may have no relationship to us, following the Chaplet . . . they will be obliged to follow these rules and create a new religion that will be called the impenitent nuns, the desperate women, the asacramentals, the un-communionicated women, the fantastical women, the female Callaghans, the crazy virgins, and anything else you can come up with.140

Thus Brisacier placed the nuns firmly at the center of Jansenism by elevating the nuns in his rhetoric to the level of synecdoche, in which they now stood for the whole concept of Jansenism. By using their Secret Chaplet to define the heresy and by listing many names for the nuns (impenitent nuns, desperate women, asacramentals, etc.), all of which were interchangeable, Brisacier made his point that the word “PortRoyal” was all one had to say to refer to the entire Jansenist phenomenon. Brisacier’s treatise marked the moment in which the woman problem at Port-Royal moved from being one of many subsidiary debates within the larger debates over Jansenist moral theology to a chain of debate in its own right over the nuns’ role in defining Jansenism. Port-Royal had become a reference point for Jansen’s critics, one that encompassed and embodied all of the elements of the Jansenist heresy. That Brisacier made this rhetorical move in response to Mme d’Aumont’s patronage of John Callaghan reveals how the real-world actions of women and the anxieties these produced contributed to the intensification of the French Jansenist debates. These anxieties were one of the drivers behind polemicists’ efforts to refine their definitions of the Jansenist heresy and added urgency to their claims that this heresy was spreading. 140

Brisacier, Le Jans´enisme confondu, part 4, p. 6. [Emphasis in original]

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Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism Conclusion

When Brisacier put the nuns at the center of his definition of Jansenism, he exploited a long tradition within Christianity of associating heresy with unruly women. What made his move uniquely significant for seventeenthcentury France was the cultural baggage already associated with these women through the revival of the querelle des femmes earlier in the century. This visible and wide-ranging debate among the Parisian elite grew out of a deep and pervasive anxiety over the social changes that were taking place within the French nobility after the Wars of Religion. Angelique Arnauld’s reform had already triggered a debate over Port´ Royal that intersected with the querelle des femmes years before Jansen’s book was published. As the first woman from the robe nobility to occupy Port-Royal’s abbacy and one whose claim to this position lacked legitimacy because of the circumstances of her nomination, Angelique had to ´ emphasize her merit as a reformer by adhering to a strict obedience to the Benedictine Rule. Angelique found herself promoting the values asso´ ciated with her robe background to advance her family’s status among France’s established elite as she navigated her way through the various opportunities and challenges she faced. The social change she represented and the anxieties it engendered were the source of the first accusations of heresy against Port-Royal. When polemicists such as Brisacier strategically appropriated PortRoyal’s controversial past into their anti-Jansenist polemics, they tapped into this deep anxiety over women and social change. They also gave France’s “woman problem” new meaning. The pervasive anxiety over social change within the nobility now reinforced and added urgency to the claim that a new Jansenist heresy had infected France.

2 Controversy and Reform at Port-Royal

On March 6, 1643, Angelique Arnauld sent a letter containing both good ´ and bad news to a fellow reformer, M. Louis Macquet, the spiritual director for the nuns of the Annunciation in the city of Boulogne. The good news was that Saint-Cyran had returned to Port-Royal after having spent five years in prison. The bad news was that several Jesuit priests had begun publicly accusing Jansen of heresy: “The Jesuit fathers are crying out from the pulpit in a strange way against M. d’Ypres [Jansen], going so far as to call him an overheated Calvinist, and describing his doctrine as the most pernicious heresy that has ever been taught. Judge for yourself just how far the passions can go.”1 According to historian Lucien Ceyssens, this letter reveals the broad impact these sermons had on Parisian society. The anti-Jansenist sermons not only resounded in the public churches of Paris but also “made a painful echo even in the most secluded spaces.”2 By describing Port-Royal as a highly secluded space, Ceyssens referred to the convent’s reputation as a successfully reformed Benedictine convent. He also upheld a long tradition of scholarship separating Port-Royal from the Jansenist debates by suggesting the convent was normally sealed off from such echoes and that they slipped through only by unfortunate mishap. However, scholars such as Ceyssens overlook a dynamic relationship that developed between the Jansenist controversy and the internal 1

2

Angelique Arnauld to Louis Macquet, March 6, 1643. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:232. The phrase “Calvin rebouilli” refers specifically to the sermon by Jesuit priest Herbodeau delivered at Saint-Andre-des-Arts during Lent 1643. Meyer, ´ Les premi`eres controverses jans´enistes, 142. Lucien Ceyssens, “L’antijanseniste Isaac Habert (1598–1668),” Bulletin de l’Institute ´ historique belge de Rome. 42 (1972), 257.

51

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operation of the convent in the initial years of the controversy. By the time that anti-Jansenists began attacking Port-Royal, Angelique Arnauld ´ already had five years of experience with accusations of heresy and had refined her response. These earlier accusations, which began with the Secret Chaplet affair, coincided with the lowest point of her career, during which the Institute of the Holy Sacrament fell apart, she was in debt, she had no patrons, and she was at odds with her fellow nuns, many of whom wanted Zamet and not Saint-Cyran to direct them. Angelique ´ eventually regained her footing after these setbacks by interpreting the accusations against her as trials from God to humble her and correct her past mistakes. Her interpretation was grounded in the Augustinian principle of “teaching by inconveniences.”3 According to this principle, Christians should accept negative pressures inflicted on them by human and natural forces as forms of positive discipline. In Angelique’s case, she ´ believed that her mistake had been abandoning her reform at Port-Royal to found the Institute of the Holy Sacrament. Her persecution was God’s way of humbling her and pointing her back to her original path. Angelique came to this interpretation of events through Saint-Cyran’s ´ guidance. He taught her to see Port-Royal’s persecution as an opportunity to experience the true contrition and spiritual renewal he counseled his followers to seek. He advised Angelique to trust that God would provide ´ for Port-Royal’s material needs if the nuns experienced a genuine spiritual renewal. With the help of her sister, Agn`es, she taught these beliefs to her fellow nuns in speeches and other texts. After each instance of persecution, the Arnauld women urged their fellow nuns to see it as God’s call for them to renew their dedication to the Benedictine Rule and combat their sins. They taught the nuns to view reform as a perpetual cycle of corruption, suffering, and spiritual renewal. When anti-Jansenists revived the accusations of heresy against SaintCyran and Port-Royal in the 1640s, Angelique embraced the new wave ´ of attacks as an operation of divine grace calling for spiritual renewal. By this time, she was well on her way to restoring her authority at PortRoyal and reinstating a strict obedience to the Benedictine Rule there. The Jansenist debates gave her a new sense of purpose and urgency in this task. Along with Saint-Cyran and her brother, Antoine Arnauld, she viewed the Jesuit attack on Jansen as a plot to undermine the Church. Following the Augustinian precept that the duty of all Christians is to 3

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 236–8.

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prevent sin, she saw her reform at Port-Royal as part of a larger mission to combat the sins of the Jesuits. To the extent that the Jesuits would accuse her of feminine unruliness, she would embrace their persecution as a means of renewing her reform efforts. Her disciplined reform, then, would stand as prima facie evidence that the Jesuit accusations of her unruliness were ridiculous and that these men were guided by blinding passion.4 Angelique thus integrated the anti-Jansenist sermons into her theory ´ of monastic reform as a perpetual cycle of corruption and renewal; they gave new meaning to her reform as an active mission against Jesuit sin. As shown in this chapter, her letters to contacts such as M. Macquet outside the convent contain frequent references to the Jansenist controversy and reveal how she encouraged others to join in and support Port-Royal’s mission. When modern scholars insist that the Port-Royal nuns had nothing to do with the Jansenist debates, they are adopting the rhetoric of Jansen’s apologists, who defended the nuns from Jesuit accusations of unruliness by stressing their worldly indifference. From the perspective of the nuns, however, the tie between Port-Royal’s reform and politics was a very close one. As “disciples of Augustine,” they believed that the inevitable misery caused by human politics was a necessary process through which God reminded them to renew and purify their spirits. They also believed that they had a duty, along with all men and women of conscience, to prevent sin. These women fought sin by adhering to the Benedictine Rule. Yet in dedicating themselves to their monastic reform they never expected to be immune from nor indifferent to the political forces of the outside world. Port-Royal’s Renewal, 1636–1643 When Angelique Arnauld left the Institute of the Holy Sacrament in 1636 ´ to return to Port-Royal, she was the object of criticism from her male spiritual advisors. On the one hand, her previous confessor, Sebastien Zamet, denounced her in the salons of Paris for betraying him and adopting the dubious religion of Saint-Cyran. On the other hand, her new confessor, Saint-Cyran, criticized her for having left Port-Royal in the first place. Letters and eyewitness testimonies recount how Saint-Cyran 4

Thomas Carr Jr., Voix des abbesses du Grand Si`ecle: La Pr´edication au f´eminin a` PortRoyal (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006), 130. ¨

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admonished Angelique for abandoning the Benedictine Rule, which he ´ described as containing “all of scripture,”5 to found the Institute of the Holy Sacrament. He stressed that she needed to do everything possible to restore her original reform, including returning to the first location of the convent, Port-Royal-des-Champs.6 When she explained that the nuns had relocated to Paris because they were dying from malarial fevers, he responded that their suffering was not a legitimate reason for moving.7 In the midst of these harsh admonishments, however, Saint-Cyran inserted messages of hope. In a letter to Angelique sent from his prison ´ cell, he explained that God “humbled” monasteries and convents just as he humbled people to remind them that their souls were more important than material matters: “He ruins them [monasteries and convents] in order to stave off the true ruins, which are those of the soul, which these [monasteries and convents] would cause through lack of discipline, if they lasted any longer.”8 After explaining why Angelique found herself ´ in such trouble, he urged her to spend whatever money she could to preserve the dormitory at Port-Royal-des-Champs so she could return there someday. He knew that she was worried about her debts following the collapse of the institute, but he promised that if she put aside her fears over money and rebuilt the dormitory out of atonement, God would treat her favorably.9 Rebuilding Port-Royal was not going to be an easy task for Angelique. ´ When she returned to Port-Royal-de-Paris in 1636, her authority in the convent was the lowest it had ever been. Not only had she relinquished her position as abbess to join the new institute but also most of the Port-Royal nuns who had not transferred into the institute were still loyal to Zamet. The most important of these nuns was her sister, Agn`es, who believed the negative rumors against Saint-Cyran.10 Agn`es had been Angelique’s ´ 5 6

7

8 9 10

Thomas Carr Jr., “‘Avez-vous lu la R`egle?’: Les Instructions sur la R`egle de la M`ere Angelique,” Chroniques de Port-Royal 52 (2003): 219. ´ When Arnauld moved the nuns to Paris, the community did not give up its jurisdiction over the land and buildings at Champs. The land provided the nuns with most of their income. The church, which was still the official parish church in the area, was cared for by a chaplain who continued to say mass for the local residents. Claude Lancelot, M´emoires touchant la vie de Monsieur de Saint-Cyran, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1738; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 2:456. Ibid., 2:318. When Angelique told him about the fevers, his response was “Tant mieux, ´ ne vaut-il pas autant servir Dieu dans l’infirmerie quand il le veut que dans l’eglise? Il n’y ´ a point de pri`eres plus agreables que celles qui se font dans les souffrances.” ´ Ibid., 2:454. Ibid., 2:455. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps, 465.

Controversy and Reform at Port-Royal

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coadjutor ever since she had left Port-Royal to reform Maubuisson in 1618. Like Angelique, she too resigned from this nominated position ´ when the convent switched over to the system of triennial elections a decade later. Now that Angelique believed that her bad experiences ´ with the Institute of the Holy Sacrament had been trials sent by God to renew Port-Royal’s reform, she needed her sister, who had supported her original reform for many years, to be a part of its renewal. Otherwise, Angelique’s critics might point to the schism between the sisters as proof ´ that Saint-Cyran had led her into heterodoxy. Convincing Agn`es to accept Saint-Cyran’s direction became Angelique’s most crucial task in regaining authority over Port-Royal. ´ The idea that Port-Royal’s woes stemmed from Angelique’s decision to ´ dismantle its reform may have helped her succeed in this task because Agn`es had helped her make that decision. Angelique could suggest that ´ the Secret Chaplet controversy – which developed over a text that her sister had written – was a sign from God highlighting Agn`es’s role in the mistake of abandoning the Benedictine Rule. We do not know for sure what Angelique said to her sister. However, we do know that Saint´ Cyran met with Agn`es to explain that he had defended her Secret Chaplet because he genuinely agreed with her ideas and not because he was trying to insinuate himself at the institute behind Zamet’s back.11 He also insisted that he was “obligated never to abandon the nun that he had defended.”12 This statement, when taken in context of his many letters chastising Angelique for her mistakes, suggests his promise to help Agn`es ´ atone for these mistakes as well. Saint-Cyran’s conversation with Agn`es convinced her to switch her loyalties to him and paved the way for Port-Royal to return to the Benedictine Rule. It also ushered in a new era in which Angelique and Agn`es ´ shared responsibility for Port-Royal’s governance. Except for a short period in which Marie des Anges Suireau served as abbess (1654–8), one of the Arnauld sisters served as abbess until Angelique’s death in ´ served for a total of twelve years in four consecutive 1661.13 Angelique ´ terms (1642–54), and Agn`es served for a total of nine years split between 1636–42 and 1658–61. During these years, the Arnaulds assigned new 11 12 13

Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps, 466. Ibid. When the sisters were not serving as abbess, they held other positions of influence in the convent. For instance, in 1636, Angelique became mistress of novices. This was an ´ important position because it involved shaping the religious life of the next generation of nuns.

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meaning to Port-Royal’s reform by merging their observance of the Benedictine Rule with Saint-Cyran’s system of spiritual renewals. In particular, Agn`es, whom Saint-Cyran nicknamed la th´eologienne, dedicated her talents to developing this synthesis.14 She composed several devotional works that stressed how nuns must continually renew their faith so that their observance of the monastic rule stems from genuine internal conviction.15 She also reinforced this synthesis in daily speeches to the nuns in their chapter meetings and in the constitutions that she drafted for the convent.16 Through these writings and speeches, Agn`es oriented the concepts of monastic obedience toward those of spiritual rebirth and renewal. At the same time that the Arnauld sisters began collaborating on their renewal of the Benedictine Rule at Port-Royal, Saint-Cyran worked from his prison cell to help them by recruiting a group of like-minded people, both lay and clerical, to support the convent’s revival. He convinced several of the Arnauld male relatives to abandon their worldly professions, turn over their personal assets to the convent’s endowment, and live at the convent’s farm as pious recluses, or solitaires.17 These relatives, along with other men who joined them, moved to the farm in 1639 and began improving the estate by draining the swamps and renovating several buildings. Saint-Cyran also cultivated new patrons for the convent. The first among them was Anne de Rohan, the princess of Guem ´ en ´ e, ´ who, like Saint-Cyran, had fallen victim to Richelieu’s politics. In her case, Richelieu had threatened to disgrace her by publishing her letters written to the older brother, Robert rebellious duke of Montmorency.18 Angelique’s ´ Arnauld d’Andilly, introduced Anne de Rohan to Saint-Cyran in his prison cell shortly after Richelieu made this threat. She was inspired by his message of spiritual renewal, took him on as her confessor, and introduced many of her friends to him, including Madeleine de Souvre, ´ the marquise de Sable´ (1599–1678), and Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, 14 15 16

17 18

Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps, 470. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 109. These writings are the l’Image d’une religieuse parfaite et d’une imparfaite, avec les occupations int´erieurs pour toute la journ´ee (1665). Written records of Agn`es’s oral discourses to the community are scant, but Carr believes that the ideas in her published texts were based on these oral discourses. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 111. Sedgwick, The Travails of Conscience, 88. The duke of Montmorency participated in a conspiracy against Richelieu and was executed for treason in 1632. When Richelieu arrested Montmorency, he found love letters from Mme de Guemen e´ among his papers. ´

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princess of Mantua and future queen of Poland.19 These powerful noblewomen paved the way for others to become Port-Royal’s patrons. MarieAngelique d’Aquaviva d’Aragon; Anne Hurault d’Aumont, the mar´ quise de Cheverny; Anne-Genevi`eve de Bourbon, the second duchess of Longueville; and Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevign e, ´ ´ all eventually became supporters of Port-Royal.20 With Saint-Cyran’s help, Angelique found new meaning and support ´ for her reform at Port-Royal. His message that God destroyed the Institute of the Holy Sacrament as a way to humble her and offer her a chance for redemption was no doubt comforting in difficult times. For the rest of her life, Angelique spoke of her move to Paris as a thing of regret ´ 21 and remorse. In contrast, Port-Royal-des-Champs became a symbol of redemption and grace in her writings.22 Port-Royal’s New Mission The Arnauld sisters created new meaning for Port-Royal’s reform when they rededicated themselves to the Benedictine Rule as an exercise in spiritual renewal. Their reform took on additional meaning when antiJansenists revived the accusations of heresy from the Secret Chaplet affair. Because these accusations threatened to revive the divisions that had existed between the nuns who had followed Zamet and those who had followed Saint-Cyran, it became imperative for the Arnauld sisters to maintain discipline among them. To help preserve this discipline, they taught their fellow nuns to view their renewed commitment to the Benedictine Rule as part of a larger mission to combat the sins perpetrated by the Jesuits against the Church. For the nuns, therefore, maintaining Port-Royal’s reform and combating the Jesuits were two sides of the same coin. 19

20 21 22

Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves was the daughter of the duke of Nevers and the duchess of Lorraine. She first came to Port-Royal after having spent time in prison under the king’s orders for being engaged to Gaston d’Orleans, the king’s younger brother and the leader ´ of a rebellion against Richelieu. She later became queen of Poland when she married Ladislas-Sigismond IV by proxy at the French court at Fontainebleau in November 1645. Zofia Libiszowska, Certains aspects des Rapports entre la France et la Pologne au XVIIe si`ecle (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1964), 4. Cecile Gazier, Les belles amies de Port-Royal (Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1930). Jean Lesaulnier, “Fallait-il quitter Port-Royal des Champs? Des regrets d’Angelique a` ´ l’apaisement de la vieille abbesse,” Chroniques de Port-Royal 55 (2005): 79–96. Sylvain Hilaire, “Une approche de la gen`ese des paysages de Port-Royal des Champs: Les ‘mythes fondateurs’ et la pensee Chroniques de Port-Royal 55 (2005): ´ du desert,” ´ 23–39.

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Once the Jansenist debates broke out in Paris in the spring of 1642, it did not take long for the controversy to affect Port-Royal. In February 1643, Angelique learned that the archbishop of Paris wanted to open ´ a new investigation into Saint-Cyran’s alleged heretical activities. He planned to visit Port-Royal to interview the nuns about Saint-Cyran’s direction over them and to search the convent for his papers. Angelique, ´ who had recently been elected abbess, was told that, if she did not cooperate with this investigation, the archbishop would remove her and any other obstructionist nuns from the house and assign new confessors to of her tenuous the remaining nuns.23 This threat reminded Angelique ´ authority over Port-Royal. Although she and her sister had worked hard to instill their values underlying monastic reform, there was always the danger that those nuns who had been loyal to Zamet just a few years earlier might denounce Saint-Cyran in private conversations with the archbishop. When Angelique wrote to Saint-Cyran asking for advice on how to ´ respond to the archbishop’s threats, he advised her to embrace this crisis as another divine intervention sent to humble her: “We must pray to God to humble us, and even to greatly persecute us, if He sees fit.”24 He also informed her that he had asked M. Singlin – one of his disciples and the nuns’ current confessor – to retrieve all of his notebooks from Port-Royal so that, when the archbishop asked for them, she could answer honestly that Saint-Cyran had all of his writings with him.25 He then stressed that she needed to maintain Port-Royal’s reform at all costs: It is the opinion of Scripture and of all the saints that good exercises must be performed under such circumstances, and if possible, voluntary afflictions must be added to necessary ones. If, under such circumstances, your convent were to crumble to the ground and you were to be moved elsewhere, this would be a lesser affliction for me than the loss of your discipline, which is the greatest evil that they could do to you in giving you other directors.26

This statement was consistent with what he had told Angelique earlier ´ when he said that God would ruin convents to prevent the “true ruin” of the soul. His message was clear: Angelique had to hold the nuns together ´ with the understanding that they were in an all-or-nothing situation. She had to instruct them to prefer the ruin of their community over the 23 24 25 26

Lancelot, M´emoires, 1:233. Ibid., 1:234. Ibid. Ibid., 1:235.

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potential ruin of their souls, which would happen through the loss of Port-Royal’s reform. The Jansenist debates thus gave Port-Royal’s reform new meaning as a mission to stand firm against Jansen’s enemies. To the extent that these enemies would try to exploit Port-Royal’s internal schisms, the Arnauld sisters had to convince their sisters to unite in defense of Port-Royal’s reform. Upholding this reform meant practicing passive obedience, if necessary. Angelique and Agn`es advised their fellow nuns to prefer self´ sacrifice rather than allow anyone – even their archbishop – to undermine their reform. To educate the nuns about their mission Angelique increasingly ´ compared Port-Royal with other convents in the speeches she gave to her fellow nuns.27 She frequently highlighted the moral failures of other convents and upheld Port-Royal as a “haven in an ocean of lax monasticism.”28 Thomas M. Carr Jr. interprets these speeches as serving a double function. On the one hand, Angelique acknowledged her fel´ low nuns’ efforts in adhering to Port-Royal’s strict discipline as a way to encourage them. On the other hand, she pointed to the widespread corruption around them to keep them vigilant.29 Her formal speeches rarely mentioned the Jesuit attacks against Port-Royal.30 Instead, she allowed her general comparisons of the morally lax directors of other houses – which she described as rapidly succumbing to sin – to Port-Royal’s virtuous directors to imply that Port-Royal was under siege. At the same time that Angelique encouraged the nuns to identify their ´ reform with a mission to combat Jesuit sin, she also sought to convince her friends and family outside the convent to support this mission. Letters she wrote between 1642 and 1652 to four correspondents – the directors of a group of Annunciation nuns in Boulogne; her brother Antoine; her patron, the queen of Poland; and the archbishop of Paris – reveal her strategies for recruiting others to Port-Royal’s mission. These strategies were grounded in the practices and conventions of letter writing. Like many elite women of her day, Angelique was a prolific ´ letter writer.31 In particular, women of the robe relied on letter writing to 27 28 29 30 31

Carr, Voix des abbesses, 127. Ibid., 128. Ibid. Ibid., 130. An edition of Arnauld’s letters published in Utrecht, Holland (1742–4), contains 1,041 letters for the period 1621–61. This edition does not contain all of the known letters written by her, nor does it contain the letters written to her by others. Jean Mesnard

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establish and maintain the social status of their families.32 Letter writing helped women achieve these goals in part because of the way people copied and circulated letters within society. Mme de Sevign e´ is the most ´ famous example of a woman who established her reputation as a purveyor of taste, moral behavior, and literary style by having her private letters Arnauld also used letter read and copied among elite society.33 Angelique ´ writing effectively to promote her ideas and establish her authority within her social circles. In Angelique’s case, the letter-writing practices of her family back´ ground had to merge with her identity as a cloistered nun. Tradition dictated that she write only to other nuns, to laywomen seeking spiritual guidance, to male superiors and other spiritual directors, and, on some occasions, to family.34 Tradition also limited her letters to matters of spirituality, religion, and, because she was abbess, the administration of her convent. Within these sanctioned topics, the Pauline interdictions on women teaching in the Church placed further restrictions, and she had to refrain from teaching others about religion or doctrine.35 These interdictions did not restrict Angelique’s output of information ´ as much as it forced her to frame this information through the figurative language of her own edifying behavior. Employing the language of the science of saints – which at Port-Royal meant concordance between theological truth and pious example – Angelique communicated her ideas ´ and opinions about Port-Royal’s mission to close friends and family and also to a wider reading public.

32 33 34

35

concludes from his study of the various printed editions of her letters that, in spite of its gaps, this is the most accurate edition of her letters. Jean Mesnard, “Pour une edition ´ critique des lettres de la M`ere Angelique,” Chroniques de Port-Royal 41 (1992): 211– ´ 26. See also Jean Lesaulnier, “Introduction.” In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:1–18. Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570–1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 176–7. Mich`ele Longino Farrell, Performing Motherhood: The S´evign´e Correspondence (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991). The convent’s constitutions also spelled out the restrictions on the nuns’ communication with the outside world. For example, women were supposed to restrict their contact with the outside world to a greater extent than normal during their novitiate, according to Agn`es Arnauld, the author of Port-Royal’s constitutions: “Pendant l’annee ´ du noviciat, les filles n’iront au parloir que le moins qu’il sera possible, ni n’ecriront de lettres a` leurs ´ parents sans grande necessit e.” ´ ´ Cited in Jean Mesnard, “Blaise Pascal et la vocation de sa soeur Jacqueline,” XVIIe si`ecle 11 (1951): 89–90. The relevant passages can be found in 1 Corinthians 14:34–7 and 1 Timothy 2:11–14. For a discussion of the Pauline interdictions at Port-Royal see Carr, Voix des abbesses, 54–70.

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Letters to the Directors of the Annunciation Nuns in Boulogne The first time Angelique ever mentioned the Jansenist debates in her pri´ vate correspondence was in a letter to the abbess of the Annunciation nuns on March 30, 1642. The abbess was one of the many women who consulted with Angelique for advice on how to reform and regulate their ´ wrote this letter, she was in the convents.36 At the time that Angelique ´ process of advising the abbess to remove her nuns from under the jurisdiction of the Cordeliers monks and to place them under that of their local bishop. After urging her fellow abbess to “hold firm to the extreme” in these efforts,37 Angelique requested that she pass along some news to ´ Macquet, her confessor: “Please tell M. Macquet that I am asking him to pray again for our dear father [Saint-Cyran] who people continue to persecute cruelly through slander, which stems from animosity for the book that he honors so much (the Augustinus), and for the book preceding it (Petrus Aurelius).”38 At one level, this passage reveals how Angelique spread news of the ´ Jansenist debates in Paris to her colleagues in the provinces within weeks of Habert’s first sermons against Jansen. However, as a nun who took her vow of silence seriously, passing such information for its own sake would have been unacceptable. At another level, then, Angelique composed this ´ passage to edify the abbess in Boulogne about her own reform efforts. She had encouraged the abbess to “stay firm” in her bid to transfer the Annunciation nuns to the bishop’s jurisdiction because she strongly supported the view that bishops were better suited than monks to administer the Church hierarchy.39 Saint-Cyran similarly argued in favor of episcopal authority at the expense of the regular clergy (especially the Jesuits) in the works he published under the pseudonym Petrus Aurelius.40 By 36

37 38 39

40

Annie Barnes provides background on Arnauld and Saint-Cyran’s relations with the Annunciation nuns of Boulogne in her edition of Saint-Cyran’s letters. Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Lettres in´edites de Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abb´e de Saint-Cyran, ed. crit. Annie Barnes (Paris: Vrin, 1962), 95–7. Angelique Arnauld to the Superior of the Annunciation Nuns of Boulogne. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:217. Ibid., 1:218. Angelique attributed her ideas on these matters of ecclesiastical hierarchy to the conver´ sations she had with St. Francis de Sales. See Cognet, M`ere Ang´elique et St. Franc¸ois de Sales, 76–7. As mentioned, she had moved Port-Royal out of the jurisdiction of the Cistercian order and into that of the archbishop of Paris in 1625. In these texts, Saint-Cyran sparred against the Jesuit priest Sirmond over the question of who should administer the English Church following the death of the last Catholic bishop there. Saint-Cyran made the case for members of the secular clergy to take over jurisdiction, and Sirmond argued in favor of the regular clergy. For details on the debates

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mentioning that Saint-Cyran’s persecution was due to the Petrus Aurepointed to him as a pious example of somebody lius works,41 Angelique ´ who was already being persecuted over the same cause for which she was encouraging the abbess to take a stand.42 Thus, by telling the abbess about Saint-Cyran, Angelique added urgency to her advice to switch juris´ dictions by implying that the abbess’s efforts were part of a larger struggle for the Church’s overall integrity. To emphasize the universal scope of this battle, Angelique closed her letter by saying, “We must pray for the ´ Holy Church more than ever.”43 Angelique mentioned the Jansenist controversy not simply to spread ´ news about it but also to encourage other men and women of conscience to identify with the sacrifice and opportunities for renewal that Jansen’s persecution offered. Another example of how she sought to edify others through examples from the Jansenist debates was the packet she sent to M. Macquet on February 27, 1643, containing a copy of Saint-Cyran’s Th´eologie famili`ere and a letter from her.44 After informing Macquet that Saint-Cyran had been released from prison that month, she explained that his persecution was not over because his enemies had seized on his catechism as a way to discredit him: They have gone to much effort to censure the little book (Th´eologie famili`ere) that I have sent to you; but in the end, the objections they made against this book were found to be ridiculous. It is in part due to the book that you admire (Augustinus) that they are waging this war against him; because they will do whatever they can to have it censured, but we think that God will defend it.45

Although Angelique mentioned that Saint-Cyran’s enemies went “to ´ much effort to censure” his catechism, she did not enter into the details.46

41

42 43 44 45 46

in France over the English Church see Hermant, 1:16–20. Alison Forrestal considers how this debate fit into a century-long conflict between bishops and members of the regular clergy in France. Alison Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors, and Kings: Visions of Episcopacy in Seventeenth-Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 113–15. When Arnauld wrote that Saint-Cyran was being slandered because of the Petrus Aurelius, she was repeating a claim that Antoine Arnauld made in the preface to the Apologie de M. Jans´enius. For a history of this long-standing struggle between episcopal authority and that of the regular orders, see Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors, and King, 109–27. Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:218. The Th´eologie ordinaire was Saint-Cyran’s catechism. See discussion of this text in Chapter 1. Angelique Arnauld to Louis Macquet, February 27, 1643. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:231. Hermant, 1:187. Lancelot, Memoires, 1:229–31. All of these events took place in late January/early February 1643, which means that Angelique wrote to Macquet within ´ days of when these events took place.

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By remaining silent on these details and by sending Macquet a copy of this text, Angelique conformed to traditional behaviors for nuns. Nuns ´ often sent devotional texts, along with advice about how to read them, as a way to provide spiritual edification. However, she not only wanted Macquet to read the catechism as an example of a spiritually edifying devotional work but also to view the text as evidence of the sinful behavior of Saint-Cyran’s persecutors. When read in the context of polemical treatises published in Paris at the time, her letter reveals her use of many of the same strategies and arguments forwarded by Jansen’s apologists to combat the sins of their opponents. For instance, providing Macquet with access to the original text so that he could judge the truth for himself was an important strategy among Jansen’s defenders, who were at that very moment translating passages from Jansen’s and Augustine’s writings into the vernacular so that French readers could read and judge the truth for themselves.47 Just as Angelique ´ informed Macquet that the charges against the Th´eologie famili`ere were eventually proven to be “ridiculous,” Jansen’s defenders were claiming that the flimsy and insubstantial evidence used by the Jesuits against claim that “we Jansen was making them laughable.48 Finally, Angelique’s ´ believe God will defend [Jansen’s book]” upheld the central premise of these apologist works, which was that the Augustinus contained doctrinal truth. Angelique made no distinction in this letter between her role as a nun ´ and the defense of Jansen. In sending a devotional work to a friend, an act that nuns were traditionally allowed, she became an apologist for Jansen. Her arguments, which adhered closely to those of Jansen’s male defenders, suggest that she saw no distinction between her efforts to combat sin as a reformer with their efforts to combat the sin of Jansen’s Jesuit enemies. Letters to Antoine Arnauld Angelique’s letters to her friends in Boulogne show how she informed ´ others about the sins of the Jesuits and encouraged them to join her in opposing them through monastic reforms. Her letters to her brother in 47 48

Antoine Arnauld provided extensive quotes from Jansen’s Augustinus within the Apologie and published separate translations of Augustine’s works at the time. In the Apologie, Arnauld likens the Jesuits to savages throwing spears at the sun. Arnauld later developed the notion that the errors of Jansen’s enemies can only be responded to by farce in his treatise, R´eponse a` la lettre d’une personne de condition touchant les r`egles de la conduite des saints P`eres dans la composition de leurs ourvrages, pour la d´efense des v´erit´es combattues, ou de l’innocence calomni´ee (1654).

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the spring and summer of 1644 show another way she sought to combat Jesuit sin – one that involved collaborating with Antoine to compose treatises in Jansen’s defense. Angelique could not dictate actual text or ideas ´ to Antoine without violating the Church command against female teaching. However, through the figurative language of the science of saints, she communicated her ideas by describing herself as experiencing tensions or emotions that accorded with spiritual concepts taught to her by Saint-Cyran. By presenting herself as a woman moved by Saint-Cyran’s pious example, Angelique urged Antoine to defend Jansen as forcefully ´ as possible. Angelique wrote thirteen letters to Antoine in the late spring and early ´ summer of 1644. These months were difficult and busy ones for Antoine because of the controversy surrounding the recent publication of his On Frequent Communion.49 He had gone into hiding to avoid arrest and was busy publishing works in his defense.50 In March 1644, he published Tradition de l’Eglise sur la p´enitence (The Church’s Tradition on Penitence), which was his general response to On Frequent Communion’s many critics. A few months later, he finally published the Apologie pour M. Jans´enius, the response to Habert’s sermons that Saint-Cyran had urged him to publish in February 1643. When Habert published Defense de la foi de l’Eglise to defend his sermons, Antoine began writing the Seconde Apologie de M. Jans´enius, which he published early in 1645. In Angelique’s first letter to Antoine that spring, she described her ´ personal feelings as a way to convince him that his current tribulations were a sign of divine grace: If you could only see, my very dear Father,51 that which passes in my heart and in my mind, you would know that night and day, I am occupied with you; and notwithstanding the great feelings of tenderness and sadness that I feel at our separation, nonetheless, the view that I have of the great and singular grace that God has given us to suffer for the truth in trying to serve the souls that He redeemed by His blood overcomes all of my feelings; in such a way that I only think voluntarily of the extreme and ardent desire I have that you will bear this temptation in a Christian and saintly way, so that by thus bearing your 49

50

51

Cardinal Mazarin had ordered him to go to Rome to defend his position before the pope, but Antoine went into hiding instead. Hermant, 1:246–49. He hid under the protection of Anne de Rohan, princess of Guem ´ en ´ e, ´ the woman who asked him to write On Frequent Communion in the first place in 1641. Lancelot, Memoires, 1:267–72. The controversy over On Frequent Communion also coincided with the loss of SaintCyran, who died in October 1643. With Saint-Cyran gone, Antoine became the new primary target for anti-Jansenist polemicists. She addresses him here according to his title as a priest, and not as her brother.

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persecution you will teach the faithful the practice of penitence more suitably than you ever could have through the theory in your book.52

This description of her inner emotions follows Saint-Cyran’s script for divine grace in action. In a devotional work on grace composed for Angelique and Antoine’s older brother, Antoine Arnauld d’Andilly, Saint´ Cyran wrote,53 [Grace] is so powerful that, to the extent that concupiscence, like a mighty weight, drags man down, [grace draws him up] towards God and heaven like a counterweight and with a welcome violence, creating the most heavenly and divine feelings of love in the soul, in which the heart and the will no longer seem to operate from the man, but rather from God.54

Saint-Cyran described grace as a force that produces an internal tug of war within those whom it touches. The presence of grace creates this inner tension because it must counteract the extreme weight of human, worldly desires. Although those who are moved by grace are aware of the initial violence against their natural feelings, they are soon overcome by feelings of a different caliber once they sense its effects. These feelings are no longer perceived as coming from within the self but directly from the heart and will of God. Similarly, the passage from Angelique’s letter began by emphasizing ´ the powerful weight of her natural feelings for her brother by saying that her mind was occupied with thoughts of him “day and night” and that she suffered emotionally from the sadness caused by their separation. Next she described how these human feelings became overwhelmed by the view she had “of the great and singular grace” that God had shown him by allowing him to suffer for the truth. Finally, she described how, once her human feelings were eclipsed by grace, she no longer felt any tension and was completely filled by the desire that he proceed “in a Christian and saintly way.” By telling her brother how she experienced this internal tug of war in a way that paralleled Saint-Cyran’s description of how grace operates, Angelique accomplished several tasks. First, she affirmed Saint-Cyran’s ´ and Jansen’s position on irresistible grace by claiming that she was a 52 53

54

Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Arnauld, March or April 1644. In Arnauld, Lettres de la ´ M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:246. Jean Duvergier de Saint-Cyran, De la grace de Jesus-Christ, de la libert´e chr´etienne et de la justification [no date]. Reprinted in Jean Orcibal, La spiritualit´e de Saint-Cyran avec ses e´ crits de pi´et´e in´edite (Paris: Vrin, 1962), 233–53. Ibid., 238.

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person who genuinely experienced grace in this way. Second, by emphasizing that her ideas were motivated by grace and not by her own human desires, she created a space for herself as a woman and a nun to speak authoritatively to her brother. By claiming that she was acting against her will, she was able to instruct Antoine about God’s will while simultaneously suggesting that to give such instruction was not typical of her nature. Finally, by upholding herself as an example of grace in action, she advanced the important idea that actions speak louder than words. She stated this last concept to her brother at the end of this passage, where she said that he would educate people more effectively about penitence if he suffered persecution for his views on penitence, rather than just writing about them.55 Angelique spent the rest of the letter encouraging Antoine to embrace ´ his persecution as an opportunity for renewal. She argued that it was a matter of providence that his suffering coincided with Lent: “Divine Providence willed that your suffering might begin during these same days that the Church celebrates the suffering of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”56 She urged him to turn to Jesus as his model and support for his suffering: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ be your strength, your hope, your rest, and your only love, and may He entirely fill your mind, separating it from all earthly things.”57 She also expressed her desire to join him in this Christlike suffering: “I would be only too happy if I could accompany you and serve you.”58 She added that, although she could not join him physically in his ordeal, she and several of the nuns in the house were with him in spirit: “Not just the five [who are from our family], but all the others, who are as moved as we are, pray for you with all their heart.”59 She closed her letter with a note saying that Agn`es was including a breviary with the letter in case he did not have one with him in his hiding place. When Angelique encouraged Antoine to embrace his persecution, she ´ was giving him advice that Saint-Cyran had given her on several occasions. However, whereas Saint-Cyran had been able to state this advice to her directly, Angelique had to adopt the more indirect means of first ´ 55

56 57 58 59

Saint-Cyran also taught this maxim in one of his treatises on how to bring a person over to Christian behavior: “Seek advice given by words, which you will thus defer using, out of prudence. For a certain time, you must use another, more powerful way of teaching, which is by effects, in modeling such exemplary behavior to this person that he sees much more perfectly in the effects of actions than could be seen in the effects of all manner of speeches.” Ibid., 645. Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:247. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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setting herself up as a witness to God’s grace in action and then explaining that she spoke according to God’s will and not her own. Another strategy she used to pass on advice was to remind her brother of the example set by Saint-Cyran. She began her second letter by urging him to remember Saint-Cyran’s behavior in prison and to model himself on this example: “You have seen how our good Father conducted himself. I beg you . . . to think about this in order to imitate him, and I especially beg you to pray a great deal.”60 She explained that frequent prayer was crucial to his writing because it would enhance his efforts: “You will not work any less, although you may often interrupt your work in order to pray. On the contrary, by a short prayer you will acquire new strength coming from new enlightenment, in order to do good and useful things.”61 Angelique offered practical writing advice, saying that frequent ´ prayer breaks would increase his efficiency by rejuvenating his ideas and inspiration. She then explained that his prayers would enhance his writing for even more important reasons: “You know well what [Saint-Cyran] has often told you, that if the writings are not the fruits of prayer and tears, they will not only be useless to those who read them, but dangerous to those who reminded her brother of the concept of write them.”62 Here, Angelique ´ 63 redeemed language. According to this concept, the internal disposition and attitude of a person writing a text have a direct impact on how readers appropriate that text. Antoine often applied this concept in his critiques of others. For instance, in Apologie de M. Jans´enius, his main charge against Habert was that his sermons were dangerous to his audience and full of lies because Habert himself was motivated by an internal, uncontrollable passion. She reminded Antoine that this theory applied to him as well and that, to inspire piety in his readers, he must first make sure that he feels a genuine desire for penitence through “prayer and tears.” Angelique added that his genuine feelings were necessary not only to ´ make his texts fruitful for his readers but also to prevent him from falling prey to the dangers they posed to him as an author: When it so happens that one is obligated as you are to engage in such debates and to respond to people who are as unreasonable as they are injurious, one needs 60 61 62 63

Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Arnauld, April 1644. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:248. Ibid. Ibid., 1:249. Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 38.

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doubly to pray to receive the double grace needed to prevent oneself from being overcome by natural feelings. . . . One must fear . . . that one does not defend the interest of God and of the truth from the heat of passion rather than from the Holy Spirit.64

Angelique cautioned Antoine to pray “doubly” because of the tempta´ tions inherent to the polemical debates in which he was engaged. She warned that, although he was fighting on the side of justice, the fight itself – which forced him to engage with “unreasonable” and “injurious” persons – put him at risk of corruption. She defined this corruption as “being overcome by natural feelings.” Antoine’s greatest care must be that his writings emanate from a divine spirit and not from a human desire to win a debate. By reminding her brother to practice the theories contained in his own writings, Angelique collaborated with him on his texts in a way that was ´ significant to the problem of heresy. If we read her letters for their textual content alone, they do not appear as a form of collaboration in the way that we normally define the term. At no point does she contribute a written line, an edited passage, or a translation to his texts. However, according to the theory of redeemed language emphasized by Jansen’s apologists, in which the internal disposition of an author directly influences how readers appropriate texts, Angelique was collaborating with Antoine by ´ ensuring that his writings were divinely inspired and not simply products of a clever intellect. Although these letters focused on the spiritual aspects of the writing process, Angelique was nonetheless attempting to change the content ´ of Antoine’s writings. At this time she was competing with other male defenders of Jansen for influence over Antoine’s writings. In particular, she was opposing her nephew Isaac-Louis Le Maistre de Sacy, who wanted to tone down the rhetoric in Antoine’s letters. In a letter to his brother Antoine Le Maistre, de Sacy described the editorial changes he wanted to make to soften Antoine’s polemics: Be careful, my very dear brother, of all these somewhat harsh terms. . . . Why, where my uncle spoke of an intolerable abuse, can we not instead put deplorable . . . ? We should, at this time, be satisfied that the truth is tolerated, and not call some abuses intolerable, as if we were still in those centuries when truth reigned supreme, and had as many defenders as there were bishops in the Church. It must also be considered that my uncle appeared to speak a little heatedly when he was in the ranks of the Sorbonne faculty. Some saw him as a fiery-minded 64

Ibid.

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man, and feared that he came across as a tad bitter even though he was not at all and was without the least bile. But we must get rid of any pretext, and fight both men’s imaginations as well as their errors. Moreover, my uncle is young. He speaks to a man whose position in the world is secure and who is a great [spiritual] director. In attacking him, he fights a good deal of people. The truth does not require from him this appearance of bitterness. . . . Interested persons would be delighted to let their anger loose on the author when they cannot find fault in his work.65

The reference to Antoine’s opponent as “a man whose position is secure” and “a great [spiritual] director” suggests that the manuscript in question was one of Antoine’s responses to Habert (either the first or second Apologie) because Habert was his most notable adversary in those years. De Sacy asked Le Maistre to cut out the “harsh terms” and “apparent bitterness” in Antoine’s prose, believing that these changes would make his text more effective because of his reputation for being hot-headed. De Sacy further justified these revisions by saying that Antoine’s opponents would no doubt fixate on the delivery rather than his ideas because the latter were sound and irrefutable. In de Sacy’s view, a personal attack of this nature was undesirable because it would distract readers from the substance of the writings. In contrast, Angelique defended Antoine’s fiery defense of Jansen in ´ a letter she sent to M. Macquet to accompany a copy of the Second Apologie in 1646. The structure of this particular letter parallels that of de Sacy’s letter to Le Maistre, suggesting that Angelique was reacting to it. ´ Where de Sacy began by saying that Antoine’s language was “too harsh” and that he should treat his opponent’s attack on truth as something “deplorable” rather than “intolerable,” Angelique began her letter by ´ saying, “Doubtless you will find a bit too much bitterness in the second Defense of M. d’Ypres [Jansen]; several people share this opinion. But many believe that it was necessary to respond against the insolent things that have been said against the truth with force and vigor.” Those who supported Antoine’s strong language believed that divine grace demanded this language: “Those who love the truth as much as they love God from which it derives cannot defend it with weakness.”66

65

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Louis-Isaac Le Maistre de Sacy to Antoine Le Maistre, 1644, cited in Nicolas Fontaine M´emoires ou histoire des Solitaires de Port-Royal, ed. crit. Pascale Thovenin (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 2001), 364. Angelique Arnauld to Louis Macquet, May 1646. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:291–3.

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Then, following de Sacy’s caution against allowing Antoine to come across as “a fiery-minded man,” Angelique protested, ´ Indeed, if the Church Fathers had been treated as injuriously as we have been, and as St. Augustine and M. d’Ypres have been treated, or even further, if the grace of Jesus Christ had been treated this way, we would think it permissible to defend it strongly.67

She also dismissed de Sacy’s point that they should consider the secure position and status of Antoine’s opponent by asserting that Habert, who had recently been elected bishop of Vabres, did not deserve his rank: “Since you admit that M. de Vabres’ false reputation causes great harm, must he not then be made to lose it, in showing that it was most illgotten, and that he enjoys this false reputation at the expense of Our Savior’s grace [?]”68 She acknowledged de Sacy’s point that Habert’s reputation gave him the power to “do great harm,” but she went on to say that Habert’s “ ill-gotten” status made it all the more important to expose him. Angelique’s letter to Macquet highlights how she equated Antoine’s ´ strong polemical tone with redeemed language. She believed that those who truly abandoned their human interests to follow God’s grace and embraced persecution for the truth would inevitably denounce men such as Habert in heated terms. These were the ideas she was trying to convey in her letters in the spring of 1644. Unlike her nephews de Sacy and Le Maistre, she was unable to make editorial comments to Antoine’s drafts, so she sought to influence his writings through discourses grounded in Saint-Cyran’s and her own pious example. She reminded her brother of the concept of redeemed language at the same time as she presented herself as somebody speaking against her own will through such language. Although the spiritual advice may not seem like a form of collaboration in the sense that we normally think of the term, she used it as her way to influence the content and tenor of her brother’s writings. Letters to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, the Queen of Poland Although all of Angelique Arnauld’s letters examined so far were political ´ in the sense that she was trying to persuade others to defend Jansen, the letters to her patron, Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, the queen of Poland, were the most openly political because she couched her persuasive efforts in a political theory about proper Christian governance. These 67 68

Ibid., 1:292. Ibid.

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letters also highlight her ideas about the extent to which she as a cloistered nun could show an interest in human politics. As it turns out, Angelique ´ followed the Jansenist controversy all the way from the streets of Paris up into the highest courts of Europe. Her letters to the queen reveal that she did not hesitate to engage in these politics because her goal was never to exert political influence for its own sake. Instead, Angelique was ´ determined to combat the sins of the Jesuits wherever she could. Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, princess of Mantua and queen of Poland, first came to Port-Royal in 1643, just a few days before SaintCyran’s death. Like many of the convent’s new patrons from this era, she had sought Saint-Cyran as her spiritual advisor after experiencing conflict with Richelieu.69 She never met Saint-Cyran in person, but she ended up spending a couple of years at Port-Royal. She left the convent when she married the king of Poland. France was trying to establish better diplomatic relations with Poland at this time, and Anne of Austria promoted the marriage as a means of establishing good relations between France and Poland. Just as the French Crown now solicited Poland’s new queen to defend its interests, so did Angelique solicit her help to defend Port-Royal’s inter´ ests. Angelique began writing to Louise-Marie in March 1646, shortly ´ after her arrival in Poland. Angelique continued writing to the queen and ´ to the queen’s confessor, Franc¸ois Fleury, a doctor of the Sorbonne who had accompanied her to Poland, up until her death in 1661. After that time, Agn`es maintained the correspondence. The queen’s departure for Poland corresponded with the time when Port-Royal and its nuns were increasingly becoming targets in antiJansenist polemical literature. Worried that the queen would hear these negative rumors at her court, Angelique filled her letters with news of the ´ rumors along with assurances that they were all false. However, because Angelique could not just send information for its own sake, she integrated ´ this news into her letters in a way that enhanced their overall purpose, which was to inspire Christian behavior befitting a monarch. In this way, she combined her role as spiritual advisor to her lay patron with her defense of Port-Royal from anti-Jansenist attacks. Angelique’s initial letters in the spring and summer of 1646 made no ´ mention of Port-Royal and the Jansenist debates. Instead, she assured the queen that she was in her prayers and sent advice on how to rule as a good Christian. For instance, when Angelique wrote on the occasion of ´ 69

See entry on “Louise-Marie de Gonzag, a-Cl`eves, Reine de Pologne.” In Dictionnaire de Port-Royal.

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Louise-Marie’s coronation on August 31, 1646, she urged the queen to reject the riches of court life and to devote herself to a life of pious good works. She also asked her to read the parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16, noting that this text had particular significance for the queen because it was the reading for the day of her coronation. Angelique ´ explained that this passage not only advised kings to use their power and riches to serve the poor but it also claimed that true kings only serve God. She explained that those who served the whims of men were not kings, but slaves: “I hope that Your Majesty will have only Jesus Christ for a master, and I pray to God for this with all my heart, so that Your Majesty may be Queen before God and the angels just as much as before men. The other queens, Madam, who reign over men and serve their did not mention who own passions, are slaves before God.”70 Angelique ´ these other queens were in this letter. In future letters, however, Angelique increasingly cited Anne of Aus´ tria as a sovereign who had fallen victim to her courtiers. Her discussions of Anne of Austria increased alongside her news of Port-Royal’s persecutions. Her first mention of these persecutions was brief. On November 9, 1646, after telling the queen that her “humble servants” (meaning the solitaires) were praying for her, she added, “They are still accused as violently as ever of being heretics, and consequently, so are we.”71 Over the next several months, Angelique’s descriptions of Port-Royal’s troubles ´ became more detailed. For example, on July 4, 1647, she wrote that the queen would be dismayed to learn that negative rumors about Port-Royal were circulating every day and that the French Crown was planning to chase away the solitaires. Angelique also explained that Anne of Austria ´ was planning this dispersion based on a rumor that there were “forty or fifty [solitaires] creating an assembly in order to form a new heresy.”72 After setting the record straight by telling the queen how many men were living at Port-Royal-des-Champs and what they were doing there, she wrote, “Judge for yourself, madam, whether or not these people are so terrible, and yet the Queen’s mind has been so forestalled that Her Majesty thinks it an obligation of conscience to drive them off as very dangerous people.”73

70 71 72 73

Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzag a-Cleves, August 31, 1646. In Arnauld, ´ ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:306. Ibid., 1:317. Ibid., 1:336. Ibid.

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By asking Louise-Marie to judge for herself the evidence that Anne of Austria had chosen to ignore, Angelique set up a dichotomy between ´ the Polish queen as wise and the French queen as blinded by passions. This dichotomy became more explicit in subsequent letters as Angelique ´ proceeded to contrast the two queens more overtly. In a letter dated February 21, 1648, she informed the queen of Poland that Anne of Austria had arrested Father des Mares, one of the priests who had spoken up in support of Jansen.74 She wrote that this arrest took place even after the archbishop of Paris had determined on multiple occasions that there was nothing wrong with the content of Father des Mares’ sermons. Once again, Angelique suggested that Anne of Austria had been blinded by the ´ false advice of slanderers. By contrast, she commented on the queen of Poland’s wisdom: “Your Majesty is fortunate in the grace that God has given her to have knowledge of all things, and to be persuaded only by that which she knows for herself.”75 She attributed this wisdom to the favor that God had shown her through His grace and to the queen’s reliance on her own intellect for judging matters. She concluded this passage by promising to pray continually that God would “increasingly fortify Your Majesty’s mind.”76 While Angelique prayed for the queen of Poland to remain wise in ´ her judgments, she lived in constant anxiety over the character of her own queen. On February 28, 1648, she described an incident in which Anne of Austria sent the lieutenant civil to search two houses in Paris where some of the solitaires were residing after rumors circulated that “there were forty men there being nourished in heresy.”77 She explained, “There are countless people who importune the Queen in order to urge her to crush this heresy, and who tell her that she will resemble the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had an extreme zeal for destroying heretics.”78 She added that Anne of Austria was so taken by these flatterers that she was not even listening to her principal advisor, Mazarin, who was “in no way persuaded” that these men were heretics. When Mazarin warned Anne of Austria that her actions “were causing a great stir among the people,” she told him “not to speak to her of the matter 74 75 76 77 78

Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, February 21, 1648. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:356. Ibid., 1:357. Ibid. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, February 28, 1648. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 1:360. Ibid., 1:361.

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for she well knew what she was doing.” Angelique added, “Your Majesty ´ will see that after this, there is everything to fear.”79 Angelique presented the news about Port-Royal’s persecution at the ´ hands of Anne of Austria as a lesson about the perils of court life that would inspire the queen of Poland toward a Christian leadership style that valued introspection and reason. Her letters reflect her views on the relationship between politics and religion and her belief that people – even cloistered nuns such as herself – must remain aware of human politics to combat sin. She linked the persecution of her convent to the moral weaknesses of France’s leadership and made it clear that a stronger monarch would have resisted the slanderers and flatterers and would not have allowed the negative rumors about Port-Royal and Jansenism to proliferate. Letter to Jean-Franc¸ois de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris Angelique’s letters to the queen of Poland circulated among the friends ´ and family of the Port-Royal nuns at the time she wrote them. Although she protested their circulation, charging that they had been copied surreptitiously by other nuns behind her back, their circulation nonetheless fit into the seventeenth-century custom of sharing private letters with a circle of friends, thus blurring the line between private correspondence and public identity.80 Another letter that straddled this line was the one she sent to Jean-Franc¸ois de Gondi, archbishop of Paris, on December 17, 1651. However, Angelique intended this letter to be public, as it was actually her ´ petition protesting against Brisacier’s Le Jans´enisme confondu and asking the archbishop to defend her convent against Brisacier’s accusations of heresy. Open letters were commonly used to help people circumvent legal and conventional barriers, such as royal censorship, and express their views publicly. People who published open letters of this sort were not necessarily their actual authors, as they may have called on more expert or eloquent authors to pen their letters. Indeed, Antoine Arnauld or one of the other solitaires may have composed this letter to Gondi on Angelique’s behalf. However, because she copied it out and signed it in ´ her own hand, we know that she read it and agreed to have it presented to the public as if it came from her. Angelique’s letter highlights her belief that, as part of her Christian ´ duty to combat sin, there are moments when she, regardless of her sex, 79 80

Ibid. Longino Farrell, Performing Motherhood, 12.

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has an obligation to speak out against this sin. She began her letter by describing the nuns’ patience displayed thus far in their persecution: “You know that I have not yet importuned you with my complaints for as long as we have suffered the persecution of several slanders that the Jesuit fathers have made against us.”81 She stressed that her silence was due to their profession as nuns, which “obliges us to patience and silence.”82 Next she added that she normally did not pay attention to what was said against Port-Royal in public, but on this occasion one of her patrons, Mme d’Aumont, brought Brisacier’s libelle to her attention.83 She wrote that the content of this text was so outrageous that she could no longer keep silent in good conscience: “This excess, which robs us of the condition of being daughters of God and of the Church, and of being your daughters, Monsignor, obliges me to throw myself at your feet very humbly in order to ask you for justice, since it is not allowed to endure such accusations without complaint.”84 The Port-Royal women remained silent until the moment a sin took place that specifically targeted their condition in the Church. Once Brisacier “robbed” them of their condition as “daughters,” her imperative to combat sin overcame her imperative to maintain female silence. Angelique’s emphasis on patriarchal power and her demand for justice ´ echoed two important themes that Augustine discussed in his passage on the ideal quality of government in City of God. In this passage Augustine not only spelled out why patriarchy is the natural form of government but he also defined innocence. For him, the innocent are not only those who avoid committing sins themselves but also those who make sure that other sinners are brought to justice.85 By demanding justice from her archbishop, Angelique practiced innocence in the latter sense. ´ The letter to Gondi was Angelique’s response to Brisacier’s claim that ´ her nuns embodied all that was wrong and disorderly about the Jansenist heresy. Throughout the letter, she stressed the nuns’ subordinate position as daughters in the Church. She also defended her right as a subordinate woman to speak up in defense of her own subordination. This paradoxical defense was key to her strategy. By emphasizing how the Jesuit sin forced her to break her vow of silence, Angelique revealed how it was ultimately ´ 81 82 83 84 85

Angelique Arnauld to Jean-Franc¸ois de Gondi, December 17, 1651. In Arnauld, Lettres ´ de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:10–11. Ibid., 2:11. Ibid. Ibid. Augustine, City of God, book 19, ch. 16.

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Jesuits like Brisacier, and not the Port-Royal nuns, who were guilty of fostering disorder in the Church. She did not want to speak up, but Augustine’s command that the innocent seek justice forced her to do so. Her speech act was the inevitable result of Jesuit disorder in the Church. Conclusion From the moment that Angelique Arnauld became Port-Royal’s abbess, ´ she had to struggle to maintain her authority by emphasizing her merit as a reformer. Proving her merit became particularly difficult in the wake of the collapse of the Institute of the Holy Sacrament in 1636, as she had by then dismantled her original reform, faced accusations of heresy, lost her former patrons, accrued debt on extravagant real estate, and fostered division among her nuns by taking on Saint-Cyran, a man in prison, as her confessor. These were difficult times for Angelique, and her entire life’s ´ work to secure her family’s reputation and fortune through her reform efforts appeared to be ruined. She recovered from these failures, however, by rededicating herself to Port-Royal and the Benedictine Rule. Under Saint-Cyran’s guidance and with help from her sister Agn`es, Angelique restored her authority ´ by applying Saint-Cyran’s concept of spiritual renewals to Port-Royal’s reform. By redefining reform as a process of perpetual corruption, suffering, and renewal, she found a new script for her life, one in which her failures with the Institute of the Holy Sacrament were no longer a deviation from her original reform but a necessary trial sent by God to strengthen her in this endeavor. Through the concept of renewals, Angelique could ´ once again define her life’s work as a process of continuity and progress. Her setbacks were themselves signs of her ongoing merit as they were instances of positive discipline sent by the grace of God. When the Jansenist debates broke out in the early 1640s, they provided an opportunity for the Arnauld sisters to perfect Port-Royal’s revival. When anti-Jansenists recycled the accusations of heresy against PortRoyal from the 1630s, the Arnauld women used these attacks to convince their fellow nuns that reform was indeed a process of perpetual suffering and renewal. They urged their fellow sisters to embrace each new instance of persecution as divine grace sent to redouble their efforts to combat the sins within them. The anti-Jansenist attacks also provided a new mission for Port-Royal. Believing that the Jesuit attack on Jansen – and by extension on Port-Royal – was a plot to destroy the Church, Angelique ´ saw defending her reform as an important weapon against this plot. When

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the archbishop threatened to remove her and her confessors if she did not cooperate with an investigation of Saint-Cyran’s alleged Jansenism, she prepared herself and her nuns to sacrifice the entire convent rather than have their reform dismantled. For Angelique, the woman who had ´ always worried that she had reformed Port-Royal out of material interests rather than genuine religious vocation, the Jansenist controversy erased her fears. Her reform was truly perfected because she would willingly sacrifice Port-Royal to combat the sins of the Jesuits. The Jansenist debates thus provided Angelique with the opportunity ´ to align her reform activities with a larger mission to defend the Church from Jesuit sin. This mission now informed her activities both inside and outside the convent. Her letters to friends and family reveal how she sought to persuade and convince others to support Port-Royal’s mission. She presented herself and her nuns as pious examples of divine grace in action and put them at the vanguard of a highly disciplined and uncompromising campaign to undermine the Jesuit plot against the Church. The reform in the decade following the collapse of the Institute of the Holy Sacrament reveals how the relationship between Jansenism and Port-Royal developed a feedback loop. In Chapter 1, we saw how anti-Jansenists harnessed the pervasive anxieties about women and social change to stoke fears over a Jansenist heresy by denouncing Port-Royal as its center. These polemicists took advantage of signs of the PortRoyal women’s influence – such as Mme d’Aumont’s patronage of John Callaghan – to renew their charges against a Jansenist plot. In this chapter, we saw how the Arnauld women similarly took advantage of the Jesuit attacks to strengthen and promote Port-Royal’s new mission. If men such as Jean de Brisacier denounced the Port-Royal nuns for embodying all that was wrong about Jansenism, this was because these women were already presenting themselves to influential friends and family as the principal recipients of a divine grace compelling them to combat Jesuit sin.

3 Jansenism’s Political Turn, 1652–1661

The first decade of the Jansenist debates set in place a reciprocal dynamic between polemical attacks against Jansen and the Port-Royal nuns’ reform efforts in which each process motivated the other toward greater intensity. This dynamic continued until the convent’s destruction in 1709. Over the years, however, other social and political developments in France provided new contexts for this dynamic that added meaning and purpose for those engaged in the Jansenist controversy. The first of these developments was the outbreak of the civil wars known as the Fronde (1648–53). One way the Fronde transformed the Jansenist debates was by providing the Arnauld women with a new context for promoting PortRoyal’s mission against Jesuit sin. The siege of Paris in 1651 forced hundreds of nuns living outside the capital – including Angelique, ´ who had returned to Port-Royal-des-Champs with a group of nuns in 1648 – to seek refuge from pillaging and marauding troops within the city’s walls. Many of these displaced nuns visited Port-Royal seeking charity and to satisfy their curiosity sparked by the negative rumors surrounding the convent. The Port-Royal nuns met these needs by welcoming refugee nuns into their cloister and teaching them about their reform. For many women, Port-Royal’s emphasis on turning adversity into spiritual renewal and on a disciplined observance of its rule contrasted starkly with Mazarin’s and Anne of Austria’s alleged immorality and inability to maintain order. Dozens of these women and their families became new adherents to Port-Royal during

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the Fronde, making the convent the largest monastic community in Paris.1 Just as the Fronde transformed Port-Royal, it also transformed the meaning of the attacks against Jansen. Mazarin initiated this change by seizing on anti-Jansenist rhetoric to help him discredit the rebellious Cardinal de Retz as a heretic and improve his relations with the pope.2 In appropriating the controversy for his own political needs, Mazarin set into motion a new dynamic in which the French Crown exploited the threat of a Jansenist heresy to tighten its reins over the French Church. This dynamic worked in part because of the way the Jansenist debates became integrated into the long-standing debate between the Crown, the pope, French bishops, and the Parlement of Paris over the traditional liberties of the French or “Gallican” Church.3 By the seventeenth century, a clear fault line had developed in the Gallican debates between those who supported absolute papal power, known as ultramontaines, and those who supported the traditional liberties of the French Church, or Gallicans. Among the Gallicans, there were tensions between representatives of the clergy (i.e., bishops), Parlement, and Crown over which of these institutions was best equipped to preserve the French Church from papal interference.4 The Jansenist debates intersected with these three positions in the Gallican debates in complex ways. For the most part, Jansen’s critics sided with the king to support royal Gallicanism, whereas Jansen’s defenders found allies among episcopal Gallicans. The Fronde moved the entire feedback loop between anti-Jansenist rhetoric and Port-Royal’s reform onto a new plane that intersected with high politics in Church and State. The political turn of Jansenism meant that powerful elites adopted the discourses associated with the Jansenist controversy for their own ends. At Port-Royal, this political turn put new 1 2

3

4

William Ritchey Newton, Sociologie de la Communaut´e de Port-Royal (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999), 16–17. Paule Jansen outlined the details of Mazarin’s manipulation of the Jansenist debates through a study of his diplomatic correspondence. Paule Jansen, Le Cardinal Mazarin et le mouvement jans´eniste franc¸ais, 1653–1659 (Paris: Vrin, 1967). Debates over the Gallican liberties were long-standing and complex, stretching back almost three centuries. Henri Morel, L’id´ee gallicane au temps des guerres de religion (Aixen-Provence: Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseilles, 2003). Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors, and Kings, 144–70. Two classic works on this subject are Victor Martin, Le gallicanisme politique et le clerg´e de France (Paris: Editions Auguste Picard 1929), and Aime-Georges ´ Martimort, Le gallicanisme de Bossuet (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1953). Forrestal, Fathers, Pastors, and Kings, 111.

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pressure on the nuns as they became the scapegoats not just for Jesuit priests but also for the Crown. Port-Royal during the Fronde On the morning of May 13, 1648, Angelique Arnauld, along with nine ´ other nuns left Port-Royal-de-Paris to return to Port-Royal-des-Champs. Angelique had looked forward to this moment ever since Saint-Cyran ´ convinced her that only by returning to Port-Royal-des-Champs could she truly atone for her mistakes in Paris.5 However, what she had hoped to be a permanent return to the convent of her youth quickly turned into a revolution in which the events of her life seemed to be repeating themselves. Just as she had to move to Paris in 1625 to protect her nuns from malarial fevers and a hostile Cistercian leadership, the Fronde forced her to return to Paris in 1651 to escape the bands of soldiers who were laying waste to the French countryside. This time, however, rather than abandoning Port-Royal, Angelique devoted all of her energies into ´ protecting and promoting the reform there.6 In his study of the speeches made by Port-Royal’s abbesses, Thomas Carr Jr. notes that Angelique gave speeches more frequently than ever ´ before upon her return to Port-Royal-de-Paris.7 She stressed the three graces that God had bestowed on Port-Royal: (1) its return to a strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, (2) Saint-Cyran’s teachings on spiritual renewal, and (3) the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament.8 She spoke openly about her past mistakes, deploring the lapses in PortRoyal’s reform, but always in the context of reminding the nuns about the process of renewal and their imperative to remain faithful to the Benedictine Rule.9 The messages she delivered orally were further reinforced in writings by her and other nuns. In 1652, when all of the nuns were back in Paris, Angelique’s nephew, Antoine Le Maistre, and her niece, Angelique ´ ´ de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, asked the nuns to write down their memories of Angelique’s reform of Port-Royal. These reports were ´ 5

6 7 8 9

Histoire du r´etablissement du Monast`ere de Port-Royal des Champs par la M`ere Ang´elique et de la part que M. l’Abb´e de S. Cyran y a eue. In Lancelot, M´emoires, 2:453. She stayed in Paris for a total of nine months during the Fronde (April 1652–January 1653). Carr, Voix des abbesses, 119. Ibid., 125. Ibid., 125–7.

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compiled in M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port-Royal et a` la vie de la R´ev´erende M`ere Marie-Ang´elique de Sainte Magdeleine Arnauld, r´eformatrice de ce monast`ere (Memoirs to Serve as the History of Port-Royal and of the Life of the Reverend Mother Marie-Angelique ´ de Sainte Magdeleine Arnauld, Reformer of this Convent) and were commonly referred to as the M´emoires d’Utrecht after their publication in Utrecht, Holland in 1742. In the preface to the M´emoires d’Utrecht, Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ wrote that she and Le Maistre began collecting these writings during the Fronde because of the advanced age of the nuns who participated in Angelique’s early reform and because of the convenience of having ´ them all together in Paris again. The Arnauld women’s desire to promote their mission against Jesuit disorder to a wider audience may have been another reason to write down their memories. The wars displaced hundreds of nuns from the countryside surrounding Paris. When they came to the city seeking refuge, they provided the Arnaulds with an unusually large audience for their message of monastic reform and renewal. Angelique was particularly interested in justifying her reform to these ´ refugee nuns who came to Port-Royal-de-Paris for food or lodging or to attend religious services. For instance, in a letter to Martin de Barcos on April 29, 1652, Angelique reported that some nuns who had attended ´ mass at Port-Royal told her that they were surprised to learn that the rumors they had heard about the convent were false: “These poor nuns, when they see the images, holy water, and chaplets here, and hear us invoke the saints, are quite astonished that quite the contrary has been with dared to be proclaimed to them.”10 The war provided Angelique ´ a firsthand opportunity to disabuse these nuns of the rumors against her. Angelique’s letters over the following weeks described the increasing ´ number of refugee nuns in Paris. On May 15, 1652, she wrote to the queen of Poland, “The whole of Paris is filled with nuns, which has obliged us to house very good nuns who did not know where to take refuge, such that we now number one hundred and sixty.”11 Later that month, she wrote to her nephew Le Maistre that Port-Royal was becoming more crowded: “We are assassinated by large numbers of nuns; three hundred

10 11

Angelique Arnauld to Martin de Barcos, April 29, 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:89. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, May 15, 1652. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:113.

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have come to see us. My sister Angelique [de Saint Jean] is keeping ´ record. Few have taken advantage of their stay, but almost all have been undeceived.”12 As the number of refugee nuns increased, Angelique’s goals for them ´ changed. Although she was happy that these nuns could see the truth about Port-Royal for themselves, she also began to hope that some might adopt the penitential system practiced there. Her comment that “few have taken advantage of” their stay at Port-Royal suggests that there were at least some nuns who were embracing its religious practices. Angelique’s ´ desire to recruit nuns became evident in a letter to the archbishop of Paris on May 28, 1652, regarding a group of refugee nuns from Notre Dame d’Estampes. They had arrived in Paris one evening after having walked forty leagues without food and water.On their arrival the Port-Royal nuns invited them into the cloister without first receiving permission from the archbishop to do so. Angelique wrote the archbishop asking him to ´ excuse the violation of the rules in this extenuating situation and asked for permission to take in nuns “in a similar circumstance which could very well happen again in these wretched times.”13 She then requested an additional favor – that he grant Port-Royal the right to take in nuns who might want to stay there for religious reasons: “Again I beg you very humbly, Monsignor, to permit us to take in nuns that we would recognize as desiring to do so out of a true pious impulse, in order to separate themselves from the world and undergo a retreat.”14 She hoped to turn Port-Royal’s charity toward refugee nuns into an opportunity to invite them to experience the program for spiritual renewal. Angelique hoped that the nuns who experienced this program might ´ go back to their houses and educate their sisters about Port-Royal. In a letter to Le Maistre in May 1652, she described a nun from Poissy who had spent several days at Port-Royal so that she could “make a renewal of her vows to M. Singlin.” Angelique wrote that she had “a very good ´ disposition” and will “one day be able to serve her house.”15 She was also happy to admit some of these converted nuns permanently into the Port-Royal community. In a letter to Le Maistre on June 12, 1652, she 12 13 14 15

Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Le Maˆıtre, May 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:123. Angelique Arnauld to Jean-Franc¸ois de Gondi, May 26, 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la ´ M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:122. Ibid. Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Le Maˆıtre, May 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:123.

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reported, “Tomorrow we will receive as professed nuns two Benedictine sisters whom we sheltered during the siege of Paris in 1649.”16 A short time later, she wrote that the number of Benedictines joining Port-Royal had increased to twelve.17 Although Angelique’s letters focused on the refugee nuns, many lay´ women also joined the convent at this time, suggesting that the efforts to showcase Port-Royal’s piety and orthodoxy also inspired these women. Records show that the Fronde coincided with a period of some of the fastest increases in the convent’s membership. The number of nuns jumped from 85 to 104, a remarkable increase considering that other large convents in Paris typically had no more than 65 members.18 This gain was also notable because it took place at a time when most religious communities of women, both contemplative and active, were declining in size.19 As Port-Royal grew, the social makeup of the convent changed, as many of the nuns came from families of a higher social status than had previously been the case. Angelique’s reform had always attracted ´ daughters of the robe nobility, but now these daughters were coming from some of the highest ranking families in Parlement and the royal administration.20 This shift toward families of elevated social status at Port-Royal also resulted in greater social diversity within the convent as Angelique continued to accept poor women without dowries on the merit ´ of their vocation.21 Port-Royal’s most famous lay recruit during this period was Jacqueline Pascal, sister of Blaise Pascal, the prominent mathematician, scientist, and author of the Provincial Letters. Like the Arnauld family, the Pascal family had earned its title by serving the Crown in legal and administrative positions.22 Jacqueline and Blaise first learned about Port-Royal

16 17 18 19 20

21 22

Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Le Maˆıtre, June 12, 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:130. Angelique Arnauld to Antoine Le Maˆıtre, July 1652. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:151. Newton, Sociologie, 16–17. Diefendorf, Penitence to Charity, 244–5. William Ritchey Newton. “Port Royal and Jansenism: Social Experience, Group Formation and Religious Attitudes in Seventeenth-Century France” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1974), 262–3. Ibid., 274. Etienne Pascal, Jacqueline and Blaise’s father, served the Crown as a tax supervisor in Rouen. For a brief biography of Jacqueline Pascal, see John Conley’s introduction to Jacqueline Pascal, Jacqueline Pascal: A Rule for Children and Other Writings, trans. and ed. John J. Conley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 1–10.

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while growing up in Rouen. They later attended church services at PortRoyal-de-Paris after their family moved to the city in 1647. A year later, Jacqueline asked her father for permission to participate in a spiritual retreat at Port-Royal for several weeks under the direction of M. Singlin.23 Her father refused the request, forcing her to wait until his death in 1651 to fulfill her wish to retreat to Port-Royal. By that time, however, Jacqueline had become certain of her vocation to become a nun. When Blaise learned of her intentions, he opposed them vehemently. She tried to convince him to accept her choice by describing the Port-Royal nuns as “visible angels” who had “no other external occupation nor any other desire in the heart than to serve [God] as extensively as any mortal creature could.”24 He finally changed his mind when he learned that Port-Royal would not require the family to provide a dowry for Jacqueline. He was so impressed by the nuns’ commitment to the Benedictine Rule, both in letter and in spirit, that he dropped his efforts to block Jacqueline’s vocation. Jacqueline became one of Port-Royal’s more extraordinary nuns because of her leadership in defending Jansen during the formulary crisis of 1661. However, her joining the convent was not unique, as the Fronde provided the Arnauld women with an opportunity to promote Port-Royal’s reform to a wider and more receptive audience than ever. Mazarin and Jansenist Politics The mixture of charity, asceticism, and spiritual renewal at Port-Royal held new appeal for many families during the Fronde. Part of this appeal had to do with a Europe-wide turn toward religious asceticism that coincided with the many revolts by nobles that took place at mid-century. One historian characterized these revolts as “popular reactions against reason of state,” in which “godly patriotism was presented as an antidote to the moral failures of humanistic government.”25 Devout Christians challenged monarchs for failing to mold their states as “cities of God.”26 In response to these challenges, monarchs bolstered their power by embracing some form of divine mandate to defend the Christian faith.27 23 24 25 26 27

Jacqueline Pascal to Etienne Pascal, June 19, 1648. In Pascal, A Rule for Children, 132–5. Jacqueline Pascal to Blaise Pascal, May 7–9, 1652. In Pascal, A Rule for Children, 138. Paul Kleber Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589–1715 ´ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 172. Ibid., 148–9. Ibid., 205–13.

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Events in France followed this general pattern, and Louis XIV eventually became one of Europe’s most assertive monarchs in his claims to be the “Most Christian King” and the “Eldest Son of the Church.”28 Louis XIV based these claims in part on his relentless persecution of the Jansenist heresy, a policy that originated in Mazarin’s handling of the “religious Fronde.”29 This term refers to those parts of the Fronde that overlapped with calls for religious reform.30 In Paris, the most fervent calls for such reform were coming from parish priests, most of whom were also supporters of Jean-Franc¸ois Paul de Gondi, the Cardinal de Retz (1613–79), nephew and coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris.31 Mazarin already feared Retz for his leadership among nobles determined to depose him.32 Yet after he arrested the cardinal on December 19, 1652, he also began to worry that lower ranking clergy would incite a popular revolt against him under Retz’s influence.33 In his quest to undermine Retz and his influence over other clergy, Mazarin seized on the threats of an alleged Jansenist heresy in France as a way to discredit these agitators.34 Historian Paule Jansen discovered the origins of this strategy in Mazarin’s diplomatic correspondence with his ambassadors in Rome.35 On February 3, 1653, Ambassador Henri d’Estampes-Valenc¸ay sent Mazarin a report detailing how the pope was currently reviewing Isaac Habert’s petition to condemn a list of propositions drawn from Jansen’s Augustinus.36 In the cover letter to the report, the ambassador said little about the propositions themselves, knowing that Mazarin would not

28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36

Lossky, 219. Richard Golden, The Godly Rebellion: Parisian Cur´es and the Religious Fronde, 165262. (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 5–6. Golden, 3. Ibid. The lower ranking clergy began agitating for a reorganization of the parish structure in which the local cures ´ had primary authority over the care of their parishioners’ souls. This movement was also known as Richerism. Golden, 72–3. J. M. H. Salmon, Cardinal de Retz: The Anatomy of a Conspirator (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 132. Golden, 9. Between the time of Retz’s arrest and his resignation from the archdiocese of Paris in 1662, Mazarin’s attempts to undermine him involved getting the pope to support his arrest of the cardinal, getting the pope to support a trial of Retz, and finally, getting the pope and Retz to agree to a bargain in which Retz gave up the archdiocese of Paris in exchange for several smaller benefices of equal value. Salmon, 231, 239–40, 280–5. Paule Jansen, Le Cardinal Mazarin et le Mouvement Jans´eniste Franc¸ais, 1653–1659 (Paris: Vrin, 1967). This was the petition that Isaac Habert had circulated at the General Assembly of the Clergy of 1650–1.

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be interested in these “useless details.”37 However, he did elaborate on the group of doctors from the Sorbonne who had come to oppose Habert’s petition before the pope. He reported that these “Jansenists” had expressed an “extreme grievance” to the pope over Mazarin’s arrest of the Cardinal de Retz in 1652.38 Witnessing their vehement attachment to Retz, d’Estampes-Valenc¸ay suggested that Retz was the great arc boutant (flying buttress) that allied the Jansenists with other frondeurs.39 Noting this link made between Jansenists and Retz by his ambassador, Mazarin wrote back expressing his great hope that the pope would condemn Jansen’s propositions.40 Mazarin thus began supporting the campaign for a papal bull against Jansen in the hopes that it would help him discredit the Cardinal de Retz.41 He also hoped the bull would help improve his relations with Rome. It was no secret that the pope disliked him and had joined the Parisian priests in condemning him for arresting Retz.42 The pope also refused to show any support for France in its war against Spain because of Mazarin.43 Yet Innocent X also resented the king of Spain and the governor of the Netherlands for not supporting his first anti-Jansenist bull, In Eminenti.44 By showing his zeal for the new bull, Cum Occasione, Mazarin sought to ingratiate himself with Rome. His ambassador again provided guidance on this matter, recommending to Mazarin that he receive the bull with “the sound of trumpets and cymbals” and see that it got registered quickly into French law: “This will make [the pope] forget – perhaps forever and at least for some time, the other affairs, including that of Cardinal de Retz’s arrest.”45 Mazarin’s success with Rome now depended on his ability to have the bull quickly approved by French bishops and registered into law by Parlement. Mazarin knew he would face opposition because several bishops already opposed the bull.46 For these bishops, the main issue was not so

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Jansen, 34. Mazarin’s secretary of state for foreign affairs at this time was Henri-Auguste de Lomenie, comte de Brienne. ´ Ibid., 34. Ibid. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 19–20. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 39, 42. Ibid., 43, June 23, 1653. Franc¸ois Gaqu`ere, Pierre de Marca (1594–1662): Sa vie, ses oeuvres, son gallicanisme (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1932), 263. These bishops sent a letter to Rome asking the pope to ignore Habert’s petition.

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much about Jansen but about what the debates over his writings meant for the traditional liberties of the Gallican Church. These bishops adopted Antoine Arnauld’s argument that the syndic of the Sorbonne had invented the propositions in a way that made their meaning ambiguous and subject to interpretation.47 When Arnauld first made this argument, he struggled against fellow doctors whom he believed were participating in a Jesuit plot to destroy Augustine. When Habert asked his fellow bishops at the General Assembly of the Clergy in 1651 to sign a petition asking the pope to condemn the propositions, a group of bishops protested that, because a Sorbonne theologian formulated the propositions, French bishops had the right to review them in the first instance.48 They opposed the petition to Rome because it undermined what they believed to be a golden opportunity to revive the national council of bishops, an institution that had fallen out of use since Francis I signed the Concordat of Bologna (1516) with Pope Leo X.49 These bishops strategically shifted the debates over Jansen’s propositions into debates over the traditional liberties of the French Church. To counter their influence, Mazarin commissioned Pierre de Marca, bishop of Conserans, to convince his fellow bishops to accept the bull. Mazarin chose Marca because he was a loyal client whose political fortunes had become closely tied to his own.50 More important, Marca was the author of De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii (On Harmony between Church and State), a notable treatise on French Gallicanism. Composed in 1641 at Richelieu’s request,51 Marca argued that if pope and Crown had clearly defined, absolute powers in their separate spiritual and temporal realms, there would be fewer conflicts between them and fewer opportunities for the clergy and Parlement to assert independence in the name of Gallican liberties.52 Marca’s work contained several compromises between the ultramontaine and Gallican positions in the sense that although he supported many of the traditional liberties of the French Church and defended the king’s absolute power in all things temporal, he also rejected the authority of national councils and instead supported papal authority to make decisions in the first instance over 47 48 49 50 51 52

See Arnauld’s Considerations sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet, discussed in Chapter 1. Dubois, Henri de Pardaillon de Gondrin, Archevˆeque de Sens, 78. Ernest Lavisse, Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’a` la R´evolution, 9 vols. (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1911), 7:389. Jansen, 44. G.R.R. Treasure, Cardinal Richelieu and the Development of Absolutism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), 259. Gaqu`ere, 108–13, 116–19, 153.

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doctrine.53 Marca’s work was well suited for Mazarin’s new initiative of cooperation with the pope to combat Jansenism because it advocated a strong, centralized monarchy and cited previous instances of royal–papal cooperation, such as the Concordat of Bologna, as positive steps toward this goal.54 As Mazarin and Marca began meeting with select bishops to build a coalition in support of Cum Occasione, they soon discovered that their opponents were taking advantage of the title of the bull – which stated that the propositions arose “On the Occasion” of Jansen’s text – to argue that the bull confirmed their position, which was that the propositions had been invented by Cornet and did not come directly from Jansen. Louis-Henri de Pardailhan de Gondrin, the bishop of Sens and a leader of this opposition, issued a pastoral letter calling for a national council of bishops to decide the question of the propositions’ meaning.55 He made the strongest assertion yet for this council by claiming episcopal authority to be “divine in its origins.”56 The ambiguity of the bull as represented in its title created an opportunity for Gallican bishops to escalate the conflict. To counter this development, Mazarin and Marca petitioned Rome to issue a new statement that left no room for ambiguity by attributing the propositions to Jansen directly.57 When the pope issued this new statement in March 1654, it increased Mazarin’s power over French bishops. Any bishop who opposed the bull in favor of a national council now risked accusations

53 54

55

56 57

Gaqu`ere, esp. chaps. 7–11. In addition, through Marca, Mazarin was also building on policies that Richelieu had adopted to promote a relationship between the Church and Crown that favored absolute monarchy. Treasure, 259. Gondrin specified in his letter that he had no quarrel with Cum Occasione in terms of doctrine, as the bull condemned the five propositions in their heretical sense. However, he critiqued the model pastoral letter that he received from the bishops of Paris by denying that the propositions came from Jansen. By making this distinction between his submission to the bull in matters of doctrine but not on the matter of Jansen’s authorship, Gondrin’s pastoral letter represents the first example of the famous right/fact distinction that became the basis of Jansenist resistance to Louis XIV’s formulary in 1661. Dubois, 84. Jansen, 56. The pope refused this request for a while, telling Franc¸ois Bosquet, bishop of Lod`eve, who was then serving Mazarin as an ambassador to Rome that he did not want to go into the matter of Jansen’s text. He wanted to follow the precedent set by his predecessor, who ordered silence on debates over grace. Yet Bosquet convinced the pope to issue the statement after impressing on him the dangers that Gallican bishops posed to papal authority if he did not issue the statement. Jansen, 91–2. Mazarin kept these dispatches secret from the French bishops during his meetings with them. Jansen, 72–3.

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of Jansenism. In effect, Mazarin had harnessed anti-Jansenist discourses against heresy as a way to control Gallican bishops. Although this statement helped Mazarin control French bishops, it also had the unintended consequence of opening up a new front in his struggle to have the bull registered into law, this time against members of Parlement. His conflict with Parlement was instigated by Gondrin, who filed an appel comme d’abus (appeal as from an abuse) with the court out of concern that his fellow bishops would use the new papal statement to prosecute him for Jansenism as a way to prove their loyalty to Mazarin.58 The original purpose of the appel comme d’abus was to prevent civil and ecclesiastical courts from violating each other’s jurisdiction by allowing appeals to the king’s sovereign courts if any such violation took place. However, by the seventeenth century, Parlement’s judges had come to treat the appel comme d’abus as a tool for fulfilling a mandate to protect the rights of the French Church from incursions from Rome.59 Gondrin spoke to this mandate in his appeal when he accused his fellow bishops of granting the pope too much leeway in French affairs by giving him the right to decide on the propositions in the first instance.60 The appeal worked, and when Parlement upheld it, Mazarin gave up hope of seeing Cum Occasione registered into law. However, even though his entire plan against Retz did not succeed, Mazarin had set his course for action and remained vigilant for a new opportunity to harness the Jansenist debates for his political goals. Mazarin’s Attack on Port-Royal The opposition Mazarin faced from Parlement could not have come at a worse time in his struggle against Retz. On March 21, 1654, JeanFranc¸ois de Gondi, the archbishop of Paris, died, thus making Cardinal de Retz the new archbishop. Retz was still in prison at the time of his uncle’s death, but a few months later, on August 8, 1654, he escaped and made his way to Rome where, to Mazarin’s dismay, the pope promised him his protection.61 On January 7, 1655, Pope Innocent X died and was succeeded by Pope Alexander VII, formerly Cardinal Chigi, another 58 59 60 61

Dubois, 86. Albert N. Hamscher, The Parlement of Paris after the Fronde, 1653–1673 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 111–13. Ibid., 113. Hermant, 2:600–1. He arrived at the papal palace on December 9, 1654, where he received a warm welcome from the pope and most of the dignitaries in residence there. Salmon, 252–71.

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longtime nemesis of Mazarin.62 With Retz on the loose and the installation of a new pope who disliked Mazarin even more than his predecessor, the minister’s fears of rebellion and losing international influence reached new heights. In these desperate times, a scandal broke out at Port-Royal when the priest for the Parisian parish of Saint-Sulpice refused communion to the duke of Liancourt unless he agreed to renounce Jansenism and remove his granddaughter from Port-Royal, where she was living as a pensioner. Mazarin seized on this scandal to convince the pope that he must issue a new anti-Jansenist bull to stifle the disturbances at PortRoyal. The convent itself now was being swept up into Mazarin’s politics. One can detect the converging paths between the Jesuit attacks on Port-Royal and Mazarin’s political calculations in Angelique’s letters, ´ especially those to the court of Poland. On July 10, 1653, Angelique ´ informed the queen of Poland of a rumor that Port-Royal was planning to revolt on the publication of Cum Occasione in France.63 She dismissed the rumor on the grounds that nobody at Port-Royal would incite rebellion. She also explained to the queen that they had no reason to oppose the bull anyway because the pope had assured the Sorbonne doctors who had gone to Rome to protest Habert’s petition that the bull condemned the “maliciously fabricated” propositions and in no way harmed the doctrine of St. Augustine.64 As the rumors of a Jansenist rebellion mounted, Angelique continued ´ to stress the obedience of Jansen’s supporters to the bull in subsequent letters to Poland. On July 24, 1653, she wrote to M. Fleury, “The most humble submission that all St. Augustine’s disciples have shown to this bull has astonished several people who were hoping for the opposite, because they had been persuaded that a terrible rebellion and a completely did not specify what this formed schism would be seen.”65 Angelique ´ 62

63 64

65

On Mazarin’s long-standing feud with Cardinal Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII, see Paul Sonnino, Louis XIV’s View of the Papacy (1661–1667) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 12–13. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, July 10, 1653. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:345. Ibid., 2:344. “I imagine that many things have been said to Your Majesty about a bull published by our Holy Father, the Pope, and that Your Majesty kindly wishes that I tell her the truth: it is that the bull does no wrong to our friends, who had acknowledged before His Holiness that the five propositions that had been maliciously fabricated and badly interpreted were heretical. Since the bull, the Pope has seen the Doctors of Theology who had gone to defend the good doctrine in Rome, and he expressed to them that he was very pleased with them, and that in no possible way did he mean to be prejudiced against St. Augustine’s doctrine. This is all that can be desired.” Angelique Arnauld to Franc¸ois Fleury, July 24, 1653. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:353.

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“terrible rebellion” was supposed to look like, but Godefroy Hermant, a doctor of the Sorbonne, recorded in his memoirs that Jesuit priests were busy convincing the king, queen, and “some other ministers and most important people at Court” that the Jansenists were plotting an alliance with Oliver Cromwell to overturn the French Crown.66 Another rumor Hermant cited was the one Mazarin feared: that the Jansenists were plotting with Cardinal de Retz to incite an uprising among the lower ranking clergy of Paris.67 In February 1654 – just as Mazarin was meeting with a group of bishops in Paris to compose the letter requesting the pope to attribute the propositions directly to Jansen – the rumors against Port-Royal escalated to the point that Angelique wrote the following to the queen of Poland: ´ Those who cannot believe themselves happy without Port-Royal’s destruction do not cease to invent daily new slanders in order to reach this goal. . . . And the last time that I went back to Paris it was said that guardsmen had come looking for me in order to take me to the Bastille. All these rumors are spread about in order to make us look like we are criminals, heretics, and deserving of all manner of punishment.68

Angelique understood the rumors against Port-Royal to be part of a Jesuit ´ plot to convince the public that the convent was a hotbed of heresy and rebellion. Not until January 31, 1655, however, after Mazarin had reached his darkest hour after Retz’s escape and the election of Chigi as pope, did the scandal break out surrounding the duke of Liancourt and his granddaughter at Port-Royal. The scandal provided Mazarin with the perfect opportunity to raise the alarm over the link between Jansenism, PortRoyal, and civil unrest (several members of the Liancourt family had been frondeurs). Port-Royal was experiencing a remarkable growth in membership in 1655, and this incident challenged its increase in popularity by calling into question the sensitive issue of childhood welfare. By ordering Liancourt to remove his granddaughter from the convent, the priest of Saint-Sulpice implied that the unruly women of Port-Royal were drawing innocent children into heresy. In what historian Paule Jansen describes as a top-secret ruse on his part, Mazarin personally fanned the flames of the Liancourt affair by 66 67 68

Hermant, 2:110–11. These priests alleged that the Jansenists had promised Cromwell 6,000 backup soldiers for his invasion in exchange for his support for their party. Ibid., 2:111–12. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, February 4, 1654. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 2:438.

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inviting Antoine Arnauld to defend Port-Royal in writing; he then promptly handed the document over to Franc¸ois Annat, the king’s Jesuit confessor and a vocal critic of Jansenism, for refutation.69 By pitting these two fiery polemicists against each other, Mazarin hoped to convince the pope of the necessity to issue a new bull to settle the disturbance.70 In response to Mazarin’s request to defend Port-Royal, Arnauld published Lettre a` une personne de condition (Letter to a Person of Quality) on February 24, 1655. Arnauld emphasized how the actions of the parish priest – whom he described as having close Jesuit ties – violated standard Church procedures, reflecting the Jesuits’ general distain for established Church traditions.71 As for the priest’s order for Liancourt to remove his granddaughter from Port-Royal, Arnauld adopted the now boilerplate argument that such attacks on the nuns were symptoms of the Jesuits’ uncontrollable passion.72 He went further, however, adding that this recent attack was particularly egregious because it involved the nuns in a theological debate of which they had no knowledge: What pretext can they have for spreading their persecution against virtuous nuns, who know nothing of these theological matters, who have never read the least line about all these contested questions, and who make a particular vow to avoid all kinds of contention, in order to occupy themselves solely with the faithful observation of the Gospel and of their Rule?73

Arnauld argued that the nuns knew nothing about these “theological matters” because their vows demanded that they remain indifferent to such contestations. His insistence on this point departed from the arguments made ten years earlier by his nephew Antoine Le Maistre in his response to Zamet’s M´emoire. Whereas Le Maistre had argued that nuns had legitimate ways to familiarize themselves with theological matters by reverently catching the “crumbs” dropped to them by male theologians, 69

70 71

72 73

Jansen, 113. Franc¸ois Annat (1590–1670) was a Jesuit priest, theology professor, rector, and confessor to the king. He was also one of the most important anti-Jansenists of the seventeenth century. Lucien Ceyssens, “Franc¸ois Annat et la condamnation des Cinq Propositions a Rome, 1649–1651,” Bulletin de l’Institute historique belge de Rome 43 (1974): 111–26. Jansen, 110, n. 29. Antoine Arnauld, Lettre a` une personne de condition. In Œuvres d’Arnauld 19:312– 20. To prove his point, Arnauld provided examples from the writings of Augustine, Chrysostom, and other Church fathers to show that to refuse the sacraments was too serious a decision for even a bishop to make without first demonstrating that the sin was “public and known.” Ibid., 19:322–3. Ibid., 19:323.

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Arnauld suggested that the nuns knew nothing beyond the “observation of the Gospel and of their Rule.” On one hand, Arnauld’s more extreme negation of the nuns’ access to theological knowledge may have reflected a greater defensiveness at Port-Royal against accusations that the convent had become a breeding ground for heresy. On the other hand, embedded within this claim was the assertion that the nuns did not have to read the theological controversies to know the truth about grace because they learned all the truth they needed by observing the Benedictine Rule. The notion that obedience to their rule was the antithesis of a Jesuit plot against the Church was one that his sisters Angelique and Agn`es had ´ developed. By referring to the nuns’ perfect obedience, Arnauld incorporated their strategy for combating Jesuit disorder into his treatise. Arnauld’s letter triggered nine rebuttals between the months of March and May 1655, including those by Annat.74 In April, he responded to these pamphlets with his Seconde lettre a` un duc et pair (Second Letter to a Duke and Peer of the Realm) on July 10, 1655. He began by dismissing most of his critics on the grounds that they forwarded nothing but the often repeated “lies” against the Port-Royal nuns.75 However, he responded to Annat’s critiques, because these cited Augustine to discredit Arnauld’s defense of the nuns. For instance, Annat argued that “the nuns . . . were overestimating themselves if they prided themselves on their virginity and profession” on the grounds that, “Saint Augustine said that there are virgins who are outside the Temple of God. Heretical nuns, who are in truth virgins.”76 By citing Augustine in attacking these women, Annat presented himself as an authority on the saint, one with sufficient knowledge to spar against and discredit the self-appointed “disciples of Augustine.” In response, Arnauld cited a letter by Augustine in which he encouraged a group of persecuted nuns to ignore the slanderous words of men because they were a symptom of human passion: “[The nuns] should consider themselves happy to be the brides of a God who can not be upset by lies made against them or moved by acts of jealousy, to which worldly husbands are susceptible even when it comes to the most chaste wives.”77 This passage reinforced the assertion made frequently by Jansen’s apologists that the Jesuits were persecuting the nuns out of a blind passion. 74 75 76 77

These responses were orchestrated to some degree by the king’s confessor, P. Annat, who authored one of them. Arnauld, Œuvres d’Arnauld, 19:41, note e. Arnauld, Seconde lettre a` un duc et pair, 19:424. Ibid. Ibid., 19:429.

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By finding an excerpt from Augustine that echoed the discourses used by Jansen’s defenders so well and that seemed perfectly tailored to the current situation, Arnauld defended his position as the superior scholar of Augustine. In this exchange, Annat and Arnauld moved the debate over the PortRoyal nuns closer to the theological core of the Jansenist debates by using their case to assess each other’s ability to interpret Augustine. They also grounded this debate in the same texts in which they debated the propositions, thereby tying together the woman problem at Port Royal and the Jansenist theological debates. The nuns’ virtue and knowledge, issues at the heart of the querelle des femmes, had become part of the debate between Jansenists and Jesuits over who interpreted Augustine correctly. In the passages concerning the propositions, Annat asserted that they came from Jansen’s text and accurately reflected his heretical thinking. Arnauld responded with his thesis that Syndic Cornet had originally formulated the propositions in 1649 to contain multiple and ambiguous meanings as part of a Jesuit plot. Arnauld then spelled out his famous right/fact distinction for the first time. He explained that he submitted to Cum Occasione because it condemned the propositions in their heretical sense: “I sincerely condemn the five censured propositions, in whatever book they can be found, without exception.”78 Here, he affirmed the Church’s right to determine which ideas are heretical and which are not. However, he then argued that the question of whether or not the propositions appeared in Jansen’s text with their heretical meanings was a matter of fact. He explained that those who were demanding that people condemn the heretical propositions as belonging to Jansen were asking people to obey the Church on a question of fact, something which the Church had no right over because observable facts were not established by Holy Scripture or tradition.79 By making this distinction between doctrine and fact, Arnauld stepped into the trap that Mazarin had laid for him. All along, Mazarin had been behind the campaign to attribute the propositions to Jansen so that he could denounce Gallican bishops such as Gondrin – who had also made this distinction in his controversial pastoral letter – as Jansenist. Mazarin had not successfully prosecuted Gondrin because Parlement had defended his position in the name of Gallican liberties. Now that Arnauld had made this distinction, however, Mazarin was determined to have it condemned 78 79

Arnauld, Seconde lettre a` un duc et pair, 19:455. Ibid.

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by the Sorbonne so that any person who might use it to impede Mazarin’s politics in the name of Gallican liberties could be labeled a Jansenist. Arnauld realized that he had stepped into this trap in November 1655 when he found himself on trial in the Sorbonne. Denis Guyart, the syndic of the Sorbonne, announced to the faculty that he had formed a committee at the request of the leaders of the kingdom to examine Arnauld’s second letter.80 A month later, Guyart presented the committee’s findings: Arnauld was guilty of presumption (t´em´erit´e). It based this verdict on Arnauld’s own distinction between right and fact: In casting suspicion on the attribution of the five propositions to Jansen, [Arnauld] calls into doubt the authority of the pope and the bishops who teach his authority. In doing this, he assigns a subversive meaning to a purely material question: a matter of fact. This accusation is aggravated by the fact that Arnauld himself is renewing one of the errors that were condemned: a matter of right.81

Because the bull had never mentioned Jansen, the committee claimed that Arnauld was putting words into the mouth of the pope by insisting that this question of fact needed clarification. Insisting on clarification was presumptuous on Arnauld’s part because it revealed his doubt in the sincerity of the pope. Furthermore, the committee insisted that this presumption was even more serious because Arnauld was also guilty of doctrinal errors. These errors were proof that Arnauld only defended the right/fact distinction to conceal his support for the heretical doctrine contained in the propositions. After hearing this report, the faculty of the Sorbonne voted to censure and expel Arnauld. Although Arnauld and his supporters tried to appeal this decision, the censure went into effect on February 22, 1656.82 During the period of Arnauld’s trial, Mazarin ordered his ambassadors in Rome to convince Alexander VII to issue a new anti-Jansenist bull. These ambassadors repeated the negative rumors against the Port-Royal nuns to sway papal opinion. For example, on December 14, 1655, Ambassador Hugues de Lionne, told the pope that the king had pushed for Arnauld’s trial at the Sorbonne because the Jansenists at Port-Royal had led the opposition to the previous anti-Jansenist bull in France.83 Lionne successfully discredited Port-Royal to the point that, two weeks later, he reported that the pope requested that “the sovereign would give the order 80 81 82 83

Jacques Gr`es-Gayer, Le jans´enisme en Sorbonne, 1643–1656 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996), 146. Ibid., 149–50. Jansen, 123. Ibid., 126–7.

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to disperse those who are at Port-Royal.”84 What Angelique Arnauld had ´ long maintained was a Jesuit plot against Port-Royal had taken a political turn in which the convent’s demise fit within the logic of Mazarin’s negotiations with Rome. Mazarin had denounced Port-Royal to convince the pope that the Jansenists were a threat. Now, he planned to destroy the convent to prove he wanted to cooperate with Rome in suppressing them. Miracles and the Crisis of Leadership at Port-Royal On hearing that the pope wanted Port-Royal destroyed, Anne of Austria issued the order for Port-Royal’s destruction.85 The decision was made on March 16, 1656. A few days later, the solitaires voluntarily left PortRoyal to avoid confronting the troops sent to disperse them.86 On April 12, 1656, Angelique wrote to the queen of Poland that the nuns were ´ themselves targeted for dispersion, beginning with the young postulants, who number “more than sixty across the two houses.”87 A few days later, M. de Saussay, one of the vicars general of Cardinal de Retz, came to Port-Royal-de-Paris to begin the process of removing the girls. His orders were to first move the children to safety and then begin removing the nuns. Mazarin’s and Anne of Austria’s plans for Port-Royal’s destruction were sidelined, however, when the nuns in Paris presented M. de Saussay with evidence of a miracle that had taken place there a few weeks earlier, on March 24, 1656. Rather than removing the girls from the house, M. de Saussay began the process of calling in witnesses and medical experts to investigate the miracle. When the experts confirmed the miracle to be genuine, the doomed convent suddenly became a popular pilgrimage site to which hundreds of people flocked to seek cures for their ailments. Mazarin and Anne of Austria canceled the order to dismantle Port-Royal out of respect for the miracle. 84 85

86 87

Ibid., 127. The pope said this in a meeting with Lionne on December 28, 1655. Ibid., 130. On April 6, 1656, Angelique wrote to the queen of Poland that Anne of ´ Austria had met with the assembly of the clergy and had instructed the bishops to push Port-Royal “to the end,” and that this matter “was her own affair.” Angelique ´ Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, April 6, 1656. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:206. Mazarin warned Robert Arnauld d’Andilly, solitaire and brother of Angelique Arnauld, ´ of the order to disperse the community. Jansen, 131. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, April 12, 1656. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:210.

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This miracle, which became known as the “Miracle of the Holy Thorn,” took place at a vulnerable time for members of the Arnauld family. Antoine Arnauld had just been expelled from the Sorbonne and had gone into hiding to avoid arrest. Angelique and Agn`es had also both ´ lost the position of abbess after term limits forced Angelique to step down ´ and an illness prevented Agn`es from taking her place.88 Just before she stepped down as abbess, one of Angelique’s final oral discourses revealed ´ that she was having trouble maintaining discipline within the convent. In September 1654, she reprimanded her nuns after a woman who had just started her novitiate at Port-Royal quit suddenly when some nuns in the house told her that Angelique’s reform was too strict and would ´ 89 not last after her death. Angelique feared that the incident, if known ´ publicly, would play into the hands of her Jesuit critics by allowing them to accuse her of imposing an overly strict form of piety on the nuns against their will.90 She reprimanded the nuns with a long and severe discourse designed to persuade them to choose for their next abbess a candidate capable of enforcing discipline.91 The nuns ended up electing her chosen candidate, Marie des Anges Suireau, to replace her in November 1654. Yet the incident revealed internal divisions within the house. As members of the Arnauld family suffered a loss of authority and status in their respective institutions, members of the Pascal family stepped forward to defend them. Blaise Pascal began publishing the Provincial Letters in Antoine Arnauld’s defense in January 1656, around the time of his expulsion. Through these fictional letters, Pascal introduced a new voice – the voice of the well-educated, concerned, and conscientious laity – into the Jansenist debates. Pascal portrays a layman going through the process of consulting expert theologians from all sides of the Jansenist debates, weighing their arguments, and eventually concluding that Jansen’s defenders had reason and religious truth on their side.92 These satirical letters, which contrasted the overly complex rationalizations of Jesuit casuists against the common sense of a layperson, were read widely in 1656 and introduced more people than ever throughout France and Europe to the Jansenist debates. 88 89 90 91 92

Angelique had been elected the limit of four terms in a row (1642–54). ´ Carr, Voix des abbesses, 115. Ibid. Ibid., 116. Richard Parrish, Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales: A Study in Polemic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

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While these letters were circulating in Paris, Pascal’s niece, the twelveyear old postulant Marguerite Perier, was miraculously cured by the ´ Miracle of the Holy Thorn when she applied a relic containing a thorn from Christ’s crown of thorns to her infected eye.93 The miracle was highly symbolic, for not only did it suggest divine favor on the house but it also involved a child shortly after discourses about childhood welfare had become central to the attacks on the convent following the Liancourt affair. The Miracle of the Holy Thorn was another way that members of the Pascal family defended Port-Royal. In this case, however, the miracle also reflected an internal division there, one with deep roots reaching back to the time of Angelique’s schism with Zamet. This division was a spiritual ´ one between those who embraced elements of mysticism and those who rejected this type of spirituality. The Port-Royal nuns had participated in the French movement toward mysticism in the 1620s when Zamet had invited priests from Pierre de Berulle’s Oratory to help with their ´ direction. Charles de Condren, a leader in this school, had been confessing Agn`es Arnauld at the time she composed the Secret Chaplet.94 Angelique ´ apparently never embraced these tendencies, and once she took charge of Port-Royal after her split with Zamet, she tried to purge mysticism from the convent.95 However, her efforts were not completely successful, and among those who harbored mystical tendencies was Flavie Passart, the schoolmistress in charge of the postulants at the time of the miracle. It was she who had encouraged Marguerite Perier to apply the Holy Thorn to her ´ infected eye and was responsible for then reporting the miracle to Agn`es Arnauld.96 When Angelique, who was living at Port-Royal-des-Champs, first ´ learned about the miracle in Paris, she was skeptical to the point of 93

94 95

96

Marguerite Perier was the eldest daughter of Jacqueline and Blaise Pascal’s sister, Gilberte ´ Pascal Perier. An account of the miracle appears in a letter Jacqueline wrote to her sister ´ on March 29, 1656. According to this account, little “Margot” applied the relic to her eye on the advice of Sister Flavie Passart, who was serving as Port-Royal’s schoolmistress at the time. Pascal, A Rule for Children, 141–3. Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, Abb´e de Saint Cyran et son temps, 310. Jean Orcibal, Entre miracle et l’ob´eissance. Flavie Passart et Ang´elique de Saint-Jean (Paris: Desclee niece Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ de Brouwer, 1957), 30–1. Angelique’s ´ ´ helped Angelique in this campaign by burning Genevi`eve le Tardiff’s letters. Ibid., 7–8. ´ Jacqueline Pascal to Gilberte Pascal Perier, March 29, 1656. In Pascal, A Rule for ´ Children, 141-3. In this translation, Conley claims that Flavie told Agn`es first because she was abbess at the time. Pascal, A Rule for Children, 142 n25.This is incorrect because Marie des Anges Suireau was abbess in 1656. Flavie may have told Agn`es first because her own sympathies with French mysticism would have made her more receptive to the news of a miracle than Angelique or Marie des Anges might have been. ´

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criticism. In a letter to a laywoman who was experiencing health problems at the time, she wrote, I marvel at how much everybody is talking about the miracle that has happened, and even more at their claims that there will be more of them. I do not believe it. . . . Do not wish, my dear sister, for God to deliver his truth by visible miracles, but by invisible conversions of hearts that take place without rumors or fanfare.97

Angelique critiqued visible miracles because they went against Saint´ Cyran’s spiritual teachings, which emphasized genuine internal conversion, contrition, and silent suffering of the soul. These teachings reflected St. Augustine’s pessimism about the human senses and their susceptibility to corruption. For years, Jansen’s defenders had positioned themselves in polemical texts as authors who appealed to their readers’ reason and contrasted their methods to those of the Jesuits, who appealed to their audiences’ physical senses through dramatic sermons, processions, and images, as a way to fool them.98 Thus the miracle represented a religious experience that suited the sensibilities of her Jesuit opponents more than those of Port-Royal. However, once the miracle was confirmed, Angelique expressed her ´ belief in it. As news of the miracle spread, crowds began gathering at Port-Royal, full of hopeful people looking for miracle cures of their own. Angelique’s prediction that the miracles would stop was proven ´ wrong as people began reporting new miracles on an almost weekly basis. Angelique sent several letters to the queen of Poland describing the ´ miracles and Port-Royal’s growing popularity in their wake.99 Although she sounded genuinely enthusiastic about the increase in visitors to PortRoyal, she also conveyed her general skepticism toward the miracles by taking care to specify which ones were documented and authenticated.100 The timing of the miracles was auspicious because they saved the convent from imminent destruction. However, for Angelique, the timing was ´ also worrisome because they followed other events, such as the incident leading to her reprimand of the nuns in 1654, that suggested her authority among the nuns was waning. Furthermore, the Crown’s persecution of Port-Royal revived mystical tendencies in the house, which Angelique ´ 97 98 99

100

Angelique Arnauld to Madame de Bellisi, April 23, 1656. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere ´ Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:220. Hermant, 2:335. See letters from Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves on June 1, ´ 1656, June 9, 1656, and November 15, 1656. In Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:250, 254, 304. Angelique Arnauld to Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves, June 9, 1656. In Arnauld, ´ Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:254.

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had been fighting against ever since she parted ways with Zamet in 1633. These old internal schisms began revealing themselves just as the Arnauld family was losing its ability to defend Port-Royal and Jansen and the Pascal family was stepping forward to help them. Ad Sacram and the Birth of the Formulary The miracles prevented the Crown from destroying Port-Royal, but did not prevent Mazarin from receiving the new papal bull against Jansen for which he had worked so hard.101 Alexander VII issued the anti-Jansenist bull Ad Sacram in the fall of 1656 and, after further negotiations with Mazarin, sent it on to France in January 1657.102 Once the bull arrived, Mazarin was determined to have it registered into law against any and all opposition from Gallican bishops and Parlement. He again tapped Pierre de Marca, now bishop of Toulouse, to oversee the process. At the March meeting of the General Assembly of the Clergy, Marca presented the bull to the bishops in a speech carefully crafted to make it clear that any resistance would be treated as a defense of heresy and not as loyal opposition in the service of Gallican liberties.103 Although there are no surviving minutes for this meeting, it appears that the bishops accepted the new bull with little debate.104 Reasons for why the bishops voted in favor of Ad Sacram with little resistance can be gleaned from two statements they issued on their acceptance. The first was a resolution granting bishops the authority to demand signatures of adherence to a formulary supporting Ad Sacram (which they collated with Cum Occasione so that the formulary applied to both bulls) from all members of the clergy within their dioceses. The formulary demanded that each person condemn the errors in the five propositions and assert that Jansen wrote them: I submit sincerely to the constitution of Innocent X of May 31, 1653 [Cum Occasione], according to its proper meaning as set forth in the constitution of our Holy Father Alexander VII of October 16, 1656 [Ad Sacram]. I recognize that I am obligated as a matter of conscience to obey these constitutions, and I 101

102

103 104

Jansen, 155–7. Finally, after the meeting of the French bishops in the fall of 1656 in which they issued a statement of intent to prosecute Jansenists based on the statement of the previous pope of September 29, 1654, Mazarin was able to convince the pope to issue a new bull confirming that statement. Jansen, 157. The negotiations had to do with France’s foreign affairs. The ambassador who brought the bull to France in January 1657 also arrived with a commission to negotiate a peace between France and Spain. Hermant, 3:320–3. Jansen, 160, n. 30. Hermant, 3:319–26.

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condemn with heart and mouth the doctrine contained in the five propositions of Jansenius in his book entitled Augustinus that two popes and the bishops have condemned, the doctrine being not at all that of Saint Augustine, but that which Jansen explained poorly against the true meaning of this Holy Saint.105

This formulary increased the bishops’ authority over their dioceses by granting them the right to make decisions regarding discipline for those suspected of Jansenism. The second statement called on the king to prohibit clerics from appealing against the formulary to Parlement via the appel comme d’abus by characterizing the appeal process as a loophole for heretics.106 These two statements reveal how the bishops accepted Ad Sacram under conditions that extended their authority within their dioceses and undercut Parlement’s ability to interfere with the Church.107 The bishops thus joined the fight against Jansenism to align their interests with the Crown at the expense of Parlement. By the time the bishops sent the bulls to Parlement for registration, members of the court had already been primed to resist them. Antoine Arnauld and Gondrin, the bishop of Sens, had circulated two memoirs among the judges that played on their worst fears by spelling out how the formulary and the suspension of the appel comme d’abus set the stage for a papal inquisition in France. These arguments resonated strongly in Parlement where, even though the majority of magistrates were antiJansenist, they resisted Ad Sacram and Cum Occasione on the grounds of protecting their privileges. Chancellor Seguier wrote this to Mazarin in ´ May 1657: “[The court] is convinced that the bull establishes an inquisition in France, [and] it believes the king wishes to take away the appel comme d’abus and that the clergy has requested this.”108 105 106

107

108

Hermant, 3:324. Ibid. “And because episcopal authority, which ought to punish with canonical sentences those who rebel against its decisions, can be challenged by their subterfuges, either by appel comme d’abus, or by way of fact, it has been decided that His Majesty will be most humbly begged to have his letters of declaration sent to his Courts of Parlement, and these letters will order them not to allow any appel comme d’abus in this matter, and to support the bishops or their officials in carrying out their judgements against the guilty.” Further evidence to suggest that bishops were looking to extend their authority can be found in their resolution to issue twelve articles spelling out the rights and responsibilities of bishops in another session of the General Assembly of the Clergy. Forrestal, 116–19. These articles also reinforced the message implicit in the statements regarding the formulary and the appel comme d’abus by stating that bishops had ultimate authority over all clerics within their dioceses in matters pertaining to faith. Hermant, 3:330–5. Hamscher, 114.

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Mazarin had been anticipating this resistance, and he delayed the Parlement’s vote on the bulls until the next scheduled lit de justice, a special session of Parlement that the king attended personally. The minister knew the judges would have a harder time resisting the bulls if the young king expressed in person his desire to have them registered. To make the bulls more palatable for Parlement, Mazarin also helped negotiate a compromise that eliminated the requirement for signatures to the formulary and the bishops’ demand for immunity from the appel comme d’abus. In response Parlement registered Ad Sacram and Cum Occasione together on December 19, 1657.109 Mazarin had finally fulfilled his promise to Rome to have the pope’s anti-Jansenist bulls registered into French law. Conclusion Since the outbreak of the religious Fronde, Mazarin’s goal had been to exploit the threat of Jansenism to undermine Retz and improve his relations with the pope. Even though he finally succeeded in getting the two anti-Jansenist bulls registered, his problems did not immediately go away. For instance, the Crown’s problems with Retz were not resolved until 1662 (one year after Mazarin’s death), when Louis XIV removed him from the archdiocese of Paris by exchanging his office for other benefices.110 Mazarin’s strategy nonetheless set into motion a dynamic that had a long-term impact on how politics and religion intersected in France. The fight against Jansenism became the vehicle through which Mazarin aligned the interests of the Crown with French bishops and through which he began the process of undermining Parlement’s influence. Through Mazarin’s efforts, the heresy that a handful of priests had condemned in the pulpits of Paris in 1640 had become an important political tool for the state, one that the Crown used to stifle loyal opposition from religious and political elites who saw themselves as the defenders of Gallican liberties. The context of the Fronde, which ultimately transformed “theology into politics,”111 changed the meaning of Port-Royal’s persecution. The 109

110 111

Ibid., 114–15. Mazarin, who still worried after the compromise that Parlementary Gallicans might oppose the bull, waited to have the bull registered during this special royal session as a precaution. Salmon, 323–26. The phrase comes from Antoine Arnauld’s, Consid´erations sur ce qui s’est pass´e en l’Assembl´ee de la Facult´e de Th´eologie de Paris, tenue en Sorbonne le 4 November 1655. In Œuvres d’Arnauld, 19:602–25.

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convent continued to provide Jansen’s critics with a compelling scapegoat that united the concept of heresy with anxieties about women and social disorder. But now, in addition, the Crown targeted the convent because it united these anxieties with those over political unrest. This new meaning was evident in the Liancourt affair, which highlighted the link between Port-Royal and frondeur families and raised fears about unruly nuns corrupting innocent children placed in their care. Mazarin took advantage of this scandal to push his political agenda – which was to pressure French bishops and members of Parlement to register the anti-Jansenist papal bulls – on the premise that the dangerous Jansenists at Port-Royal must be stopped at all costs. Angelique’s reform also took on new meanings in the context of the ´ Fronde. The disruptions caused by the civil wars created new pressures that strengthened the Arnauld sisters’ calls for monastic discipline and spiritual renewal. One of these pressures was the need to provide charity for the hundreds of nuns who sought refuge in Paris from the battles taking place in the surrounding countryside. Another pressure was the increase in anti-Jansenist attacks against the convent linking the nuns to civil revolt and rebellion. As abbess, Angelique sought to use Port´ Royal’s charitable offerings to refugee nuns as a means of dispelling the negative rumors. Her successes in doing so added a new pressure in the form of the many recruits who wanted to join the convent. Port-Royal rapidly increased in size during the religious Fronde, making it the most populated convent in Paris by the time Louis XIV came to power in 1661. These new pressures took their toll on the convent in ways that showed the strains of twenty years of the Arnauld sisters’ leadership. The incident leading to Angelique’s reprimand of her nuns in September 1654 and the ´ Miracle of the Holy Thorn revealed divisions among the nuns. To protect their reform and maintain control over Port-Royal, the Arnauld sisters stressed the link between disciplined reform and spiritual renewal more than ever. Their task became ever more daunting as these now elderly women faced persecution from a young and vigorous king, one whose authority rested in part on a policy of scapegoating their convent as a way to suppress loyal opposition from Gallican bishops and members of Parlement.

4 The Limits to Obedience, 1661–1664

The first major change in the meaning and context of the Jansenist debates occurred during the Fronde. In the years between 1652 and his death in 1661, Mazarin had initiated the persecution of Jansenists as a way to discredit Cardinal de Retz. Along the way, this persecution helped him consolidate state power over Gallican bishops and Parlement. The second major change in the Jansenist debates took place in 1661 when King Louis XIV came to power and declared that he would rule personally without a minister. When Louis XIV ascended the throne, he continued Mazarin’s strategy against Retz and further consolidated his power by redefining Jansenist persecution as necessary for “his faith, his honor, and for the good of the state.” By making this persecution a personal matter, Louis XIV initiated his legacy of “divine right” leadership by tapping into two broad intellectual and political developments taking place in Europe at the time. First, his actions reflected a trend in which the individual became a source of certainty in questions both moral and epistemological.1 Second, the emphasis on his own faith fit into a European trend in which relationships between monarchs and subjects were redefined so that kings became model “Christian selves” with whom subjects were meant to identify.2 The ideal seventeenth-century monarch now “reflect[ed] not only God but also the divine element that

1 2

´ Jean Rohou, Le XVIIe si`ecle, une r´evolution de la condition humaine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2002), 14. Monod, The Power of Kings, 19–24. Monod describes the “Christian self” as the specific combination of an individual soul and body.

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is in the individual, so that every subject can recognize himself or herself in a royal being who commands our love.”3 For Louis XIV, combating Jansenism became an important activity through which he expressed his divine self and encouraged his subjects to identify with him. To enforce this identification, he ordered all members of the clergy, “both male and female,” to sign the formulary that the French bishops had drawn up in 1657, which asked the faithful to condemn the five propositions attributed to Jansen with “both heart and mouth.”4 This request for signatures marked the most invasive attempt by the Bourbon monarchs to regulate their subjects’ consciences and to rival the Church as a mediator with God.5 The formulary also created a new context that changed the meaning of the debates surrounding the propositions. Under Mazarin, those who had argued that Cornet invented the propositions in the Sorbonne had done so to defend the rights of French bishops to convene a national council. Now, under Louis XIV, their argument had the added force of defending individual consciences against the king’s attempt to subjugate them. The Port-Royal nuns became the leaders of the movement to resist signing the formulary at the moment when the meaning of the propositions changed under Louis XIV. The nuns did not declare outright that the propositions had been invented by Cornet. Instead, they resisted by signing the formulary with a declaration that the Pauline interdictions on female silence prohibited them from taking an oath on a theological matter that they were not allowed to study or discuss. With this declaration, the nuns highlighted an inherent contradiction within the king’s orders. It allowed them to present themselves as orderly, obedient, and capable of reason at the same time that it suggested that the king’s order violated Church traditions. The querelle des femmes at Port-Royal had always been a significant thread within the Jansenist debates. Now, under Louis XIV, the feminist arguments from this querelle were being forwarded by actual women who put themselves at the front of the battle to limit the king’s personal rule in matters of conscience. Scholars have criticized the nuns’ resistance to the formulary. According to Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, their opposition reflected the values of a “second generation” of nuns, which included Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ 3 4 5

Ibid., 199–200. This formulary was the same one issued by the General Assembly of the Clergy in 1657. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 33.

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Arnauld d’Andilly, Jacqueline Pascal, Eustoquie de Flesselles de Bregy, ´ and Christine Briquet. In his view, the “first generation” of nuns led by Angelique and Saint-Cyran had been genuinely disinterested in the world ´ and were responsible for Port-Royal’s unique genius.6 In contrast, these younger nuns had more in common with the sophisticated pr´ecieuses (precious women) of the salons, with their displays of rational thought and quick wits, than with Angelique’s humility and otherwordliness.7 ´ Although individual differences in temperaments and personalities may have contributed to these differences between the first and second generations of Port-Royal nuns, Louis XIV’s rule was the main catalyst for change. If the second generation of nuns focused on matters of individual reason and conscience, it was because the king had placed these matters at the center of his anti-Jansenist campaign.8 Louis XIV’s Initiative against Jansenism Louis XIV first indicated his intent to persecute Jansenists in a private meeting held in Mazarin’s quarters on December 13, 1660. He called together the three presidents of the General Assembly of the Clergy and announced that he needed to exterminate Jansenism in France. The feeble Mazarin, lying in his bed, supported Louis’s announcement, saying that “God inspired the king in this decision.”9 In this way, the dying Mazarin passed the torch of his anti-Jansenist campaign into the hands of the young king. Yet what had started under Mazarin as a strategic plan to undermine Retz and suppress loyal opposition to the Crown from Gallican bishops and parlementaires was transformed under Louis XIV into a matter of royal conscience through which the king established his personal rule in matters of religion. Shortly after this meeting, Louis XIV established a

6 7

8

9

Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 2:648–9. Ibid., 2:736–7. For his discussion of Jacqueline Pascal, see pp. 320–1. The term pr´ecieuse in the seventeenth century originally referred to the learned and refined women of the salons. It later developed a pejorative connotation as referring to “pedantic” or “meddling” woman. For more on the parallels between these nuns and the pr´ecieuses, see Daniella Kostroun, “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 506–16. The position I take here upholds the findings of Steven Greenblatt and other New Historicists, who argue that individual identities were first shaped by subjects who fell under political pressure from absolute authorities. John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,” American Historical Review 102 (December 1997): 1317. Hermant, 4:509.

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conseil de conscience (council of conscience), consisting of clerics who had distinguished themselves under Mazarin as ardent anti-Jansenists: Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse; Hardouin de Per the bishop of ´ efixe, ´ Rodez;Henri de la Motte-Houdancourt, the bishop of Rennes; and the king’s confessor, P`ere Annat. Under Louis XIII, the conseil de conscience had evolved from a group of advisors occasionally used by the king to address specific religious questions to a formal council charged with recommending candidates for royal nominations to Church benefices.10 Under Louis XIV, the council further evolved into a gatekeeper against Jansenism in France. One of the first decisions made by the conseil de conscience was to revive the formulary that Parlement had forced the General Assembly of the Clergy to drop in 1657.11 The procedure Louis XIV followed to implement this recommendation was significant because it circumvented review by Parlement: After asking the General Assembly of the Clergy to reissue the formulary at its meeting in January 1661, the Council of State issued a decree commanding those holding Church offices within dioceses to sign the formulary under penalty of losing the temporal income of their benefices.12 The king confirmed this decree with lettres de cachet ordering France’s bishops to circulate the formulary in their dioceses using a model mandement (injunction) designed by the General Assembly of the Clergy.13 The formulary was the first among many decrees that the king issued straight from his councils without any review from Parlement, and its issuance marked the beginning of a long period in which he cooperated with French bishops at Parlement’s expense.14 Ten days after the Council of State confirmed the formulary, Louis XIV initiated steps to destroy Port-Royal. In lettres de cachet he ordered the arrest of the convent’s confessor, M. Singlin, and the removal of all pensioners and postulants from the convent. These orders reversed Anne 10 11

12 13 14

Joseph Bergin, Le Cardinal de Rochefoucauld, 130. The council of conscience commissioned Pierre de Marca with the task of convincing the other bishops to approve the formulary. Pierre Blet, Le clerg´e du grand si`ecle en ses assembl´ees, 1615–1715 (Paris: Cerf, 1995), 244. Ibid. ´ eque d’Alet Etienne DeJean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant au XVIIe si`ecle: Nicolas Pavillon, Evˆ (1637–1677) (Paris: Plon, 1909), 174. Many of the king’s policies in these early years allied the Crown and high-ranking clergy at the expense of Parlement. Cynthia Dent, “The Council of State and the Clergy during the Reign of Louis XIV: An Aspect of the Growth of French Absolutism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 24:3 (1973): 247. Albert N. Hamscher, The Parlement of Paris, 130. On July 8, 1661, he formalized this practice into law.

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of Austria’s decision to spare Port-Royal after the Miracle of the Holy Thorn. Conditions had changed so that an attack on the convent again made sense. First, the members of the king’s council of conscience did not believe that the Miracle of the Holy Thorn justified sparing PortRoyal. In particular, Annat made the case that the miracles were sent to inspire the nuns to return to orthodoxy, not so they could further entrench themselves in heresy.15 Second, the Crown’s troubles with the Cardinal de Retz were far from over. If anything, Mazarin’s ailing health and death had emboldened the old frondeur, who was taking steps to reassert his authority in Paris.16 The destruction of Port-Royal – the largest convent in Paris and one suspected of Jansenism – was ordered by the king in conjunction with the formulary as a way to thoroughly undermine and discredit Retz’s authority as archbishop of Paris. The nuns’ letters and other writings in the spring of 1661 reveal that they understood both the contours of this new phase of persecution in which their fate was linked to that of the Cardinal de Retz and that they were now subject to a king who wanted them to identify with his Christian self. In March 1661, Angelique Arnauld, who was then living ´ at Port-Royal-des-Champs, received a letter from her niece, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly (henceforth Angelique de Saint-Jean), who ´ was serving as subprioress at the Paris house, informing her that the king had announced his intention to rule without a minister. Her niece added that the nuns have been warned that the king intended to persecute them: “It is said that we have been greatly recommended [for this persecution], as well as the Cardinal de Retz.”17 By mid-April, the nuns learned the details of their persecution. Their confessor, Singlin, went into hiding to avoid arrest, and Angelique ´ returned to Paris to help her sister Agn`es, who was serving as abbess at the time, to deal with the crisis. Angelique arrived in Paris on April ´ ˆ 23, the same day the lieutenant civil and a procureur du roi au Chatelet (the highest ranking magistrate) presented the nuns with lettres de cachet forbidding them from taking in any new pensioners, including those who might seek the novitiate, and ordering them to return the girls to their 15

16 17

Franc¸ois Annat, Rabat-joye des Jans´enistes, ou Observations n´ecessaires sur ce qu’on dit qui s’est pass´e au Port Royal, au sujet de la Sainte Espine, par un docteur de l’Eglise (1656), 9. Salmon, 316–17. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Angelique Arnauld, March 16, 1661. In ´ ´ Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:518.

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families within three days.18 The nuns responded by quickly advancing into the novitiate seven postulants and sending home the pensioners. The following week, on May 4, 1661, the lieutenant civil returned to PortRoyal to inform the abbess that the king was upset that the nuns had advanced the seven girls into the novitiate in the past week, as he saw this as an attempt to circumvent his orders.19 The lieutenant presented them with a lettre de cachet ordering the removal of all postulants and the new novices as well.20 Because these orders had been made by lettres de cachet, there were no formal procedures in the judicial system that the nuns could use to appeal them. Therefore Agn`es Arnauld protested the orders in a letter addressed directly to the king.21 She stressed that she had to write as a matter of conscience because his order to remove the postulants and novices from Port-Royal was a death blow to the convent: “It is through these persons that a convent subsists and maintains itself.”22 She argued that the king must have confused pensioners with postulants because he would not willingly have ordered the suppression of a convent, knowing full well that only the Church could make such a decision and only after “a solemn and canonical judgment.”23 She stated that the nuns could not execute the king’s orders in good conscience because to dismiss the postulants and novices would violate their monastic rule and the laws of the Church. She begged the king to execute his orders by his own powers if he was not persuaded by her arguments and thus sparing the “tenderness of [the nuns’] consciences” from committing what they believed was a sin.24 18

19

20 21

22 23 24

Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663. In Divers actes, lettres et relations des religieuses de Port-Royal du Saint Sacrement, touchant la pers´ecution et les violences qui leur ont e´ t´e faites au sujet de la signature du Formulaire (1724), 3. The king was also upset that there were still several pensioners living in the house. The nuns claimed that they could not evict all of the girls in only three days because their families lived at a distance in the provinces and needed extra time to reach Paris. Ibid. Ibid. Agn`es Arnauld to Louis XIV, May 6, 1661. In Agn`es Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Agn`es Arnauld, abbess de Port-Royal (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1858), 1:493-6. As in the earlier case of Angelique Arnauld’s letter to the archbishop of Paris in 1651, Agn`es’s letter was ´ most likely the product of a collaborative writing project between the nuns and their male supporters. Ibid., 1:495. Ibid. Ibid., 1:494.

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At the same time as Agn`es protested against Louis XIV’s order, she also expressed her understanding of and respect for the new ideal seventeenthcentury monarch as a Christian self who mediated between his subjects and God. She acknowledged this new relationship between subject and sovereign with statements that likened her relationship with Louis XIV to the one she shared with God. For instance, at the start of her letter, she wrote that she only “dares” to bring her suffering before her king because knowing that “God himself does not refrain from listening to the voice and the sighs of his servants,” she knows that “[His Majesty] will also have the bounty” to listen to her.25 At its conclusion, she wrote that she hopes “[Your Majesty] will be touched by our tears and prayers, just as we hope that God will be touched by those that we offer unto Him.”26 And in the middle of her letter, she stressed the significance of this new relationship between sovereign and subject to Port-Royal’s particular predicament. While explaining that sending away the postulants and postulants would entail a sin, she wrote, If this order, Sire, did not come to us from a most Christian king, we would only have patiently to endure our novices being ripped from our arms, our novices whom we ourselves could not send away without making ourselves guilty in God’s eyes, and we could put the judgment of our case in His hands. But, living under the reign of such a pious prince, and of whose sole intentions to maintain the laws and the discipline of the Church we are most assured, we believe ourselves excusable, Sire, if it pains us to resolve to remove from this house so many nuns that God had brought together there.27

Agn`es credited Louis XIV’s piety for her current pain and dilemma. She argued that the nuns would have easily martyred themselves through silent suffering had their king been a tyrant. Yet, knowing that he was a good Christian, she found herself in an impossible position from which all she could do was beg her king to spare her from sin. Implicit in this passage was the argument that, if pious subjects such as the PortRoyal nuns disagreed with the king, it was not out of rebellion but out of their own heightened consciences and desire to avoid sin, which the king himself had inspired. She thus embraced the emerging notion that subjects should identify with their monarch’s Christian self, but in a way that presented the nuns’ pain and suffering as reflections of this self gone awry. 25 26 27

Ibid., 1:493. Ibid., 1:496. Ibid.

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Another way the nuns resisted the king’s persecution was by keeping track of it in a journal. This journal, which they began when the king removed the pensioners and postulants in May 1661, contained all of the letters, relations (reports), and other documents generated by the nuns and some of their supporters during their struggle against the king over the following years. The convent journal helped the nuns resist Louis XIV in two important ways. First, it provided a record of their experiences that would justify them to posterity. Ever since Saint-Cyran had advised Angelique to let Port-Royal be destroyed rather than allow the women ´ to lose their discipline, the nuns’ willingness to martyr themselves for Jansen’s cause had become an important part of Port-Royal’s institutional identity. The nuns knew that, if Port-Royal were ever to be destroyed, their critics would attribute its demise to the nuns’ bad faith. It was essential therefore that they create a record so their martyrdom might not be in vain. Their opponents might gloat over Port-Royal’s demise, but for the faithful, the sacrifice would provide an edifying example of religious piety.28 The nuns’ concern for posterity dated back to the time of the Fronde when Angelique de Saint-Jean and her cousin Antoine Le Maistre began ´ collecting reports by the nuns describing Angelique’s reform of Port´ Royal. Angelique de Saint-Jean described how she was still compiling ´ these reports when Louis XIV began his persecution in 1661.29 She wrote that “the afflictions and persecutions of this house” forced her to put the project aside for several years, but she finally completed the project shortly after she resumed working on it in 1671.30 Thus, when the nuns began keeping a journal in 1661, they were already in the habit of recording their history. A second way that the journal helped the nuns resist was by providing their supporters outside of the convent with descriptions of what was happening to them. In the 1660s, these supporters published treatises and memoirs defending the nuns based on information from the journal

28

29

30

Angelique de Saint-Jean indicated her desire that Port-Royal’s history might one day ´ be used to provide others with edifying examples in a letter to Mme de Fontpertuis in 1683. F. Ellen Weaver, Madame de Fontpertuis: une d´evote jans´eniste, amie et g´erante d’Antoine Arnauld et de Port-Royal (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), 125. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, preface, in M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire ´ de Port-Royal et a` la vie de la R´ev´erende M`ere Marie Ang´elique de Sainte Magdeleine Arnauld, r´eformatrice de ce monast`ere edited by Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld ´ d’Andilly (Utrecht, 1742). Ibid.

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reports.31 A notable feature of these reports was their dramatic narratives detailing the emotional suffering of the nuns caused by Louis XIV’s persecution. In the passage where the young girls first learned of the king’s orders to remove them from the convent, for instance, the author – writing as a third-person narrator – described how these girls “uttered such loud cries that the mistress felt wracked with pain.”32 The girls desperately pleaded with their mistress to help them stay in the convent: “Some said to her, Sister, you know that I will become lost if I return to the world; others asked to put on the habit of lay sisters, so that it might prevent their leaving.”33 According to the author of this narrative, the mistress was so distraught by the girls’ cries that she had to leave the room. These narratives, which describe an emotional drama taking place within the secret confines of the cloister, suggest that the nuns imagined themselves as visible to a human observer in addition to God. This recognition of a new observer complemented Agn`es’s letter to Louis XIV claiming that she could no longer hide the nuns’ suffering from her king any more than she could from God. The Formulary Debates At the same time that Louis XIV issued orders to begin dismantling PortRoyal, the vicars general of the Cardinal de Retz were contemplating how to satisfy the king’s order to gather signatures to the formulary. The formulary presented them with a dilemma because they knew it fit into a plan to wrest from the Cardinal de Retz – who was still living in exile at this time – his position as archbishop of Paris. A letter by Thomas Petit, a doctor of the Sorbonne, to Claude Taignier, a fellow doctor who had fled Paris to avoid being arrested for Jansenism, reveals the political quandary that the formulary created for the vicars general.34 On June 24, 1661, Petit wrote to Taignier, who was serving as liaison between the Sorbonne and the Cardinal de Retz, a report describing the reasons being forwarded by their enemies to the vicars general to 31

32

33 34

By 1664, the nuns began publishing actes, or written protests against the king’s persecution of them. These actes also drew on the narratives they had composed in their relations. Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663, 3. The author of this report was probably Angelique de Saint-Jean, who was serving as mistress of novices at this time. ´ Ibid. Hermant, 4:695.

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pressure them to circulate the formulary. The main reason was that the king was the real power behind the order to circulate the formulary and that he wanted to be “the king absolutely.”35 Retz could not possibly satisfy the king’s order because the concentration of Jansenists in Paris guaranteed that the formulary would meet with resistance there.36 In turn this resistance would give Louis XIV the proof he needed that Retz was harboring Jansenists in his diocese. In other words, the formulary was a trap set for Retz by the king. This was the reason given for why the vicars general should cooperate fully with the king’s orders to circulate the formulary. By doing so, Retz would at least prevent the king from putting the lieutenant civil in charge of executing his orders.37 Others advised the vicars general to circulate the formulary but with a directive that allowed people to sign it with mental reservations. The vicars general decided on the latter course and issued a mandement containing the following statement: We order and command, verily concerning the facts decided by the said constitutions, and contained in the aforesaid formulary, that everyone remain in the full and sincere respect due to the aforesaid constitutions by neither preaching, writing, or arguing against them, and that the signature that each one will affix to the aforesaid formulary may be a witness, promise, and public and inviolate assurance of this respect . . . as for their belief in the [popes’] decision on faith, after which this signature, the good faith of each one being recognized, we make the express prohibition and defense against all members of the diocese of [the archbishop of Paris] to slander one another with the name of Jansenist.38

A close reading of this statement reveals Antoine Arnauld’s right/fact distinction. In fact, Blaise Pascal, who was working closely with Antoine Arnauld at this time, is credited for drafting this statement.39 In the first half of this passage, the vicars general stressed that they asked for signatures as a sign of respect only to the matter of fact in the papal bulls. In the second half, they stated that signatures in respect of fact would be recognized as signs of good faith. When the vicars general published this mandement on June 19, 1661, it came under fire from Jansen’s critics and some of his defenders alike.40 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid., 4:696. Ibid., 4:695. Ibid., 4:696. ´ Ordonnance de Messieurs les Vicaires G´en´eraux de Monseigneur l’Eminentissime, et R´ev´erendissime Cardinal de Retz, Archevˆeque de Paris (June 8, 1661), BPR L.P. 384. Blaise Pascal, Œuvres Compl`etes, ed. Jean Mesnard, 4:1064–8. Hermant, 5:46–7.

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From the perspective of the king, his conseil de conscience, and the bishops of the General Assembly of the Clergy, the mandement was an affront to their authority. They immediately recognized in it the hand of Arnauld and his colleagues and denounced it as the latest example of the Jansenist plot to undermine the Church through subterfuge and temerity.41 Among Jansen’s supporters, there were those who similarly believed the mandement was an attempt at subterfuge because it did not go far enough to defend Jansen’s innocence. Guillaume Le Roy, the abbe´ of Hautefontaine, was among those who argued this point.42 He believed that people should sign the formulary with mental reservations to avoid disobeying the king. Yet because Jansen’s text accurately reflected Augustine’s doctrine, the directives from the vicars general should make their mental reservation on the matter of Jansen’s guilt more explicit. Letters exchanged between Le Roy and Antoine Arnauld reveal how this debate among Jansen’s supporters came down to a question of texts and how people read them. According to Le Roy, any person who signed the formulary had to focus on its content: “It is the formulary itself and not our interpretation of it, that they ask us to sign. There is no doubt that the enemies of the truth will use this signature to their advantage.”43 In Le Roy’s opinion, signing with the right/fact distinction would lead them into a trap. The “enemies of the truth” would overlook the distinction as spelled out in the mandement and merely point to the signature to show that the signers had professed total adherence to a papal bull attributing the five propositions to Jansen. To avoid this trap, Le Roy suggested that people preface their signatures with an additional clause that left no room for ambiguity: “My thought is thus that one can only sign by writing before one’s signature something that demonstrates its ambiguity, and that one does not want in any way to confuse facts with what is right, and that one condemns only evil doctrine.”44 He added that he would prefer to refuse altogether to sign it and instead submit a separate document spelling out his position: “I would like even more to provide a separate document where I would make this 41

42 43 44

Consid´erations sur l’ordonnance de messieurs les vicaires g´en´eraux de Paris pour les souscriptions. La copie du procez verbal de l’assembl´ee de nosseigneurs l’archevesques et evesques, tenu¨e a` Fontainbleau les 26 juin et 2 juillet 1661 sur le sujet du mandement desdits sieurs grands vicaires, pour lesdites souscriptions (1661), BPR L.P. 384. Gerard Namer, Abb´e Le Roy et ses amis: Essai sur le jans´enisme extr´emiste intramondain ´ (Paris: SEVPEN, 1964), 18–22. Hermant, 5:48. Ibid.

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declaration, in order that it not be said that I had signed the formulary.”45 However, he was not willing to go this far because an outright refusal to sign the formulary would entail open rebellion against the orders of the king, the General Assembly of the Clergy, and Cardinal de Retz’s vicars general. Arnauld responded to Le Roy by stating that the mandement did hold weight over the formulary and that nobody could misinterpret the meaning of the signatures because “it is not just the formulary nor the interpretation alone that we sign, but an interpreted formulary, that is to say that we only sign the formulary according to the interpretation given to it by the vicars general.”46 As for responding to the formulary with a separate explanation, Arnauld wrote that this would be redundant, because the purpose of the mandement was to serve as this separate explanation. Arnauld assured Le Roy that the vicars generals’ intent was to defend the truth: “What they did is in no way a trick to have the formulary signed; on the contrary, their plan has been to ruin it in such a way that it might have no hold over them. And indeed, if the court does not destroy what they have done, it can be said that they have overturned in a day all that iniquity and malice have worked for seven years to establish.”47 Arnauld agreed with Le Roy that the mandement was not the best solution and that “if I had been in their position, I would have tried to do the same thing but through a different route, which would have been to oppose openly the Assembly [of the Clergy]’s enterprise.”48 However, he added, “God has not given them enough benevolence of spirit for this.”49 He explained that the vicars general were trying to oppose the assembly another way, certainly not the best way in God’s eyes but one “that can assuredly be followed in good conscience by inferiors, especially if they have not had any thought of writing in Jansen’s defense.”50 After arguing for the vicars generals’ sincere opposition to the formulary, Arnauld returned to the question of the signatures. He argued that because this mandement had the potential to destroy the Jesuits’ plot in one swoop, one must sign “simply, without restriction or explication.”51 A straightforward signature was imperative because any further 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid. Ibid., 5:49. Ibid. Ibid., 5:50. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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explanation in a separate document would only undermine the mandement’s efficacy: “For if there are some who sign only with restrictions, they demonstrate in this way that they do not judge the mandement as being clear enough.”52 He added that any restriction at this point might cause those who signed outright to have their signatures misinterpreted as a condemnation of Jansen: “It will amount to prejudice against those who will have simply signed outright, and will provide an opportunity to put such men in the ranks of those who condemn Jansen, which would be most harmful to that prelate’s reputation.”53 He also added that the court would be looking for pretexts to undermine the mandement and that any individual commentaries on it would open the door for them: Moreover the court will apparently have a great deal of difficulty in attacking the vicars general’s mandement. But if there are persons or religious communities that do not sign outright, they will leave themselves open to attacks which will condemn them as wishing to elude the good intentions of the Assembly and the King – thus ruining everything the vicars general have done.54

Arnauld concluded his letter by saying that the mandement had the potential to bring peace to the Church. He advised Le Roy to “humble himself a little” in the name of Church unity: “If we have some scruples about being too complaisant, we should also have some scruples about being too rigid, and having rejected a reasonable accommodation that might be able to restore peace to the Church.”55 Arnauld positioned himself as a voice for moderation by saying that, in addition to worrying about being too complaisant, they must also worry about being too rigid. In his view, the mandement was a “reasonable accommodation.” The debate between Arnauld and Le Roy reveals how once Louis XIV backed the formulary as a matter of his conscience, he created a crisis of conscience among Jansen’s defenders. As committed royalists, these defenders could no longer openly dispute the matter of Jansen’s propositions because Louis XIV had decided that question with his arrˆet de conseil. Louis’s resolution against Jansen shifted the debates from questions of doctrine to questions of authority, obedience, and individual conscience. Although both Arnauld and Le Roy agreed that they had to obey the king’s orders to sign the formulary, they split over to what extent individual conscience put limits to their obedience. Antoine belonged to 52 53 54 55

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 5:50–1. Ibid.

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the “centrist” group, which sought a compromise between speaking up for the truth and maintaining peace within the Church: By prefacing their signatures with the right/fact distinction, they stressed their mental reservations but never openly defended Jansen out of deference to Church unity. In contrast, Le Roy was among the “extreme” Jansenists, who believed it was more important to defend the truth about Jansen than to remain silent for the sake of Church unity.56 The Nuns’ Resistance When it came to signing the formulary, the Port-Royal nuns suffered the same crisis of conscience as did men such as Arnauld and Le Roy, and a schism similarly developed between centrist nuns, who wanted to sign with the right/fact distinction, and extreme nuns, who believed that they should sign with a restrictive clause that more openly defended Jansen’s innocence in the name of truth. Regardless of what position the nuns took on this matter, both groups shared an additional problem not faced by men, which was that any restrictive clause to their signatures forced them to confront for the first time a long-standing paradox between their corporate and individual identities. Jansen’s apologists had long argued that the nuns were innocent and ignorant of the Jansenist debates. They had contrasted the Jesuit penchant for attacking the nuns out of passion with a Church tradition that treated nuns according to their corporate identity and profession, which prescribed their ignorance and innocence. However, a small, yet influential group of nuns had read texts generated by the Jansenist debates, and a few of them joined Port-Royal specifically because they believed Jansen’s work accurately reflected St. Augustine.57 Louis XIV’s request for signatures to the formulary, which contained an individual oath, forced them to choose between their prescribed group ignorance and actual individual knowledge. This choice created a crisis because to defend Jansen the nuns had to decide to what extent the knowledge of individual nuns could legitimately place limits on their group identity and the tradition of feminine obedience. The first sign of tensions among the Port-Royal nuns over the formulary appeared in a letter sent to Antoine Arnauld by one of the nuns (most

56 57

Namer, 97–115. Linda Timmermans, “La “Religieuse Parfaite” et la Theologie: l’Attitude de la M`ere ´ Agn`es a` legard de la participation aux controverses,” Chroniques de Port Royal 43 ´ (1994): 97–112. Timmermans counts at least six nuns who had read the texts.

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likely Angelique de Saint-Jean) shortly after the nuns received a copy of ´ the formulary along with the controversial mandement. In his exchange with Le Roy, Arnauld justified the mandement by saying that the vicars general were resisting the formulary in a way that “inferiors” could follow “in good conscience,” especially if these were people who “have not had any thought of writing in Jansen’s defense.” However, according to the nun’s letter, as examples of such “inferior” people who could not possibly write in Jansen’s defense, the nuns were having a very difficult time signing the mandement. She explained that the problem lay in the discrepancy between the wording of the mandement, which the nuns found to be vague and obscure, compared to that of the formulary, which they found to be very straightforward: “The problem here is that most of us have had difficulty unraveling the obscurities of the mandement, to find within it the good sense that saves the truth and our consciences. [But then, the few among us who can understand the mandement] are horribly struck by the formulary’s clarity [in contrast to the obscurities of the mandement].”58 For the majority of the nuns, the confusing language of the mandement made it impossible to understand its meaning. For those few nuns who did understand it, the document was unsettling because they could not help but contrast its convoluted language against the very straightforward language of the formulary. For the latter group, the mandement made it difficult to sign the formulary in good conscience because they felt burdened by their doubts that this crafty and evasive document did not adequately defend their consciences. The author went on to explain that, more generally, the mandement and the formulary put the knowledgeable nuns in an awkward position because the confusing language made it necessary for them to explain the mandement to those who were truly ignorant. Educating some of these nuns would not only be a hopeless cause because of their lack of intelligence but it would also force the convent to contradict what it had maintained all along, which is that the nuns never talked about the Jansenist debates: “Beyond the fact that some nuns might have difficulty in understanding it clearly, this might seem entirely contradictory to the protest we have already given, that nobody has ever spoken to us of all these things and that we are in no way instructed in it.”59 The mandement thus caused 58 59

Antoine Arnauld, Apologie pour les Religieuses de Port-Royal. In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 23:316. Ibid., 23:317. Antoine Arnauld had argued that the nuns knew nothing about the doctrinal matter in his Second lettre a` un duc et pair. Angelique Arnauld repeated this claim ´ in a letter to Anne of Austria. Angelique Arnauld to Anne of Austria, May 25, 1661. In ´ Arnauld, Lettres de la M`ere Ang´elique Arnauld, 3:536–45.

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more harm than good for the nuns, because it forced them to confront a contradiction between their public claims to ignorance of the Jansenist debates and some nuns’ actual knowledge. The letter writer concluded that there was no way for the nuns to sign the mandement and the formulary outright and preserve their consciences at the same time. Given this impasse, she asked Arnauld to draw up a new heading for the nuns’ signatures that would at least preserve their consciences: “And since we are living in a time when truth cannot be saved, at least save our consciences.”60 Antoine responded by developing a special restrictive clause for the nuns’ signatures. This clause stressed their ignorance of the theological issues at hand and their obedience to the Church: “The nuns espouse absolutely and without reserve the faith of the Catholic Church, they condemn all that it condemns and their signature is proof of this disposition.”61 In composing this clause, Antoine found himself pushed by the special dilemma faced by the nuns to proceed in a way against his own judgment. In his letter to Le Roy, he had argued that any special qualification by one signer to the mandement threatened to cast into doubt the integrity of the signatures of others. Yet the nuns’ dilemma forced him to make this exception that he probably had not foreseen and certainly had not desired. On June 22, 1661, the nuns at Port-Royal-de-Paris, including Agn`es Arnauld and Angelique de Saint-Jean, signed the formulary using this ´ clause without incident. Angelique Arnauld probably would have also ´ signed the formulary with this clause had she not been able to exempt herself because of her illness and imminent death.62 However, the situation was different when the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs received the formulary the next day. Both the prioress, Marie de Sainte-Madeleine du Fargis d’Angennes, and the subprioress, Jacqueline Sainte Euphemie ´ Pascal, protested the document with vehemence. These women argued that the mandement, with its subtle language, presented too much of a compromise with the formulary. They disagreed with the notion that they were “living in a time when truth cannot be saved” and argued instead that they should use whatever reason and knowledge they had to defend Jansen’s innocence.63 60 61 62 63

Arnauld, Apologie pour les Religieuses de Port-Royal (1664). In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 23:317. Ibid., 23:317–18. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 145. Jean Orcibal claims that Jacqueline was influenced by Le Roy’s Lettre sur la constance et le courage qu’on doit avoir pour la v´erit´e, which he published at this time. Orcibal, Port-Royal entre le miracle et l’ob´eissance, 33.

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Jacqueline Pascal expressed this opinion in a letter she sent to Angelique de Saint-Jean on June 23, 1661. She also intended the letter for ´ Antoine Arnauld and asked Angelique de Saint-Jean to show it to him on ´ her behalf. She began it by attacking the right/fact distinction embedded within the mandement. She explained that she understood that, according to the mandement, they were condemning the false doctrine with their signatures but were remaining silent on the question of whether this false doctrine appeared in Jansen’s Augustinus. She wished that the mandement were “less favorable” to Port-Royal so that they could reject it in its entirety. In her view, the right/fact distinction emerged from a false prudence among those who believed that the nuns should protect their physical selves as well as their consciences.64 She argued that this was false prudence because “only the truth can bring true freedom”65 and that defending the truth without fear of material consequences was the only thing that would make them “true children of God.”66 Her main complaint about the mandement was its compromising nature. She claimed, “I can no longer hide the grief that pierces me to the bottom of my heart when I see the only people to whom God entrusted the truth being so unfaithful to Him.”67 She added that she admired the mandement for its “subtle reasoning” (subtilit´e de l’esprit) but that such cleverness was not a virtue in itself. With a reference to the parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16, she explained that, if she supported such cleverness, “I would be giving great praise to a heretic in the same manner that the lord of the household praised his manager, if [the heretic] also cleverly escaped his condemnation.”68 She added that never before in the history of the Church had the faithful used “disguise and pretense” to defend the truth,69 and she would rather “pray God to allow us to die today” than “allow such an abomination to occur inside His Church.”70 Jacqueline explained that the nuns must not sign the formulary because Jansen’s text reflected the true doctrine of Augustine: “You know that this is not only about the condemnation of a holy bishop, but that his 64

65 66 67 68 69 70

Jacqueline Pascal to Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, June 23, 1661. In Blaise ´ Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, ed. Jean Mesnard (Paris: Desclee ´ de Brouwer, 1992), 4:1082. The accusation of “false prudence” may have been leveled against her brother Blaise, whom she knew was the author of the mandement. Ibid., 4:1092, n. 3. Ibid., 4:1082. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 4:1083. Ibid. Ibid., 4:1084.

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condemnation includes in precise terms that of the grace of Jesus Christ.”71 They should not apply “fine distinctions” to counter the formulary but rather declare more openly their opposition to this request for signatures. She offered her own model for a restrictive clause: Given our ignorance, the most that one can hope for from the signature that is asked of us is a witness to the sincerity of our faith and to our perfect submission to the Church, to the Pope who is its leader and to the archbishop of Paris, our superior; although we do not believe that anyone has the right to demand such proof of faith from those who have done nothing to place it in doubt.72

With this model, Jacqueline followed Antoine’s clause by insisting on the nuns’ ignorance and by saying that they can give witness only to their faith. However, she went further, saying that the nuns do not believe “that anybody has the right” to demand this proof. Their state of ignorance made them innocent in her view. In turn this innocence rendered the request for signatures an illegitimate use of authority because it forced the nuns to act on a situation that was unnecessary and irrelevant to their profession. Thus, in contrast to Antoine, who used the nuns’ ignorance as a reason for them to sign only on a matter of faith (and thus imply silence on the matter of fact), Jacqueline used this ignorance to question the legitimacy of the formulary altogether. Jacqueline explained that she opposed Antoine’s use of the argument of female ignorance in his clause because there was nothing exceptional about the claim to ignorance in this case: “Who is to stop all ecclesiastics who are aware of the truth when they are asked to sign the formulary from responding: I know I owe respect to My Lords the bishops; but my conscience will not allow me to sign that a certain thing is in a book where I have never seen it.”73 She claimed that any person, male or female, could make this argument. If theologians used ignorance as a reason for not signing, it would be obvious to everybody that they were just trying to evade the formulary. The nuns’ claim to ignorance in Antoine’s clause was just as evasive. She believed that, if anything, the nuns should set an example by embracing their special obligation to sacrifice themselves for their bridegroom, Jesus Christ: I know very well that people say that nuns [filles] are not meant to defend the truth, although, one could say that due to an unfortunate course of events and 71 72 73

Ibid. Ibid., 4:1088. Ibid., 4:1082.

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the moral upheaval in which we now find ourselves, that for as long as bishops act with the courage of nuns then nuns must act with the courage of bishops. If we are not meant to defend the truth, then we are meant to die for the truth.74

Jacqueline argued that, even if nuns could not defend the truth as theologians, they could defend the truth as martyrs. As for the “unfortunate course of events,” she was probably referring to the bishops in the General Assembly of the Clergy who had originally opposed the formulary and then ultimately caved to royal pressure.75 She may also have been referring to Cardinal de Retz’s vicars general who, as Antoine put it, had not enough “benevolence of spirit” to oppose the formulary. In both of these cases, the bishops and their representatives failed to act like “true bishops” who, according to tradition, were often regarded as saintly men because they dared to stand up to secular leaders to defend the Church.76 Because these men were showing the “courage of nuns,” Jacqueline argued that the time had come for nuns to shake the ecclesiastical hierarchy from its foundations. She justified this bottom-up initiative with a passage from St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153): Saint Bernard teaches us through his wonderful manner of speaking that the most insignificant person within the Church not only can, but must cry out with all of her strength when she sees the bishops and pastors of the Church in a state such as we now find them, when he said: “Who can find fault that I cry out, I who am a little lamb, to try to wake up my pastor when I believe that he is asleep and is about to be devoured by a cruel beast?”77

Thus Pascal justified the nuns’ actions by evoking the efforts of their order’s founder, St. Bernard, to inspire bishops to defend the Church from royal encroachments. She then explained her disdain for the right/fact distinction with an analogy based on a hypothetical situation involving Augustine. She asked her reader to consider what Augustine would do if he had been ordered to sign a bull that confirmed the doctrine of the Holy 74

75

76 77

Ibid., 4:1086. I have translated the word “filles” as nuns, but the word also means “girls” or “daughters.” The relationship between bishops and nuns was often described as one between fathers and daughters. The prime example among those bishops who changed their position on the formulary was Gondrin, the bishop of Sens, who had long fought against the campaign to attribute the five propositions to Jansen. In the spring of 1661, he began secret negotiations with the Crown and the papal nuncio to put himself back into their good graces. On July 9, 1661, he revised his pastoral letter demanding signatures to the formulary to attribute the five propositions to Jansen. Hermant, 5:31–9, 138–40. Forrestal, 153. Rene´ Taveneaux, “L’evˆeque selon Port-Royal,” Chroniques de PortRoyal 32 (1983): 34. Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, 4:1085.

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Trinity. She asserted that they both know that he would probably sign without hesitation. She then suggested that they consider what would happen if an infidel prince came to the throne in Augustine’s country and ordered him to sign a bull that denied the unity of God and instead ruled for a plurality of gods. She asked, “Would Augustine sign this formulary in the interest of peace?” She answered, “I do not think so.” She then suggested that one may claim that the nuns’ authority does not equal that of Augustine. To this objection she responded that, when one is talking about members of the Church, “the little weight of their authority makes them no less guilty if they use it against the truth.”78 Even though the heading Jacqueline proposed for the nuns’ signatures relied on the tradition of treating women as ignorant and innocent in the Church, she defended it with arguments that had the force of asserting individual women’s right to reason and theological knowledge. Her defense of reason was inherent in her attack on the right/fact distinction, in which she argued that ignorance was no excuse for using the distinction because doing so would entail an act of evasion for women as much as for men. Her defense of women’s theological knowledge can be gleaned from the passage describing a hypothetical situation in which Augustine had to defend his ideas on the Trinity; Jacqueline probably deliberately chose this scenario as a way to cite his authority on this matter. Augustine used the mystery of the Trinity to argue for the spiritual equality of the sexes in book twelve of his work On the Holy Trinity. In addition to asserting gender equality in spiritual matters, Augustine also argued for people’s obligation to use their knowledge to avoid sin. Although Jacqueline did not explicitly argue for women’s theological knowledge, her allusion to Augustine’s thoughts on the Trinity had the force of defending this knowledge because she drew attention to those writings where he defended female knowledge and spiritual equality.79 Jacqueline used the problem of female knowledge to push Arnauld and the nuns at Port-Royal-de-Paris toward the extreme position advocated by Le Roy. For reasons that remain obscure, Jacqueline Pascal and the other nuns who wanted to refuse to sign did sign the mandement shortly after having criticized it so vehemently. According to her niece Marguerite 78 79

Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, 4:1087. When Antoine Arnauld reprinted Jacqueline’s letter in the Apologie pour les religieuses in 1664, he edited out the sections where she referred to Bernard and Augustine. Jacqueline and Angelique de Saint-Jean both studied the works of Augustine, Bernard, and Ambrose. ´ Brigitte Sibertin-Blanc, “Biographie et personnalite´ de la seconde Angelique,” Chroniques ´ de Port-Royal 34 (1985): 78.

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Perier, who later wrote a biography of Jacqueline’s life, Jacqueline deeply ´ regretted her signature and four months later, in October 1661, died from the grief it caused her. In 1664, Arnauld reprinted excerpts of Jacqueline’s letter in his Apologie pour les Religieuses de Port-Royal. He wrote that he had been very touched by her “ardent love for sincerity” and had planned to write her “with as much humility and clarity as he could to free her from her doubts.” He claimed that he was not the cause of Jacqueline’s change of heart because she had decided to sign before he had a chance to respond to her letter. He, too, portrayed Pascal as a martyr who died out of grief from signing the formulary. The Second Mandement It is possible that the shroud of mystery surrounding Jacqueline’s decision to sign with her fellow nuns covers a pragmatic decision on her part not to separate from her sisters over what was already a moot point. As she wrote her letter, a group of bishops was already gathering at the royal palace of Fontainebleau to denounce the mandement published by the vicars general of the Cardinal de Retz. With Pierre de Marca presiding, these bishops denounced the mandement on June 26 on the grounds that it did not follow the “common mandement” that the General Assembly of the Clergy had drawn up to “maintain uniformity across the dioceses.”80 On July 9, 1661, the Council of State confirmed the bishop’s decision by ordering the mandement “revoked, and null and void.”81 On October 31, 1661, the vicars general drew up a second mandement that called for a signature to the formulary “pure and simple” with no distinction between right and fact.82 The attack against the vicars general’s first mandement fit into the continuing saga between the Crown and the Cardinal de Retz, as the Council of State’s order to revoke the mandement came at the same time Louis XIV was pressuring Rome to instigate a trial against Retz. Louis XIV had learned from his ambassador that the first mandement had greatly irritated the pope. While the pope continued to ignore the king’s requests to bring Retz to trial, Louis XIV tried to use this conflict to his advantage by blaming Retz for the vicars

80

81 82

Consid´erations sur l’ordonnance de messieurs les vicaires g´en´eraux de Paris pour les souscriptions. La copie du procez verbal de l’assembl´ee de nosseigneurs l’archevesques et evesques, tenu¨e a` Fontainbleau les 26 juin et 2 juillet 1661 (1661). Arrest de Conseil d’Etat (July 9, 1661). Hermant 5:322–8.

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general’s disobedience.83 However, the king failed to persuade the pope of Retz’s Jansenism because Retz had been busy over the past several weeks convincing the pope that he was no Jansenist. He even went so far as to write a letter to the pope in which he signed a copy of the formulary that he translated into Latin.84 Retz’s unambiguous attempts to clear himself of suspicions of Jansenism meant that some of his supporters, who had previously allied themselves with Jansen’s defenders to resist the formulary, now switched sides and pressured Retz’s vicars general to retract the first mandement. Among this group was Felix and ´ Vialart de Herse, the bishop of Chalons ˆ the uncle of Madeleine de Ligny, a nun at Port-Royal. Vialart personally called on M. de Contes – the more resistant of the two vicars general – on two occasions to urge him to retract the first mandement.85 Arguing that M. de Contes’ “too great rigidity” would bring about “the entire ruin of their archbishop,” Vialart finally convinced him to retract the first mandement.86 Shortly after the vicars generals formally retracted the first mandement and issued a new one, Angelique de Saint-Jean wrote to Antoine Arnauld ´ on November 5, 1661, to tell him that Vialart and other “weak friends” were now pressuring the nuns to retract their signatures to the first mandement and sign the new one: “For weak friends, and even D [Vialart, the bishop of Chalons] say to [the nuns] what an evil it will be to risk comˆ plete destruction of an entire community which has set so many examples, has done so much to edify the Church, and which has helped to save so many souls, by refusing that which the vicars general will ask of them.”87 It appears that, although Vialart was able to convince de Contes that “too much rigidity” could do more harm than good to the Church, this argument did not work with the nuns. Angelique de Saint-Jean wrote ´ that she would rather see Port-Royal destroyed in one fell swoop than succumb to gradual decay: For myself, if God allows Port-Royal to meet its end in this shipwreck, it seems to me that there will be a great consolation for those who took part in establishing this convent, to see that God consecrated their work in such a way, by not allowing 83 84 85 86 87

Salmon, 321. Hermant, 5:148. Salmon, 321. Hermant, 5:324. Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, November 5, 1661, BPR ´ P.R. Lettres, 358.

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the passage of time to ruin little by little the fruit of their labors, as we see in all the most holy reforms.88

In embracing the possibility of Port-Royal’s destruction, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean placed herself in the tradition of her aunt Angelique Arnauld ´ and of Saint-Cyran, who had maintained since the beginning of the Jansenist debates that they would prefer to see Port-Royal destroyed rather than allow corruption to ruin its discipline. By stressing her willingness to sacrifice Port-Royal, Angelique de Saint-Jean made it clear to ´ her uncle that the nuns would refuse to sign the new mandement without restriction. The letters exchanged between Angelique de Saint-Jean and Antoine ´ Arnauld in the next week reveal both her determination to resist the new mandement and his ambivalence toward her position. On November 9, 1661, she wrote Antoine asking him to design a new preface for the nuns’ signatures to the second mandement, one that resembled the preface to the first one by emphasizing their submission to matters of faith alone. She informed him that Vialart and Singlin (their confessor, who was then in hiding) were pressuring the nuns to sign the second mandement “purely and simply.”89 These men were citing the nuns’ own claims to ignorance while signing the first mandement as the reason they should sign the new one without elaboration. She rejected their advice on the grounds that everybody would notice the contradiction between the two signatures: But who would not be astonished at the change? When the mandement was as good as it could be for us, we wanted to put [a preface stressing our ignorance and simplicity] at the top of our signature for greater assurance [that we were explaining ourselves well]; and now the mandement being the worst it can be, we weaken and encumber [everything this first preface did to guarantee our sincere signatures] . . . [by now saying] that in my ignorance and simplicity I would believe myself to be acting more sincerely if I signed without explanation.90

Angelique de Saint-Jean feared that this contradiction would lead people ´ to interpret the nuns’ original protestation of ignorance and simplicity as “underhandedness and disguise.”91 Angelique de Saint-Jean then pointed to the risk of division among ´ the nuns as another reason to reject Vialart and Singlin’s advice: “I beg 88 89 90 91

Ibid. Hermant, 5:371. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, November 9, 1661, BPR ´ P.R. Lettres, 358. Ibid.

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and conjure you . . . to take up the defense of our faith, so that this weak advice does not cause those nuns who are less educated to weaken, and those nuns who are utterly convinced of the truth to separate from the rest to prevent themselves from following in their weakness.”92 She explained that using the nuns’ ignorance as the pretext for signing the formulary “purely and simply” was sure to divide the nuns because if some signed without restriction, this would push those who were “utterly convinced of the truth” (that Jansen’s text accurately reflected Augustine’s doctrine) to completely reject the formulary on their own. She then urged Antoine to consider how the nuns could benefit Jansen’s defense by rejecting the second mandement as a united front: “Take a chance on us; perhaps we will be the retainers of the princes of the army of Ahab, who had to be the first to enter combat and win the battle. After all, we do not risk much, and if we should perish, the Church will not in any way lose those men who could defend her.”93 By comparing the nuns to the retainers of Ahab (I Kings 20:12–21), Angelique de Saint-Jean sug´ gested that the nuns could serve as decoys who sacrifice themselves so that the real army (i.e., Antoine) could attack a now vulnerable enemy. The parallel she made with the army of Ahab reinforced Jacqueline Pascal’s point that, although it might not be the job of nuns to defend the truth, they could certainly die for the truth. By emphasizing that the Church would not lose much from the nuns’ sacrifice, Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ also reinforced her position that Port-Royal would do more good for the Church destroyed than it could by lingering as a damaged institution. Antoine’s response to this letter on November 11, 1661 revealed his ambivalence about his niece’s offer to lead the charge in Jansen’s defense. He questioned the merits of Port-Royal’s sacrifice by stating that its destruction could “do more harm to the truth than any help [that the nuns’] opposition could bring.”94 He then suggested that there was no reason for the nuns to take a stand because Jansen only needed a few “sufficient witnesses” to speak up in his defense and there were already “several persons in this day and age, who have in no way consented to the condemnation of Jansen.”95 He added that the impact of this opposition would only decrease if too many of Jansen’s supporters came under censure: “This advantage would lessen, if it happened that all those who 92 93 94 95

Ibid. Ibid. Antoine Arnauld to Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, November 11, 1661. In ´ Arnauld, Œuvres de messire Antoine Arnauld, 1:284. Ibid.

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were opposed to this condemnation, ended up oppressed and condemned by the Church.”96 He shared her concern for the potential division among the nuns and advised her to take “great care” while informing the other nuns “of the reasons you have for doing things, in order to remove all their scruples.”97 He stressed that on this matter she needed to appeal to the nuns’ reason and not their obligation to obedience: “For justice desires it, since you believe that you must have been guided by reason in these matters, and not only by authority, that you should be guided in the same way in your behavior towards your sisters.”98 Antoine knew that, ever since Jacqueline Pascal protested the first mandement, there were nuns who harbored doubts about the Arnauld women’s leadership in the house (Agn`es was still abbess at this time). He did not want Angelique de Saint´ Jean to take any false steps. Angelique de Saint-Jean responded the next day by insisting once again ´ that the nuns must sign the second mandement with a restrictive clause, one that “[marks] a tacit but most respectful restriction [on the matter of fact] in a few words.”99 She wrote that she shared Antoine’s opinion that it would be best if they could save Port-Royal and the truth at the same time: “If the truth and Port-Royal could be saved, it would doubtless be to the greatest advantage for the truth, as well as for us.”100 She added that she did not believe this happy outcome could be possible, however, if the nuns signed the formulary without a clearly worded restriction: But this is indeed self-delusion, to imagine that more muddled, less clear terms would save us. It would be good if our enemies desired peace, and only sought a pretext for appeasement. But what proofs do we not have of the contrary, and how much more reason is there to believe that if we sign without any explanation, they will not desist from seeking other ways to push us, since they have declared themselves as wanting to ruin us, and began to execute this project before having any pretext for doing so and without saying anything to us.101

She believed that there was no reason to assume that any compromise with the formulary would guarantee Port-Royal’s survival. She reminded Antoine that the king had already began the process of Port-Royal’s 96 97 98 99 100 101

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, November 13, 1661, ´ BPR P.R. 358. Ibid. Ibid.

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destruction by removing the postulants before the formulary had even been circulated. She argued that because their enemies would probably find a way to destroy the convent no matter what the nuns did with the formulary, it was reasonable for the nuns to at least save their consciences by signing the document with a restrictive clause. In the end, Angelique de Saint-Jean convinced Antoine with her argu´ ments, and together they settled on a preface for the nuns’ signatures to the second mandement: Considering our ignorance of those matters that are above our profession and our sex, all we can do is give witness to the purity of our faith. We declare most willingly with our signature, that being subject with the utmost respect to Our Holy Father the Pope, and believing that nothing is more precious than our faith, we embrace sincerely and with all of our heart everything that His Holiness and Pope Innocent X have decided in favor of the faith and we reject all the errors that they have found to be contrary to the faith.102

Thus the nuns tacitly refused to engage in the formulary’s condemnation of Jansen’s text by stating that the matter is “above our profession and our sex.” After suggesting that Jansen’s text was not something that the nuns were qualified to judge, the preface emphasized their submission and full obedience to Church authorities on matters of faith. Convincing Antoine to compose this preface was Angelique de Saint´ Jean’s first challenge. Her next challenge was to convince the other nuns to use it when signing the formulary with the second mandement. The convent journal records a speech delivered to the Port-Royal community by Abbess Agn`es Arnauld on November 18, 1661, in which she explained why signing the formulary with Antoine’s new preface was the reasonable choice for women of conscience.103 She began by saying, “You see, my sisters, that they want to oblige us to sign something in which we have not been instructed, and that we are not capable of understanding.”104 She added that there were two questions that the nuns needed to consider. The first issue was “to know if these five propositions that have just been read to us are good or evil; Catholic or heretical.”105 Regarding this question of orthodoxy, she told the nuns, “We are obligated to submit to ecclesiastical authority as humble daughters of the Church, and to condemn 102 103 104 105

Arnauld, Apologie pour les Religieuses. In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 23:330. Relation de ce quisest ´ passe´ a` Port-Royal de puis be commencement d’Auril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’annee suivante 1663, 25–8. Ibid., 25. Ibid.

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them as the Pope has condemned them.”106 The abbess then explained that the propositions could be interpreted in different ways: “They may have a good meaning, but because they have an evil meaning that has been unanimously rejected, this is sufficient [reason] to condemn them; and thus we owe an entire belief in the Pope’s decision on this point.”107 After affirming the Church’s right to this decision, she turned to the second issue. She explained that “the second thing is to know whether these propositions are, or are not, in Cornelius Jansen’s book, and if he said them in the evil sense in which Pope Innocent has condemned them.”108 This judgment was the heart of the problem as “many virtuous people insist that they do not appear in this book.”109 Agn`es insisted that she was not trying to force the nuns to sign one way or another: “We do not wish to constrain you in any way, nor trouble your conscience: each sister ought to follow what God gives her to know she ought in conscience to do.”110 She then outlined the nuns’ three options for signing the formulary. The first choice was to embrace the formulary and “condemn and reject Jansen’s doctrine as evil, and to believe firmly that the five propositions are to be found in his book, although we have never read it.” The second choice was to refuse any signature “as an unreasonable and extraordinary thing.” The third choice was to sign with the preface she was presenting to them. She then told the nuns that her “personal feeling” (“sentiment particulier”) was that the last choice was the best one because “one’s conscience remains secure, and this is more respectful toward [our] superiors.” The abbess stressed that these choices put the burden on each nun to decide what was best for her conscience: “You well see, my sisters, the importance of this matter: each one must act according to her conscience, because each one is engaged in it for herself, and exposes herself personally to the consequences that can result.”111 At the same time that she told the nuns that they were free to make their own decision, she warned them to keep in mind that the people who were asking them to sign the formulary were not doing so in good faith: “I cannot hide from you that this is a trap that our enemies have set in order to ruin us.”112 It was a trap because 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 26. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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either signing or not signing brought dangers. Signing it outright, without a preface, would be condemning Jansen without having any means to confirm for themselves whether he was in fact guilty. Not signing it would make them vulnerable to “various temptations, as much from our enemies, as from friends and relatives; and it must not be doubted that they will come tempt us in several ways.” Therefore, she recommended they sign with the preface because it gave them a middle road: “The safest was to take the middle path between two extremities.”113 She outlined for the nuns the various arguments that people would use to “tempt” them into signing the formulary. The first argument was as follows: “It was a horrible presumption for nuns to believe themselves more capable than those of the first rank in the Church.”114 Her response to this objection was “that not only was it not out of presumption and sufficient intelligence, but that it was rather our ignorance and our incapacity to judge that do not allow us to sign something we do not at all understand.”115 She went on to say that some people would argue that the nuns’ signatures indicated their adherence to a papal decision and that to resist “is rebellion and disobedience to not wish to submit to his orders.”116 Agn`es stated that it was even easier to respond to this argument: “For there is no one who does not see that one should not obey men at the expense of what one owes to God, who judges individual souls according to their own actions, and not those of others.” She then told the nuns that some would argue that the signature really “counts for nothing” and that it does not engage their conscience: “that we will always believe what we want, but that we sign only out of submission.” To respond to this argument, she pointed out this phrase in the formulary: “one will sign that one sincerely believes from the heart.” She said that this wording made it clear that to sign the formulary while believing something else in one’s heart would entail a lie.117 She added that those who would downplay the importance of the nuns’ signatures would also accuse the nuns for being “guilty” if they allowed a saintly house such as Port-Royal to be destroyed “for a matter of such little importance.”118 She rejected this position by saying that “whatever good

113 114 115 116 117 118

Ibid., 28. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Ibid.

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may come from something, it is never allowed to make such a thing subsist in doing evil and committing a sin.”119 Finally, Agn`es warned the nuns that some would argue that many “good people” who have shown “esteem for Jansen’s book” have nonetheless already signed the formulary. Agn`es argued that this argument was no better than the others because “a sin can never be allowed, even if all were committing it.” She then stressed again that each nun was responsible for following her individual conscience: “Everyone has his own soul to save, and the great number of those who are damned, does not make damnation any less worthy of fear and horror.”120 Agn`es sought to influence her fellow nuns by appealing to their reason. At one level, her appeal to reason reflected the strategy that Antoine Arnauld had counseled in his letter to Angelique de Saint-Jean.121 At ´ another level, this appeal reflected a general trend in the seventeenth century in which the individual conscience had become the source for truth in religious and epistemological questions. However, this trend placed the nuns in a difficult position. Up to this point, Jansen’s apologists had argued for the nuns’ ignorance and innocence as a group. Now that the nuns were being commanded to sign the formulary, each had to decide for herself whether it was her duty to obey her superiors as a nun or to obey her conscience as an individual. Agn`es admitted her personal belief that the nuns should not sign the formulary merely out of obedience to their male superiors. She spelled out the reasons they should sign with her brother’s restrictive clause, and she exposed the flaws in the arguments used by those trying to tempt the nuns into signing out of obedience. However, what she did not directly address were those arguments in favor of using a restrictive clause that openly defended Jansen by rejecting the formulary altogether. This omission was glaring because the issue of openly defending Jansen was the one that most divided the nuns. Ever since Jacqueline Pascal vehemently protested the first mandement on the grounds that it was too vague and equivocal to defend Jansen adequately, a group of nuns had grown suspicious of the Arnauld women, who had signed it without hesitation in April 1661. This doubt only increased after Jacqueline’s death because, in her absence, her brother Blaise stepped forward to carry on her legacy of critiquing Antoine 119 120 121

Ibid. Ibid. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 151–4.

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Arnauld.122 Some time in November or December 1661, he composed an Ecrit sur la signature (Writing concerning the Signature [to the Formulary]), in which he condemned the preface that Antoine composed for the nuns’ signature to the second mandement.123 This Ecrit marked a recent schism between Antoine and Blaise because, at the time of the first mandement, they had been in full agreement.124 Blaise critiqued Antoine’s restrictive clause stressing the nuns’ faith alone on the grounds that it was too vague to preserve their consciences in this context. He suggested that only those who had read texts (such as his Provincial Letters) describing the right/fact distinction would recognize the nuns’ reference to this distinction in their claim that they signed in matters of faith alone.125 Because this distinction did not appear in the papal constitutions, the mandement, or the formulary, there was nothing in these texts to ensure that people would interpret the nuns’ preface according to this distinction.126 Given that the doctrine condemned by the formulary was condemned as belonging to Jansen, those who wanted to defend Jansen’s innocence had to do so explicitly in a restrictive clause. He stressed that this clarification was necessary because the formulary, like everything else that the Jesuits had done, was an attempt to condemn Augustine through pretense and disguise.127 He concluded that the nuns must clarify their belief in Jansen’s innocence before signing: “I conclude . . . that those who sign in speaking only of faith, and not formally excluding Jansen’s doctrine, are taking a middle way, which is abominable before God, despicable to men, and entirely useless to those whose personal ruin is sought.”128 Following his sister, Blaise now argued that the nuns had to be more explicit in their defense of Jansen if they wanted their signatures to save their consciences.

122 123

124

125 126 127 128

Sainte-Beuve, 2:323. All original copies of this text had been destroyed in the seventeenth century. We know its contents only through Pierre Nicole’s refutation of the document. Jean Mesnard reconstitutes Pascal’s e´ crit from Nicole’s refutation in Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, 4: 1204–7. Pascal is credited for writing the first mandement. Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, 4:1176– 358. Martin de Barcos, Correspondance de Martin de Barcos, abb´e de Saint-Cyran, avec les abbesses de Port-Royal et les principaux personnages du groupe jans´eniste, ed. Lucien Goldmann (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956), 1–62. Pascal, Œuvres compl`etes, 4:1205. Ibid. Ibid., 4:1204. Ibid., 4:1207.

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The convent journal reveals that some of the nuns were familiar with Blaise’s arguments.129 When the abbess invited the nuns to speak with her after her speech, several of them told her that they were “resolved to not sign at all” and justified their position by saying that “seeing that everything was confusedly mixed up in the constitution put forth by His Holiness, it was difficult to distinguish well what was a question of faith, and what was not, so they preferred to expose themselves to suffer the effects of the wrath of men, instead of weakening the truth of God.”130 To these nuns, the abbess responded that the community would not sign the formulary until after mass the next day so that each woman could use the service as an opportunity to “bring God’s Holy Spirit upon her” and thereby ensure that she was acting “only at the Holy Spirit’s movement, without any individual inclination or passion.”131 The influence of members of the Pascal family at Port-Royal posed a problem for the Arnauld women. On December 1, 1661, Angelique ´ de Saint-Jean wrote to Antoine about the trouble she had getting her fellow sisters to sign the formulary with his preface: “My brother will tell you what happened here concerning the signature, and the difficulty we had in convincing many who could not understand the good sense of using words that [accorded with our previous statements] and who saw so much appearance of evil, that many quite lengthy explanations were required to persuade them that there was none.”132 She explained that the crux of the problem lay with how they were interpreting the term “ignorance” in the preface: But this ignorance that we proclaim at the top of our declaration is the word . . . which seems to me to slit our throats; because if we want to appear sincere in declaring our ignorance, nothing that we say afterwards convinces that we are not in any way making distinctions with our signatures, and our phrase all we can do, which is supposed to save us, will end up meaning nothing, except perhaps that all we can do is accept as an object of faith everything that we are told since ignorance excludes intelligence and discernment. If we then must explain the positive interpretation of our actions . . . then we will prove ourselves 129

130 131 132

Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663, 28. Flavie Passart reported that she had requested a copy of this writing from Pascal. Orcibal, Entre le miracle et l’ob´eissance, 36. Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663, 28. Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, December 1, 1661, BPR ´ P.R. 358.

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to be cheats who are only claiming ignorance to save ourselves since we can distinguish and explain things that ignorant persons do not understand. These are the thoughts that have so tormented me since this has happened.133

The nuns found themselves grappling with the contradiction between their previous claims to ignorance by virtue of their profession and their current desire to defend Jansen. Angelique de Saint-Jean admitted that ´ the nuns had put themselves in a corner when they used the term “ignorance” to justify their signatures to the first mandement. Jacqueline Pascal had warned that they would come across as sneaks if they used their traditional female ignorance to justify Antoine’s right/fact distinction rather than discredit the formulary altogether. Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ realized that Jacqueline’s prediction had now come to pass because there seemed to be no way to reconcile their current desire to defend Jansen with their previous claims to being ignorant and obedient women in the Church. The push by some of the nuns to declare Jansen’s innocence openly made Angelique de Saint-Jean’s strategy of signing with a “tacit ´ restriction” out of deference to Church unity and the tradition of female obedience look disingenuous.134 Angelique de Saint-Jean wrote Antoine again the next day to say that ´ the community was starting to fall apart in the wake of signing the formulary. She wrote angrily against the king who demanded the nuns’ signatures in the first place: “Those who force nuns to sign hardly know what injustice they commit, and how incapable the nuns are of signing. And truly it is those who force us that give impossible commandments.”135 She then described the turmoil: “Everything is anguish at Port-Royal, and nobody could come to a decision yesterday, I do not know what they might do today.”136 She explained that some of the nuns who signed the mandement were now unable to reconcile themselves with their actions: “My sister Flavie weeps day and night since she has signed, and if her tears had fallen on her signature, it would be quite washed away, and surely no trace of it would remain.”137 She reported that another nun declared that she was going to burn what she signed and draw up a 133 134 135 136 137

Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean used the term “tacit restriction” in her letter to Antoine Arnauld ´ on November 13, 1661, cited above. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, December 2, 1661, BPR ´ P.R. 358. Ibid. Ibid.

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personal preface for herself.138 She found it difficult to keep her thoughts to herself as she watched her fellow nuns struggle with their consciences: “And I who listen to them do not dare to say out loud what I think, which is that I wish every nun could make an individual declaration underneath her signature, so that everyone who is fearful might save her soul without encumbering the community. I dictated such a declaration this morning de Saint-Jean confessed to ease my mind a bit.”139 Although Angelique ´ her secret wish that each nun could sign in a way that put her conscience completely at ease, she knew that to allow expression of individual inclinations to this extent would jeopardize the convent’s integrity as a unified community. In the end, Angelique de Saint-Jean and Agn`es succumbed to the pres´ sure put on them by the extremist nuns influenced by the Pascal family. In a separate note Angelique de Saint-Jean sent Antoine a copy of a dec´ laration that the nuns composed and agreed to attach to their signatures so that those who still had doubts could sign the formulary in good conscience: After having signed in the manner below, in order to satisfy the ordinance of the vicars general and to bring all our community to bear unanimously on it, We the undersigned declare that although, strictly speaking, we believe we have done nothing against our consciences because we have spoken only of faith, we nonetheless harbor some doubt that we may not have spoken clearly enough, and that someone could attach a false interpretation to our declaration. [For this reason] we declare without retracting anything we have said to express our submission on the matter of faith, that we take no part in all the rest and condemn no one, knowing that it is a certain part of our condition [as nuns] to obey Jesus Christ’s precept: Judge not, lest ye be judged; condemn not, lest ye be condemned.140

With this statement, the nuns confirmed their signatures to the first mandement with the right/fact distinction. However, they went further in rejecting the formulary by declaring that the command to judge Jansen was an impossible one for nuns to obey. According to the convent journal, when the nuns presented the vicars general with their signatures, he said that he personally was satisfied, but he knew that the court would not be.141 Before Louis XIV had time to 138 139 140 141

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663, 31.

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respond, however, the nuns came under intense pressure from both family and friends to revise their signatures. The first person to pressure them was Vialart, the bishop of Chalons. On December 12, 1661, the Port-Royal ˆ nuns elected his niece Madeleine de Ligny as abbess. On New Year’s Day, Vialart came to Port-Royal to pay his respects to her. During this visit, he did his best to persuade Madeleine that she needed to convince her fellow nuns to retract their signatures.142 However, after spending an hour and a half with her, he left without changing her mind.143 Another person who tried to convince the nuns to change their minds was Martin de Barcos, the nephew of Jean Duvergier de Hauranne and current abbe´ of SaintCyran. In a letter to Agn`es Arnauld dated February 8, 1662, he chastised her for insisting on the right/fact distinction in the nuns’ signature: “They should not then concern themselves at all with discerning fact from right, because it is clear that this discernment does not belong to persons lacking in knowledge . . . this distinction and this subtlety should be left to doctors of theology and other theologians.”144 He stressed that the nuns should have adopted Singlin’s preface for their signatures: “I have no fear in assuring you that the signature as proposed to you by Monsieur Singlin does not contain [Jansen’s] condemnation.”145 He then told her that it was not too late for the nuns to change their minds: “It could happen that the court, not being content with the way you signed . . . will propose that you make changes and additions.”146 Because the nuns might be asked to revise their signatures, he enjoined them to listen to his advice and to sign the formulary without restriction in the future.147 Although the nuns were pressured almost immediately by friends and family to retract their signatures, six months passed before they felt any pressure from the Crown. The reason for this delay was the deal finally struck between Louis XIV and the Cardinal de Retz to remove Retz from the archdiocese of Paris. On February 26, 1662, the Cardinal de Retz accepted a settlement with the Crown in which he relinquished his archbishopric in exchange for several less prestigious yet equally lucrative benefices.148 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 40. Martin de Barcos to Agn`es Arnauld, February 8, 1662. In Barcos, Correspondance de Martin de Barcos, 324. Ibid., 325. Ibid. Ibid., 325–6. Salmon, 324–6.

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To replace Retz, the king nominated Pierre de Marca as the next archbishop of Paris. By doing so, Louis XIV rewarded the principal architect and theorist for the Crown’s anti-Jansenist policies with the most important diocese in France. As soon as his bulls of confirmation arrived from Rome in June 1662, Marca promptly ordered his vicars general to draw up a new mandement for the Port-Royal nuns to sign. This mandement required a signature to the formulary without distinction and threatened those who failed to comply with suspension.149 Marca, however, was never able personally to circulate this mandement because he died suddenly of a stroke on June 29, 1662. In spite of this unexpected death, Marca’s vicars general traveled to Port-Royal with the new mandement on July 7 to obtain the nuns’ signatures. The nuns protested to the vicars general with a judicial appeal, which they filed at the cathedral chapter. In their appeal, they upheld their right to refuse the mandement on the grounds that the vicars general could not enforce it without usurping the power of suspension, which belonged to the archbishop alone.150 The cathedral chapter upheld the nuns’ appeal, and for the time being, the vicars general left the nuns alone. The king also let the matter drop. It is likely that he did not bother with the nuns’ refusal to sign Marca’s mandement because he temporarily halted his campaign to obtain signatures to the formulary after one of France’s most highly respected bishops, Nicolas Pavillon, the bishop of Alet, refused to circulate the formulary in his diocese on procedural grounds.151 Pavillon had nothing against the formulary itself and had even supported it in 1657 when the bishops first approved the document. Yet when he received the order to issue it in his diocese, he protested, stating that the General Assembly of the Clergy had overstepped its authority by ordering other bishops to issue the formulary within their dioceses.152 Pavillon’s resistance prompted the king to sponsor a series of meetings under the direction of Gilbert de Choiseul, the bishop of Comminges, to negotiate a truce within the French Church over the formulary and the debates over grace more generally.153 149

150 151 152 153

Jer Besoigne, Histoire de l’abbaye de Port-Royal (Cologne [Amsterdam], 1752– ´ ome ˆ 3. Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), 1:448. This was the “suspension ipso facto,” a form of Church discipline in which a cleric was suspended from the income of a benefice for failure to comply with a certain condition. The suspension ceases automatically as soon as the condition is fulfilled. Hermant, 5:503. DeJean, Un pr`elat ind`ependant, 175. Ibid., 175–8. Ibid., 178–9. Hermant, 6:1. Almost all of volume 6 of Hermant’s memoirs is devoted to M. de Comminges’ attempt to bring peace to the Church of France.

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However, after two years of intense negotiations, all attempts to settle these disputes failed. During this period of negotiations, the Port-Royal nuns were spared further pressure because the king was preoccupied with gaining papal approval for Marca’s successor, Hardouin de Beaumont de Per ´ efixe ´ confirmation for rea(1605–71).154 The pope was delaying Per ´ efixe’s ´ sons that had nothing to do with the candidate. Instead, a diplomatic incident known as the “affair of the Corsican guards”155 had created such tensions between France and Rome that the two suspended diplomatic relations for two years. During this time, the Port-Royal nuns were largely left alone, and there were no immediate consequences for their signatures. Conclusion When King Louis XIV declared his personal rule in 1661, he changed the meaning of the Jansenist debates in important ways. Although he continued Mazarin’s policy of persecuting Jansenists to further certain political goals, this persecution now fit into the logic of a new relationship between sovereign and subject in which Louis XIV, by vesting his authority in his Christian self, became an individual on whom the subjects were meant to model their own consciences. Jansen’s defenders found this new relationship problematic, especially once the king circulated the formulary as a litmus test to determine who was a Jansenist. Torn between their desire to defend Jansen and their desire to respect Louis XIV’s Christian self, Jansen’s defenders delved into their own consciences to determine the reasonable limits to their obedience.

154

155

Per was born in Poitou to the son of Richelieu’s maˆıtre d’hotel ´ efixe ´ ˆ (steward). Per ´ efixe ´ was still a youth when his parents died, so Richelieu took him under his wing and oversaw his education. He earned his advanced degree at the theology faculty at Paris in 1636 and then joined the faculty a few years later. In 1642, Mazarin appointed him chief tutor for the dauphin, the future Louis XIV. In 1649 the court nominated him bishop of Rodez. He participated in the Sorbonne debates over Antoine Arnauld in 1655–6, arguing resolutely against Arnauld’s positions and calling for his censure. When Louis XIV came to power, he appointed Per to his council of conscience. See ´ efixe ´ entry on Per in Dictionnaire de Port-Royal. ´ efixe ´ Lossky, 120–1. This incident began when tensions between the French ambassador and the pope over the pope’s use of nepotism resulted in a brawl between the pope’s Corsican troops and the personal guards of the ambassador. The violence escalated to the point that the papal troops fired on the French ambassador himself (he escaped without harm but one of his wife’s pages was killed).

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When it came to the question of the nuns’ signing the formulary, this process of turning inward to consult their own consciences raised the problem of their gender. The issue of women’s access to theological knowledge had been under debate in the Jansenist controversy ever since it intersected with the querelle des femmes in the 1640s. Up to this point, however, the nuns had been spared the task themselves of grappling with the question of their knowledge, as the debate had always remained theoretical in polemical texts. However, when asked to sign the formulary, each nun had to decide what the traditions of female ignorance and silence meant for her in terms of both her corporate identity as a nun and her identity as an individual woman. The Port-Royal nuns, who were already starting to show signs of internal divisions during the Fronde, came into direct conflict with one another when asked to sign the first mandement. Jacqueline Pascal chastised those who signed the formulary with Antoine Arnauld’s right/fact distinction and who used the tradition of female ignorance to justify this distinction. Her critique, in conjunction with the king’s command for signatures to a second mandement, propelled the entire community to reject the formulary as an impossible command for nuns. In embracing this position, the nuns became Louis XIV’s staunchest resisters. Through their initiative, the right/fact distinction, which had previously been used by doctors of the Sorbonne and by Gallican bishops to defend the traditional liberties of their institutions, took on the force of defending female consciences from Louis XIV’s efforts to subject them to his Christian self.

5 A Feminist Response to Absolutism, 1664–1669

In April 1664, after two years of tense diplomatic relations between Louis XIV and Pope Alexander VII, the pope finally approved Hardouin de Per nomination as archbishop of Paris. This nomination took place ´ efixe’s ´ at the same time that proponents of papal infallibility and royal absolutism were making their most assertive claims ever about the authority of these powers. According to Pierre de Marca’s political theory, this parallel concentration of power in the French monarchy and the papacy was supposed to reduce tensions between the two powers. However, in reality, relations remained tenuous as each power jealously guarded its authority and feared the slightest infraction from its rival. In 1664, one source of tension between these powers was the debates over the doctrine of papal infallibility that took place after the faculty of the Sorbonne condemned a thesis defended at the Jesuit college of Clermont that supported this doctrine.1 These debates alerted Louis XIV to the danger this doctrine posed to him both domestically and internationally. At home, Louis XIV worried that some bishops and magistrates might seize on the threat of this doctrine as an excuse to renew their resistance to the Crown’s anti-Jansenist policies in the name of Gallican liberties. In the international arena, the king worried that the doctrine granted the pope rights to control the temporal arm of the French Church, a right traditionally coveted by French kings. In turn, the pope saw the 1

This was the thesis defended by the Jesuit priest Coret in 1661. P. Dieudonne, ´ La paix cl´ementine: d´efaite et victoire du premier jans´enisme franc¸ais sous le pontificat de Cl´ement IX (1667–1669) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 36–46. The Sorbonne faculty rejected this thesis in 1663 in a list of propositions known as the “maxims of the School of Paris.” Hermant, 6: 227–37.

141

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Sorbonne’s censure of the thesis on infallibility as an attack on papal power and refused to support Louis XIV in other ventures until he had the censure overturned. To prevent loyal opposition from Gallican bishops and magistrates and to avoid provoking Rome too much, Louis XIV issued a new edict in April 1664 supporting the two anti-Jansenist bulls Cum Occasione and Ad Sacram. This edict asserted Louis XIV’s determination to stamp out Jansenism as a matter of royal conscience. It also targeted the PortRoyal nuns by default, as they were the only people left who resisted his formulary. Jansen’s male defenders had all either signed the formulary (with mental reservations), gone into hiding, or had been imprisoned. In contrast, the Port-Royal nuns, although divided over how to sign the formulary, all agreed that their signatures must have the unmistakable force of rejecting its contents. Using their gender to resist the formulary, they had established themselves in 1661 as Jansen’s staunchest defenders. Now in 1664, these women became Louis XIV’s final front in his campaign against Jansenism. The Royal Edict of April 29, 1664: Louis XIV Defines Jansenism As soon as the pope confirmed Per as archbishop of Paris, Louis ´ efixe ´ XIV issued the edict of April 29, 1664, his strongest edict yet against Jansenism. Previous edicts ordering signatures to the formulary had emphasized the king’s support of resolutions made by either the pope or by French bishops in matters regarding doctrine.2 In contrast, this edict put the king’s own conscience at the forefront of the campaign to identify and prosecute Jansenist heretics. For those who might resist the formulary in defense of Gallican liberties, the edict sent a clear message that Louis XIV saw himself as the champion of these liberties. This message was embedded in a historical narrative of the Crown’s fight against Jansenism that described the king’s current edict as the logical next step in a series of anti-Jansenist initiatives that had all along respected the rights and privileges of the French Church. The king now took charge of these initiatives because the stubborn resistance of Jansenist heretics had left him with no other choice. 2

Both Louis XIV’s declarations ordering the acceptance of Cum Occasione in 1657 and ordering signatures to the formulary in 1661 stress that his orders are in support of those given by the pope and by the French bishops. Pierre Blet, “Louis XIV et les papes aux prises avec le jansenisme,” Archivum historiae pontificiae 31 (1993): 118, ´ 167.

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In the first lines, the edict asserted that the divine sanction underlying Louis XIV’s identity as the “Most Christian King” and “Eldest Son of the Church” was the source of his commission to suppress religious turmoil in his realm.3 By stressing Louis XIV’s own god-given authority to deal with matters of conscience, the edict rejected the claim that the king acted in the service of ecclesiastical authorities, especially the pope, in matters regarding Jansenism.4 The edict then suggested that his divine sanction was crucial to his royal mandate for maintaining order because the Jansenist problem was a social problem as much as a doctrinal one. It stated that, from the time of its publication, the Augustinus had created pervasive disorder throughout France “not only in schools, and among theologians, but even among persons of every condition and both sexes.”5 After establishing the suppression of Jansenism as a matter of state and not just of the Church, the edict noted that, ever since Louis XIV became king, royal authority had been unable to eradicate this disturbance: “From the earliest years of our reign, we have tried every possible means to assuage these differences from the start and to prevent their increase.”6 In listing all of the steps that the Crown had taken to suppress Jansenism, the edict emphasized the long-standing cooperation between the crown and French bishops in this endeavor. It also stated that the pope only became involved after French bishops had invited him to help them: “A large number of bishops in our realm have asked and invited the Pope to become aware of it, and to settle the matter for them.”7 By claiming that the French bishops had enjoyed the right of first decision on the matter of Jansen, the edict implicitly rejected the Gallican position that the pope had become involved at the expense of the power of a national council of bishops.8 3

4

5 6 7 8

Lettres Patentes du roy en forme d’edict par lesquelles Sa Majest´e ordonne que les Bulles de nos SS. PP. les Papes Innocent X et Alexandre VII au sujet des cinq Propositions, seront publi´ees par tout son Royaume: Et enjoint a` tous Eccl´esiastiques, S´eculiers et R´eguliers, de souscrire et signer le Formulaire. (29 Avril, 1664). Jean Mesnard has emphasized this anticlerical dimension to the king’s assertion of “divine right” rule. Jean Mesnard, “La monarchie de droit divin, concept anticlerical.” In Justice ´ et force: Politiques au temps de Pascal, Gerard Ferreyroles ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996), ´ 111–38. Lettres Patentes du roy en forme d’edict (29 Avril, 1664), 4. Ibid. Ibid. After 1654, the king stressed this initiative among French bishops in all of his declarations ordering the acceptance of Rome’s anti-Jansenist rulings. He added this emphasis after many bishops protested that he had not made this point in his initial declaration ordering the acceptance of Cum Occasione in 1654. Blet, Louis XIV et les papes, 119.

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The edict then explained how Pope Innocent X had responded to the bishops’ request with a decree that left no room for doubt regarding Jansen’s authorship of the five propositions: “The five propositions [were] excerpted from Jansen’s book, as being the outline of his doctrine and the principles that he wanted to establish in the rest of his work.”9 Nevertheless, Jansen’s defenders sought to undermine the papal decree first by “boldly declar[ing] that the Pope had not condemned [the five propositions] in their natural meaning”10 and then by arguing “that the condemned propositions have never been taught by Jansen, and that they cannot be found in his book.”11 This resistance, motivated “by cabals and jealousy,” prompted Pope Alexander VII to issue a second decree clearly stating that “the five propositions condemned by his predecessor were taken from Jansen’s book, and condemned according to the meaning in which that author had taught them.”12 The edict of April 29, 1664, compared the behavior of Jansen’s defenders to that of ancient heretics: “This stubbornness has gone so far, that following in the footsteps of heretics in former times, they have continued to spread their doctrine and teach it in secret.”13 Given this troubling behavior, the edict explained how the French bishops authorized the formulary in 1657. When Jansen’s defenders defeated the formulary with an appel comme d’abus in Parlement on the basis of a minute technicality, this became further evidence of their determination to use underhanded techniques to undermine order.14 The edict then asserted that the Jansenist “exploitation” of the appel comme d’abus was proof that the Jansenists intended to extend their disorderly ways into the heart of state institutions.15 This assault on the state was what left Louis XIV with no choice but to take charge of the

9 10

11 12 13 14

15

Lettres Patentes du roy en forme d’edict (29 Avril, 1664), 4. This is a reference to the chart presented to the pope by Saint-Amour and his delegation to show how the propositions could have different meanings according to their context. Angelique mentioned in a letter to M. Fleury in Poland that a false rumor had spread ´ that this chart had been composed after the papal bull had been issued. Lettres Patentes du roy en forme d’edict (29 Avril, 1664), 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. The edict states that Jansen’s supporters were able to exercise the appel comme d’abus “under the pretext that in our declaration registered in our court of Parlement in Paris, no mention was made of the signature to any formulary.” Ibid., 8. “it cannot be doubted that those seeking various pretexts for not signing the said formulary continue to contribute to fomenting dissension within the Church that, with time, could be produced in the State.”

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campaign to stop Jansenism.16 He ordered the bishops to publish the two anti-Jansenist bulls in all of their dioceses and then to gather signatures to the formulary from all ecclesiastics within their dioceses as a way to establish “complete unity” among the people of France.17 For those who refused to sign, the king announced he would strip them of their right to the temporal income from their benefices and would consider those benefices “vacant.”18 He also specified that anybody who resisted the bulls would face charges of sedition.19 The edict of April 29, 1664, represented a new phase in the political life of Jansenism. A decade earlier, Mazarin had solicited anti-Jansenist bulls from Rome as a way to open up negotiations with the pope. Now, several years later Louis XIV reissued these bulls to assert an authority over the French Church that was independent from Rome. This authority rested on his own divine sanction and on his narrative of the Jansenist controversy, which stressed the seamless relationship between religious unrest and civil disorder. By characterizing the legalistic strategies of contemporary lawyers as a modern incarnation of the traditional stubbornness associated with heretics, he also redefined the defense of Gallican liberties as a strategy of heretics. This edict revealed how the Crown made no distinction between political resistance and the Jansenist heresy and used this double threat to extend its authority over the French Church. P´er´efixe’s Ordonnance: Human Faith and Papal Infallibility The royal edict made resistance to the formulary tantamount to rebellion against the king and sealed off all previously existing avenues for loyal opposition in the name of Gallican liberties. However, Jansen’s defenders soon found new opportunities for loyal opposition in the mandement that Archbishop Per published on June 8, 1664. Per ´ efixe ´ ´ efixe, ´ who was charged with obtaining signatures from all those in his diocese, inserted a clause demanding signatures out of obedience to the Church, which he described as a matter of “human and ecclesiastical faith,” in the hope that this clause would make it easier for Jansen’s defenders to sign the formulary. Instead, by claiming that the clause justified the doctrine of papal infallibility, Jansen’s defenders denounced it as the latest

16 17 18 19

Ibid., 9. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 9.

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development in the Jesuit plot to undermine the Church. Jansen’s apologists thus pried open a new space for Gallican resistance by accusing Per of advancing the interests of papal infallibility rather than those ´ efixe ´ of the Crown. Per mandement became vulnerable to this critique because of ´ efixe’s ´ the way he tailored it to the problem of the Port-Royal nuns. Although he did not mention them specifically, they were his intended audience by default because they were the only ones openly resisting the formulary. In the mandement, Per expressed sympathy with those who opposed ´ efixe ´ any profession of faith on a matter of fact and explained that eliciting such a profession was never the intention of the formulary.20 Instead, he explained that the command for signatures would entail an expression of “human and ecclesiastical faith” out of respect for Church unity: In this respect, [the signatures] only require, as it has been so often said, a human and ecclesiastical faith, which obliges one to sincerely submit one’s judgment to that of one’s legitimate superiors. This is because otherwise, this way it would be easy to avoid the condemnation of all kinds of errors, and under the pretext of the question of faith, one could always preserve the freedom to defend one’s opinion concerning the law.21

From Per perspective, his request for signatures as an expression ´ efixe’s ´ of human and ecclesiastical faith offered the formulary’s critics a reasonable compromise in which they could sign on the matter of fact without compromising that part of their faith that was divinely inspired.22 As he saw it, this clause would ease the minds of those who feared bearing false witness against Jansen by making it clear that they were signing the formulary only out of obedience to him and to the popes’ rulings, and not as a matter of faith. Conversely, for those who feared that the Jansenists resisted the matter of fact as a way to secretly endorse a heretical doctrine, the assertion of human and ecclesiastical faith provided a guarantee of their sincere submission to the Church. However, from the perspective of Jansen’s defenders, Per doc´ efixe’s ´ trine represented an abuse of authority in which he distorted the meaning of “human faith” to coerce his subordinates into signing the formulary out of an inferior form of faith. This concept of “human faith” can be 20

21 22

Hardouin de Beaumont de Per Ordonnance de Monseigneur l’illustrissime et ´ efixe, ´ ¨ de P´er´efixe, archevesque de Paris sur la signature du formulaire r´ev´erendissime Hardouin du foy, dress´e en ex´ecution des Constitutions de nos saints p`eres les papes Innocent X et Alexandre VII (7 Juin, 1664). (Paris, 1664), 4–5. Ibid. Dieudonne, ´ 29–36.

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traced to St. Thomas Aquinas, who distinguished between two levels of faith: that gained by science and that gained by access to the divine.23 According to this tradition, human faith – that gained by science – was the inferior form of faith because, although it could bring a person to submit to the tenets of the Church, it could not bring about salvation. Salvation was possible only through the higher revelation of divine faith. Therefore, human faith was necessary for divine faith, but never sufficient on its own for salvation.24 Arnauld and Nicole argued that Per was demanding signatures ´ efixe ´ out of this inferior form of faith and that would set a precedent for demanding blind faith from his followers: M[onsignor] de Paris in no way established the obligation to believe Jansen a heretic on the basis of external signs of certainty that accompany it . . . but on the basis of a certain spirituality that is quite new, which is that, in matters of fact, one should submit one’s judgments to the authority of one’s legitimate superiors. Thus he associated this human belief in facts with his character and his position in the church: he acted as if making this association was a privilege and a right of ecclesiastical superiority.25

The problem for Arnauld and Nicole was the meaning Per had ´ efixe ´ ascribed to the term of “human faith” by employing it within the current situation. In this context, Per transformed the traditional concept of ´ efixe ´ “human faith” into a command for a blind faith in one’s superiors.26 23

24 25 26

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (II-II:6:1). In the context of the Jansenist debates, Antoine Arnauld (with the help of Pierre Nicole) had described “human faith” two years earlier in the Port-Royal Logic (1662) as the process through which humans come to assume reasonably that a certain event is true even though they could not immediately verify it through direct observation. Antoine Arnauld, La logique, ou l’art de penser. In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 41:397–401. See article entry for “Faith” in the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/ cathen/index.html Arnauld, Apologie pour les religieuses. In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 23: 217–18. Arnauld and Nicole’s critique of Per use of “human faith” accords with what ´ efixe’s ´ J. G. A. Pocock calls “innovatory paroles,” or language “moves” that have the power to create a new political language. Such moves “may propose an alteration in value signs, a treatment of that which was bad as now good or vice versa; or it may propose to remove the discussion of a term of problem from the language context in which it has been conventionally discussed into some other context itself known but not hitherto considered appropriate to this discussion.” J. G. A. Pocock, “The Concept of a Language and the m´etier d’historien: Some Considerations on Practice.” In The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 34. Pocock stresses that the innovatory potential of such moves depends on reader reception, meaning the extent to which readers latch on and give

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Linking Per order to the doctrine of papal infallibility was a ´ efixe’s ´ strategic move for Arnauld and Nicole because it allowed them now to discredit the formulary by portraying Per as a Jesuit agent who ´ efixe ´ had inserted a dangerous clause into his injunction secretly to undermine the authority of French bishops and of the Crown. Arnauld focused on the threat to bishops in La nouvelle h´er´esie des J´esuites [The Jesuits’ New Heresy] (1662), whereas Pierre Nicole focused on the threat to royal power in Les pernicieuses cons´equences de la nouvelle h´er´esie des J´esuites contre le Roi et contre l’´etat soutenue dans une de leurs th`eses le 12 Decembre, 1661 [The Pernicious Consequences of the Jesuits’ New Heresy against the King and against the State, Defended in One of Their Theses on December 12, 1661] (1662). Their opposition to Per ´ efixe’s ´ injunction thus became a form of loyal opposition, in which the goal was to protect the French Church and king from the Jesuits and their doctrine of papal infallibility. Resisting “Human Faith”: A Feminist Paradox at Port-Royal The controversy over papal infallibility became the main ideological context for Louis XIV’s final assault against the Port-Royal nuns. When the archbishop came to the convent two days after publishing his injunction, the nuns refused to sign the formulary for the same reasons they gave in 1661. This time, however, the nuns’ resistance had the additional force of opposing the doctrine of papal infallibility. The nuns did not cite this doctrine as a reason for their resistance, but we know from other sources that they were aware of the controversy surrounding it. For instance, in December 1661– shortly after the controversy over the Jesuit theses erupted – the nuns’ journal mentions papal infallibility in a passage describing a conversation between the priest Louis Bail (1610–69) and Abbess Agn`es Arnauld.27 Bail was a new confessor appointed to PortRoyal by the vicars general of the Cardinal de Retz after they issued the second mandement. At one point, Bail met with Agn`es to complain that her nuns “were schismatics” and “did not recognize the pope at all” in

27

voice to this new potential meaning. In the case of Per his critics were all too eager ´ efixe, ´ to point out the innovation of his doctrine of “human faith,” because innovation was a common mark of “error” or deviancy from Catholic orthodoxy. Pierre Nicole further forged the link between Per definition of human faith and papal infallibility in De ´ efixe’s ´ la foy humaine (1664). Louis Bail (1610–69) was a doctor of the Sorbonne and the cure´ of Montmartre. He also published polemical pamphlets against Jansenism.

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refusing to sign the second mandement. When she replied that the nuns had expressed their “very profound respect” for the pope in the preface to their signatures, he responded that they honored the pope as the Jews honored Jesus: “by beating him on the head and spitting in his face.” When he then insisted that the nuns obey “all that the pope said without distinction,” Agn`es responded, “But, is the Pope God, to believe that he is infallible?”28 According to the journal, this comment enraged Bail and caused him to storm out of the room.29 On June 9, just one day after he published his mandement, Per ´ efixe ´ traveled to Port-Royal to present it to the nuns and to explain what he meant by “human and ecclesiastical faith.” After his presentation, he announced that he would be returning over the next few days to interview each nun individually to hear her reason for not signing the formulary.30 One reason to suspect that the journal report of this visit reflected a carefully crafted response to the mandement is that, of the sixty-three nuns interviewed that June, the journal included reports by only three nuns – Marguerite Dupre, de Saint-Jean, and Christine Briquet. ´ Angelique ´ Although it is certainly possible that these three nuns were the only ones to write down their interviews, it is more likely that their interviews were carefully selected as representative of the nuns’ experiences with Per ´ efixe. ´ The nuns’ interview reports reveal four important features of their resistance at this time. The first was the emphasis on the individual identity of the nuns. The reports were presented in the journal as authentic eyewitness testimonies composed by the nuns themselves. They contained passages describing the women’s private thoughts and experiences and were also written in different writing styles, reflecting the individuality of the nuns. The second feature of these reports was each nun’s emphasis on her ability to reason. In each case, when pressed by Per to sign the ´ efixe ´ formulary out of obedience to him, the nun responded that she could not do so in good conscience because she had reason to harbor doubts about the formulary. The nuns carefully attributed their doubts to observable evidence such as the disagreements among bishops, the extreme vehemence of their persecutors, and a noticeable increase in disorder within 28 29 30

Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port-Royal depuis le commencement d’Avril 1661 jusqu’au 27 du mˆeme mois de l’ann´ee suivante 1663, 35. Ibid., 35. Per did not visit Port-Royal-des-Champs to interview the nuns there until Novem´ efixe ´ ber 15, 1664. Prioress Marie de Sainte-Madeleine d’Angennes du Fargis was a member of the Gondi family (her cousin was the Cardinal de Retz). She was never removed from Port-Royal-de-Champs for refusing to sign the formulary. Sainte-Beuve, 2:701.

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the Church. In this way, they stressed that, although they were ignorant of theology, they still had legitimate reasons to question the formulary. The nuns’ calm rationality made a stark contrast to the third feature of these reports: Per unreasonable behavior. In these reports, Per ´ efixe’s ´ ´ efixe ´ oscillated between treating the nuns with respect and gallantry and barraging them with accusations and insults suddenly and unpredictably. In describing this irrational behavior, the nuns implied that Per doc´ efixe’s ´ trine was flawed because it was a product of his human passions and not divine grace. A final feature of resistance was the nuns’ insistence on their right as women to answer directly to God. Although the nuns never stated this last feature explicitly in their reports, the first two features of their resistance – their focus as individual women and their defense of reason – worked together to assert female equality before God. In other words, to denounce Per doctrine of human faith, and by extension ´ efixe’s ´ the doctrine of papal infallibility, the nuns upheld their equal rights as women in matters of reason and conscience. The first interview transcript to appear in the journal was by Marguerite de Sainte-Gertrude Dupre. ´ Dupre´ had originally been a nun in Flanders, but transferred to Port-Royal after learning from Jansen himself about Angelique’s reform.31 When the nuns were first asked to sign ´ the formulary in 1661, Dupre´ was among the “extremist” nuns who rejected the right/fact distinction and wanted to refuse to sign it. Yet, under pain of exile, she was the first of the Port-Royal nuns to sign the formulary. Even though she retracted this signature, she soon signed again and retracted once more, earning a reputation for being fickle. However, once she finally joined her fellow nuns under house arrest at Port-Royaldes-Champs in the spring of 1665, she sustained her opposition to the formulary until her death a few months later. She contracted a deadly fever in July 1665 and died without receiving her last rites because of the archbishop’s prohibition.32 Of the three reports, Dupre’s ´ represented that of a “simple nun” in the convent who, although faithful to Jansen, appeared slow-witted and unable to express herself well. In his interview with her, Per also lost ´ efixe ´ his temper more frequently than he did with the other two nuns. Dupre’s ´ report began with the archbishop offering her a chair to sit down on. He then asked her if she understood the meaning of his speech he gave the day before at the start of his visit. In this speech, Per ´ efixe ´ 31 32

Besoigne, 2:viii:203. Besoigne, 2:viii:334.

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had outlined his reasons for why the nuns should sign the formulary out of “human faith.” He then said to Dupre, ´ “I believe that after this, you should have no more doubts, and you should be of a faithful disposition, which means signing the formulary at the end of my ordinance. Sister, tell me your thoughts.”33 Dupre´ answered, “Monsignor, I’ve quite understood what it has pleased you to take the trouble to tell us, and I have indeed grasped all the reasons you give us; but this does not mean I can sign the formulary.”34 He then asked her, “Why, Sister, can you not sign? One must not say that one will not do something out of stubbornness, one must have one’s reasons, ah, tell them to me.”35 When Dupre´ responded, “It would not be right, Monsignor, to fail in what you wish from us without reason, and if my conscience would allow me,”36 he interrupted her abruptly: “My conscience . . . my conscience! Does your conscience permit you to disobey your archbishop?”37 Dupre´ managed only to say “Monsignor . . . ” before he interrupted her again: “Keep quiet, listen to me: Do you not know well that I have the right to command you and that you are obligated to obey me?”38 The rest of the interview hinged on this conflict between his command for obedience out of “human faith” and her responses that revealed that this compromise in no way relieved her of her scruples. In describing his ordinance he stated that he had phrased it specifically to accommodate the nuns: I ask you only one thing, which is to obey me and sign my injunction. I wrote it the way I did out of love for you, removing all those doubts that might exist regarding that divine faith that it was said to contain. No, Sister, I do not ask divine faith from you, but human faith, ecclesiastical faith.39

When he asked her why she could not obey, she responded that to do so would entail making a false witness on her part: “Monsignor, . . . I cannot 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

Marguerite de Sainte-Gertrude Dupre, ´ Relation de ma Soeur Marguerite Gertrude in Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port Royal depuis le commencement de l’ann´ee 1664 ˆ de la mˆeme ann´ee. In Divers jusqu’a` l’enl`evement des Religieuses, qui fut le 26 Aout actes, lettres et relations des religieuses de Port-Royal du Saint Sacrement, touchant la pers´ecution et les violences qui leur ont e´ t´e faites au sujet de la signature du Formulaire ( 1724), 13. Ibid. Ibid., 14–16. Ibid., 14. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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give witness . . . in the face of God and all of the Church against an innocent person, this would go directly against God’s commandment which prohibits us from giving false testimony against our neighbor.”40 Per ´ efixe ´ responded angrily, “I understand you well . . . so well that I, your archbishop, ask you to bear false witness; I want you to commit a sin, indeed, that is what you are saying.”41 He then pressed her further by asserting that he was not asking her to do anything that she was not obligated to do. He emphasized that he was only asking for a submission of “human and ecclesiastical faith”: “Could you ask for anything more fair?”42 Dupre´ answered that it was the knowledge she gained before entering the convent that gave her reason to doubt: “M[onsignor], after seeing and learning everything that I knew about these matters before entering this again interrupted her by saying that she was evading convent.”43 Per ´ efixe ´ him: “Aha, are you not avoiding the question?”44 She responded by saying that she was not trying to avoid answering, but rather to explain herself. She then told him that she wanted him to know that she was among the nuns who did not even want to sign the second mandement in December 1661.45 After a final attempt to get her to sign, an exasperated Per ended ´ efixe ´ the meeting by saying, “Well then, you are thus resolved not to do anything about it?” When she responded, “But no, Monsignor, I cannot,” he yelled, “Get out of here, there is not a drop of reason in you.”46 Dupre´ wrote that he appeared to be so angry with her that she left without asking him for the customary blessing. The next nun to be interrogated was Angelique de Saint-Jean. Com´ pared to Dupre, de Saint-Jean came across as a much more ´ Angelique ´ sophisticated interlocutor in her report. She not only expressed herself better but she was also better able to manage Per temper. Although ´ efixe’s ´ she could not prevent his outbursts, she was able to point out to him how they only increased her doubt. Thus, if Dupre’s ´ interview represented the experience of a less competent “extremist” nun, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean’s interview represented the experience of the more poised and capable “centrist” nun. 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 14. Ibid. Ibid., 14–15. Ibid., 15. Ibid. Ibid., 16.

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Angelique de Saint-Jean’s interrogation began with Per asking her ´ ´ efixe ´ why she refused to sign the formulary without distinction. When she replied that she had many reasons, he asked her to give him her best one. She responded that her best reason lay in all of the contradictions she saw: “This affair seemed to be so uncertain and each person has explained it in a different way, that it has put me in a state of great unease.”47 She said that these discrepancies filled her with such doubt that “I could not have a sincere belief in the matter of fact, nor could I be resolved to give proof of this belief by signing on it because I would be speaking against the belief that lies in my heart.”48 Per then pressed her to sign the formulary on the matter of fact by ´ efixe ´ asserting that those who denied the matter of fact were merely doing so to deny the matter of faith as well. He explained that it was typical of “all sectarians to seek out some evasive measure to hide [their doctrine] when the times are not favorable to them.”49 Hearing this argument, Angelique ´ de Saint-Jean pointed out that he must not really believe this because he had just told the nuns in his speech to the community that a signature on the matter of fact involved only a “human faith for which the fault in no way renders one heretical”50 ; thus, the decision to sign on fact had nothing to do with doctrine. He replied with the qualification that his notion of “human faith” applied only to nuns and not theologians,51 and therefore there was no reason to suspect nuns of unorthodoxy if they expressed doubt. However, in the case of theologians, their refusal to subscribe to a matter of fact “gives one just cause to believe that it is because they are harboring forbidden ideas in their hearts.”52 Angelique de Saint-Jean replied that ´ she had seen this opinion expressed in the king’s declaration, which was exactly why she remained suspicious, given that just a few years earlier, theologians had openly debated the question of fact without any suspicion of heresy.53 By pointing out this “innovation” in the king’s proclamation, she argued implicitly that it was illegitimate because innovation was a sign 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Relation de ma soeur Ang´elique de Saint´ Jean. In Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port Royal depuis le commencement de l’ann´ee ˆ de la mˆeme ann´ee in Divers 1664 jusqu’a` l’enl`evement des Religieuses, qui fut le 26 Aout actes, lettres et relations des religieuses de Port-Royal, 17. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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of error. Her response angered Per and she wrote that he shouted at ´ efixe, ´ her so forcefully that it scared her. He yelled that the decision had been examined in Rome in all due form and solemn procedure and that he was offended that she was accusing him of trying to deceive her.54 Angelique de Saint-Jean wrote in her report that she remained silent ´ throughout his outburst. When he finally asked her if she had anything else to say, she replied that this doctrine of human faith that he kept asserting to the nuns had “reduced people to a strange extremity.” She explained, “The more they assure us that things have always been a certain way, the more they increase my suffering, because it is beyond my power to believe one thing when I am absolutely sure of its opposite.”55 Although Angelique de Saint-Jean focused on the nuns’ predicament, the ´ timing of her comment, which took place immediately after Per ´ efixe’s ´ outburst, also suggested that he too may have been “reduced” by this “strange extremity.” In this way, she tacitly undermined his position by suggesting that he had succumbed to his human passions and was the one guilty of error, and not the nuns who respectfully asked to remain silent on the matter of fact. At this point in the text, Angelique de Saint-Jean’s report switched ´ from narrative to dialogue form. After she stated that she was incapable of submitting to his doctrine of human faith, Per responded by asking ´ efixe ´ why she believed that he was trying to deceive her. She replied, “I’ve seen for myself proof that things used to be different; how can I not believe my own eyes?”56 He responded that it was impossible that she could have seen any such proof because “things have always been as I say they are.”57 To this she replied, I am not relying on hearsay. . . . I saw a report printed in the year that the five propositions were first presented to the theology faculty for examination in which the doctors who were opposed to them declared in no uncertain terms that the propositions were invented, dubious, and ambiguous and that no author supported them in the meaning that they give upon first impression. That certainly is not attributing them to Jansen.58

Here again, Angelique asserted her right to doubt the formulary on ´ the basis of her own observation of the disagreements over the texts. 54 55 56 57 58

Ibid., 18. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The text in question here is probably Antoine Arnauld’s Consideration sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet.

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However, she took a risk with this response because it gave Per an ´ efixe ´ opening to reprimand her for involving herself in religious debates outside the convent. He advised her, “You should try to remove yourself from these regrettable affairs and here is an easy chance for you to do de Saint-Jean defended her right to follow so.”59 Ever poised, Angelique ´ these debates by stating that she had no other choice given Port-Royal’s history: I believe . . . that it is not so easy to remove ourselves from the persecution that we have been subjected to for the last twenty-five years. The signature was not the beginning of this and I would highly doubt that it will be its end. I promise you that were it the case that we had nothing other than our own experience, to persuade us that our superiors demand nothing other than a sign of our obedience, then it would be very difficult for us to believe that there was no other secret motivation for your current treatment of us.60

With this statement, Angelique de Saint-Jean again emphasized her ability ´ to doubt the formulary based on her reason. When Per asked her ´ efixe ´ what the real reason was behind Port-Royal’s persecution, she replied that it all went back to the time when Saint-Cyran was put into prison: It was during the time when the late abbe´ de Saint-Cyran was imprisoned at Vincennes. It was claimed that Mother Angelique was very much in collusion ´ with him, and you know, Monsignor how criminal he was.61

In this last sentence, where she claimed sarcastically that Saint-Cyran was criminal, she was probably referring to the fact that Per had ´ efixe ´ known Saint-Cyran personally and had been on good terms with him countered her comment by saying that time had in the past.62 Per ´ efixe ´ shown that Saint-Cyran had indeed been plotting to form a sect. He also told her that he had firsthand knowledge of the affair because he had been Richelieu’s Maˆıtre de Chambre at the time. Per said that on the ´ efixe ´ very day that Richelieu arrested Saint-Cyran, Richelieu told Per that ´ efixe ´ the arrest would be condemned by “learned men and good people” but that it was the right thing to do because Saint-Cyran had “particular and dangerous” ideas that could divide the Church and that “it is one of my maxims that anything that can cause trouble for religion can also cause 59 60 61 62

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 19. Per father and Saint-Cyran had been childhood friends. See entry on Per in ´ efixe’s ´ ´ efixe ´ Dictionnaire de Port-Royal.

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trouble for the State.”63 Per then explained to Angelique de Saint´ efixe ´ ´ Jean that because Port-Royal had always been viewed “as the seminary of this sect” the nuns were put under greater scrutiny: “It is right to insist on asking things from you that could not be asked of other nuns, and you should give in, because this is the way to put yourself above confirmed her point that the suspicion.”64 With this statement Per ´ efixe ´ current struggle was not about Jansen, but about a more long-standing conflict surrounding Port-Royal. Angelique de Saint-Jean’s response to this tacit acceptance of her ver´ sion of events was to tell Per that she hoped he could use his authority ´ efixe ´ to dispel these false suspicions about the nuns: “[I told him that] I hoped he would have the goodness to protect us on this occasion, which was only the sequel to the plot that had existed for so long to ruin us.”65 He responded that he “certainly loved” Port-Royal and esteemed the virtue among the nuns but that he was not in a position to prevent the consequences that would befall the nuns if they did not sign the formulary. He said “that when the king had asked him what we did, and if he were obligated to tell him, he would do us no harm, and it would be the king who betrayed his own weak position acted.”66 With this response, Per ´ efixe ´ vis-`a-vis the king and conceded that the formulary crisis was an initiative from secular authorities and not the Church. From the nuns’ position, this response was proof that Per was ill-equipped to take responsi´ efixe ´ bility for their consciences. If he could not take responsibility for their consciences before the king, how could he possibly do so before God? Angelique de Saint-Jean’s report ended on a civil note in which she ´ and Per agreed that they wanted peace at Port-Royal. He assured her ´ efixe ´ that he had nothing but affection for Port-Royal and that he would be willing to “give his blood” to bring peace to the house.67 In response, she expressed her willingness too to sacrifice herself for Port-Royal: “I can assure you that death would seem sweeter to me than the misfortunes and separations that threaten [this house].”68 With this statement, Angelique ´ de Saint-Jean expressed her similar desire for peace at Port-Royal, but also indicated that she was willing to pay the ultimate price to achieve this peace without compromise. 63 64 65 66 67 68

Arnauld d’Andilly, Relation de ma soeur Ang´elique de Saint-Jean, 19. Ibid. Ibid., 20. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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The final report included in the journal was by Christine Briquet, another “centrist” nun who was also, at the age of 23, one of the youngest nuns in the house. Structurally, Briquet’s report resembled that of Dupre, ´ as it was written entirely in the form of a dialogue. However, in its tone, her report was closer to Angelique de Saint-Jean’s with its longer entries, ´ fluid dialogue, and regular commentary on Per mood and reactions. ´ efixe’s ´ Her report was also the longest of the three and covered the widest range of issues. Among other topics, Briquet and Per discussed the bishops ´ efixe ´ who currently refused to circulate the formulary in their dioceses, the legal advice that Briquet received from her uncle Joseph Bignon, avocat g´en´eral, on the formulary, and the miracles that had taken place in the convent.69 Briquet’s interview began with her convincing Per that the nuns ´ efixe ´ were genuinely acting according to their individual consciences. Perhaps because of her youth, Per tried to extract from her a confession that ´ efixe ´ the abbess was pressuring the rest of the community to resist him. When Per asked her why she would not sign the formulary, she responded ´ efixe ´ “that it is only the fear of harming my conscience, by taking part in something much beyond my capacities, which prevents me from giving who you proofs of my obedience.”70 Briquet described a weary Per ´ efixe ´ removed his biretta from his head as he responded: “I already know everything you want to tell me: you are all submissive, humble, obedient, respectful, and so forth.”71 He then added sarcastically that he already knew her reasons for refusing him: “I have resolved not to do it, I have promised this to my abbess and my sisters, we have plotted this together.”72 He told her that she might as well give him this answer because “I won’t insist anymore; this is nothing but pure cabal.”73 She responded that he might believe what he pleased, but “God knows that we have never promised anyone not to sign, and that the last thing on our minds is to forestall something or form a cabal.”74 He responded, “I believe nothing of the sort. Is it your abbess, then, who has forbidden it to you?”75 She then described the speech that the abbess gave in October 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

Madeleine de Sainte-Christine Briquet, Relation de ma Soeur Madeleine Christine Briquet, in Relation de ce qui s’est pass´e a` Port Royal depuis le commencement de ˆ de la mˆeme ann´ee. l’ann´ee 1664 jusqu’a` l’enl`evement des Religieuses, qui fut le 26 Aout In Divers actes, lettres et relations des religieuses de Port-Royal, 21–33. Ibid., 22. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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1661 about the second mandement. She told him that Agn`es specifically told the nuns that each had to ask God to guide her conscience. Then Per asked, “What, did she not tell you not to sign?”76 Briquet replied ´ efixe ´ that the abbess did go on to tell the nuns her own position on the matter, which was that “she could not say that she believed in her heart and confess with her mouth something that she doubted.”77 He then asked her if after she prayed to God whether she decided on her own to refuse the formulary or whether she consulted with some “intelligent man” for advice. He said that if she consulted with a man, then she might not have done anything too wrong.78 However, if she made this decision on her own, then “you are all quite presumptuous, to believe yourselves more capable than them and to judge something that you yourselves admit you do not understand.”79 Briquet answered that because he asked her to tell him where she “took counsel,” she had to answer honestly that she took it from the formulary itself: “For it makes me say that I believe in my heart and confess with my mouth something that I am not at all persuaded of . . . and that I know intelligent theologians to be divided over.”80 At this point, Per responded that he saw that Briquet had “intel´ efixe ´ ligence” and was “capable of reason.”81 He added that he wanted to delve into matters a bit further with her because “when one comes across people capable of reason, it is a pleasure to talk to them.”82 He then proceeded to tell her that the attack that Jansen’s supporters were waging against the doctrine of infallibility was dangerous for the Church. He said that if it were true that the Church was not infallible in facts and if the pope could err in these matters then “by this single maxim, the entire foundation of our faith could be overthrown.”83 He cited scriptural translations as an example of this danger. If people questioned the accuracy of the Latin translations of Scripture, then that might convince them to stop following its dictates. From this example, he explained that to question the Church’s authority on the matter of fact in Jansen’s case would be “to give everyone the freedom to rise up against what the 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Ibid. Ibid., 22–3. Ibid., 23. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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Church has decided.”84 Per then went on to say that Jansen him´ efixe ´ self had indicated his belief in the Church’s authority by writing in the preface to the Augustinus that he submitted to the pope’s decision on his text. When the pope later condemned the propositions from Jansen’s text, everybody in the Church, aside from “a small handful of people” (“une petite poign´ees de gens”), submitted to the pope’s authority as well. To this argument, Briquet replied that when it came to matters of faith, a majority of opinion did not equal the truth: “Monsignor, were they ten thousand in number, I would wholeheartedly distance myself from them if they were rebelling against the Church, but you well know they are not.”85 She then added that among this “handful” of people were some well-respected bishops such as Nicholas Pavillon, bishop of Alet; Nicolas Choart de Buzanval, bishop of Beauvais; and Henri Arnauld, bishop of Angers. After a short discussion about these three bishops, Per then ´ efixe ´ asked Briquet why she did not follow the example of Jansen, who himself submitted to the pope in the preface to the Augustinus. She then replied, “I have a hard time believing that his submission would go so far as to persuade him that he might have taught errors that he well knew he had not taught.”86 On hearing these words, Per had an angry out´ efixe ´ burst, and more discussion followed about the nuns’ refusal to sign the formulary. Then Per offered to show Jansen’s book to Briquet so that she ´ efixe ´ could see for herself that the propositions condemned in the bulls were present in the text. In particular, he offered to show her the first proposition because this one appeared word for word in the Augustinus: “Very well, I will bring you the book of M[onsignor] Jansen, I will show you the first proposition in its precise terms; and after that you will sign, right?”87 Briquet responded that his efforts would be “quite useless” because Jansen’s book was a Latin text that she could not understand. Per was not satisfied with this response and continued to press, say´ efixe ´ ing, “I’ll explain it to you word by word.” She replied once again that his efforts would be useless because the material in the book was “beyond my capacity.”88 She then reminded him that theologians and not nuns should study Latin texts, “but if you would like, M[onsignor], to take the trouble to point out these propositions to those theologians who do not see them, 84 85 86 87 88

Ibid. Ibid., 25. Ibid. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 30.

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they can be persuaded.”89 By emphasizing that the examination of this text was the responsibility of theologians and not nuns, Briquet turned the discussion away from her intellectual abilities to the order of the Church that theologians alone had the right to interpret theological texts. In spite of her efforts to turn the discussion from the specifics of Jansen’s text, Per persisted in this vein, saying, ´ efixe ´ At least, my daughter, you know very well how to read in Latin, and when you see the pater noster in two books, you can judge easily if there is a difference between them, I will bring you the book of M. Jansen and a copy of the proposition and all you have to do is read.90

By suggesting that Briquet could easily decipher Latin texts by perceiving differences among them and applying her reason, Per was setting ´ efixe ´ a trap for her. Just as Angelique de Saint-Jean had previously argued that ´ women could use natural reason to determine religious truth, Per ´ efixe ´ now turned this argument against Briquet to persuade her that she could determine the truth about the propositions without formal theological knowledge. However, Briquet outwitted Per by responding, “But I marvel at ´ efixe ´ how it can be, that people with judgment argue that the propositions are not in Jansen’s text when it is so easy to demonstrate the contrary, and I am surprised that they are not yet convinced.”91 She undermined Per claim that the propositions were easily found in Jansen’s text ´ efixe’s ´ by stating her “surprise” that trained theologians continued to disagree over their meaning. Her seemingly innocent tone allowed her to appear humble and ignorant while she was in fact reminding Per that the ´ efixe ´ interpretation of texts was a complex and ambiguous practice. Clearly, she could not identify the propositions in the Augustinus by pointing out the actual words if theologians were in disagreement over the meaning of those words. By suggesting that there was more to reading texts than recognizing words, Briquet upheld her point that nuns were ignorant of formal theological knowledge by virtue of the Church’s own order and should be treated accordingly. Per persisted in his offer to show her the first proposition in ´ efixe ´ Jansen’s text, but Briquet outwitted him once again by asking, “But 89 90 91

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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M[onsignor], you only talk about showing us the first proposition: is this because it is the only one that appears in [Jansen’s] book?”92 She wrote that these words caused Per to smile. He paused and responded, “Ah, ´ efixe ´ but you know well, my daughter, that a single idea can be expressed in many different ways.”93 The archbishop smiled because he realized that she had cornered him. Because the first proposition was the only one to appear verbatim in Jansen’s text, Per was forced to concede Briquet’s ´ efixe ´ earlier point that the interpretation of texts demanded training beyond the simple act of recognizing words. His alternative would have been to admit that the other propositions did not appear in Jansen’s text, thus confirming the long-standing argument used by Jansen’s defenders that Cornet had invented the propositions in the Sorbonne. Caught between upholding her point about female ignorance or acknowledging that the rest of the propositions were not in Jansen’s text, Per evaded her ´ efixe ´ question in a way that tacitly agreed with her position that women had to be treated as ignorant by the Church. Briquet, in spite of her youth, was a reasonable and capable interlocutor. She succeeded in keeping Per temper in check to the point ´ efixe’s ´ that when she cornered him with her arguments he smiled appreciatively rather than exploding at her. His willingness to participate in a polite, bantering conversation appears to have lulled him into admitting positions (such as his support for the doctrine of papal infallibility) that his critics later attacked him for. Moreover, Per exposed himself as a source of ´ efixe ´ disorder by engaging nuns in theological debates, thereby undermining the tradition of female silence in the Church. When he offered to show Briquet a copy of Jansen’s text, she was forced to deflect his offer by arguing that the issue at hand was not her capacity to read, but what was appropriate for nuns as members of the Church. These missteps on his part proved the nuns’ point that the formulary caused more disorder than order and that their resistance to it was easily justified through observation and reason. Of the three reports, Briquet’s most explicitly addressed the details of the five propositions in a defense of Arnauld’s position that they had ambiguous meanings. However, taken together, these interviews underscore how the five propositions, which had been the sticking point for Gallican bishops and parlementaires, were now the sticking point for the 92 93

Ibid., 31. Ibid.

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female conscience. In spite of their differences in intelligence, personal experience, and knowledge about texts, all three nuns had reasons for not signing the formulary as a matter of conscience. The nuns’ argument was paradoxical in the sense that, at the same time they stressed their ignorance, they defended the feminist position in the querelle des femmes of women’s ability to reason. In defending their capacity for reason, the nuns also upheld the paradox that Per doc´ efixe’s ´ trine of human faith denied women’s spiritual equality in a religion that was based on the premise of this equality. The nuns did not assert their spiritual equality outright, but rather they used ideas about gender – in this case, traditional assumptions about female inferiority – paradoxically to uphold their right to conscience on a par with men. Such use of a gender-based paradox to assert women’s spiritual equality accords with Joan Scott’s definition of feminism as the history of women with “only paradoxes to offer.”94 Scott’s definition provides a useful framework for understanding the nuns’ resistance to Louis XIV at this point. For although the content of their resistance – which focused on women’s capacity for reason – may accord with the concerns of other seventeenth-century feminists, Scott’s method of “reading for paradoxes”95 alerts us to another dimension of the nuns’ feminism embedded in the illocutionary force of their arguments.96 In this case, the Port-Royal nuns defended not only their capacity for reason but also, even more radically, their equal right to conscience as individuals and as women. Throughout the interviews Per presented ´ efixe ´ his doctrine of human faith as a compromise made out of love for the nuns that addressed their scruples. From the nuns’ perspective, this compromise subordinated their faith to a lower level of accountability before God. The nuns’ emphasis on female reason and individual autonomy in defense of their spiritual equality was not something that these women, who genuinely valued their corporate identity, could have possibly planned or anticipated. This strategy was both a consequence of and a response to the claims of infallibility and absolute rule espoused by both the pope and the king. Under these circumstances, the nuns’ feminist discourses turned into feminist action.

94 95 96

Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Ibid., 16. Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History (London: Routledge, 1998), 12.

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Division among the Nuns The moment when the nuns’ individual and personal resistance to the Crown and their archbishop were highest was also the moment when the community of nuns at Port-Royal split into two irreparable factions. Although the majority of nuns refused to sign the formulary, a small group broke ranks and signed it after Per exiled twelve nuns from ´ efixe ´ 97 the house. These were the nuns he believed were leading the resistance against him. Ironically the first nuns to capitulate were the “extremist” nuns who in December 1661 had refused most strenuously to sign the formulary because of the right/fact distinction.98 These women understood Jacqueline Pascal’s fear that using the term “ignorance” to support the distinction might make them appear dishonest. Three years later, in 1664, while under pressure from Per to sign the formulary, they ´ efixe ´ became convinced that “centrist” nuns such as Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ were indeed disingenuous, and they signed the formulary, stating that it was better to obey their legitimate male superior than to follow their duplicitous sisters.99 The split was a devastating blow to the nuns’ resistance because the capitulating nuns confirmed Per suspicions of a plot within the ´ efixe’s ´ convent to resist him. Flavie Passart, the leader of these nuns, confirmed his suspicions in a letter she wrote describing Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ and her followers’ resistance to the formulary as stemming from family loyalty and political motivations. Flavie’s letter gave Jansen’s critics a new eyewitness account, one to complement that composed by Zamet three decades previously, documenting the unruliness and bad faith of the Port-Royal nuns.100 Angelique de Saint-Jean responded by composing ´ an unflattering relation of Flavie’s character, which she denounced by equating Flavie’s penchant for miracles with a lack of rationalism and reliability.101 97

98 99 100 101

Seven nuns signed the formulary on September 12, 1664. The number of signing nuns then fluctuated because during the course of the formulary crisis several who signed later retracted their signatures. In a few cases, some nuns signed and retracted their signatures more than once. The leader of the signing nuns was Catherine de Saint-Flavie Passart. She had been the mistress of novices at the time of the Miracle of the Holy Thorn. Jean Orcibal, Entre le miracle et l’ob´eissance, 35–42. This letter was published by Desmarest de Saint-Sorlin in his Response a` l’insolente apologie des religieuses de Port-Royal. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Relation de quelques circonstances de la vie ´ des soeurs Flavie et Doroth´ee (1665).

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This division among the nuns over the formulary resulted in their physical separation. When Per first exiled the twelve nuns, he housed them ´ efixe ´ in other convents at the state’s expense. Later, he moved the rest of the recalcitrant nuns to Port-Royal-des-Champs where they were supervised by armed guards. This arrangement reflected the genius of finance minister Colbert, who not only trimmed the cost of supporting the nuns in exile but also found a way to garrison troops at Port-Royal’s expense. The arrangement also facilitated the division of the Port-Royal community across its two houses. In November 1665 the nine sisters remaining at Port-Royal-de-Paris elected Dorothy Perdreau abbess. Two years later, Louis XIV reclaimed his right of nomination at Port-Royal-de-Paris and declared Dorothy its abbess in perpetuity. For the sixty-four nuns living at Port-Royal-des-Champs, Dorothy’s nomination confirmed the tradition of equating the integrity of Angelique Arnauld’s reform with ´ Jansen’s defense. When the nuns at Paris betrayed Jansen, they also lost Port-Royal’s reform. Acts of Protestation and Appeals to Parlement When Per first came to Port-Royal to pressure the nuns to sign ´ efixe ´ the formulary, they resisted him in their individual meetings by arguing against his logic. At that time they also resisted this pressure by seeking allies for their cause in Parlement and among French bishops. In Parlement, the nuns sought aid from Gallican lawyers and judges by filing an appel comme d’abus. Their strategy followed that of the Gallican bishop Gondrin, who had upheld Arnauld’s argument about the five propositions by filing such an appeal in 1654 with the claim that the papal bulls against Jansen were setting a precedent for papal infallibility. The nuns similarly hoped to raise fears about papal infallibility, but they never mentioned this issue. Instead, in the report they included with their appeal they emphasized Per violence and disrespect for the law. For those familiar ´ efixe’s ´ with the current debates over Jansen, Per tyranny over these nuns ´ efixe’s ´ served as an image of the doctrine of papal infallibility in action. The nuns filed their appel comme d’abus immediately after Per ´ efixe ´ began removing nuns from the convent on August 26, 1664. Christine Briquet, who had not yet been removed from the house, composed the report accompanying the appeal and smuggled it out of the house with help from her family.102 Two themes dominate her report: the 102

Acte du 27 Aoust 1664. In Divers actes des religieuses de Port-Royal du Saint Sacrement Touchant l’Ordonnance de Monseigneur l’archevesque de Paris, par laquelle il exige la

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archbishop’s violence against the nuns and his open disdain for legal forms and procedure. No doubt she highlighted these themes to incite moral indignation among the judges, several of whom had female relatives at Port-Royal.103 Briquet’s report began by describing how the archbishop arrived at Port-Royal-de-Paris on August 26, 1664, at two o’clock in the afternoon, accompanied by various Church officials (his vicars general, the official of Paris, his chaplains, etc.) as well as by a police force represented by the lieutenant civil and several guardsmen.104 She described how these guards “have taken over the outside courtyard, and lined up in ranks with muskets on their shoulders, like an army would have.”105 In describing Per violence, Briquet focused on his treatment of ´ efixe’s ´ Agn`es Arnauld. When Per announced that she was to be removed ´ efixe ´ from the convent, the nuns begged him to spare her on account of her advanced age. They said that his violence was “excessive” and would make “orphans” out of them because at seventy-three years old, she could not possibly survive this ordeal: “We threw ourselves at his feet to tell him . . . that he was giving Mother Agn`es a death blow . . . and that it was putting a knife in her chest.”106 According to this account, the nuns’ pleas did nothing to stir Per sense of charity. Instead, ´ efixe’s ´ he became increasingly violent and irritable with them. When Agn`es took what he thought was an excessive amount of time to gather her belongings for the voyage, he said, “What, she doesn’t want to come? We’ve used enough gentleness; it is time to act differently. If she does not come willingly, four men will take her by the head and feet and she will indeed be made to leave by force.”107 Later, when Agn`es was in the doorway just about to exit the convent, she “humbly” asked Per ´ efixe ´ to tell her where he was taking her. Rather than answering her, he shoved her out the door: “He took her by the shoulder quite brusquely, and said to her harshly, ‘Go, go; it suffices that I know where you’re going.’”108

103

104 105 106 107 108

foy humaine du fait de Jansenius. Et les e´ tranges violences qui leur ont est´e faites en cons´equence de ce commandement (1664). William Ritchey Newton, “Port Royal and Jansenism: Social Experience, Group Formation and Religious Attitudes in Seventeenth Century France.” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1974), 265–274. Acte du 27 Aoust, 1664. In Divers Actes des Religieuses de Port Royal du Saint Sacrement, 19. Ibid. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 22.

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After Briquet recounted how Per violently pushed the elderly ´ efixe ´ Agn`es out the door, she described how Per then vented his anger ´ efixe ´ on other women in the house. When he was returning to the cloister, he came across three converse nuns in the hallway who were crying.109 He spoke to these nuns with much contempt: “Shut up, don’t cry any more, there is no reason for it; your mothers were taken from you only because they were disobedient and rebellious. We’ll give you others in was referring to were their place.”110 The new mothers whom Per ´ efixe ´ the nuns of the Visitation who had been recruited to take over PortRoyal’s direction in the absence of Agn`es Arnauld and the other officers in the house.111 These examples revealed Per violence, both physical and ver´ efixe’s ´ bal. In addition to stressing his violence, Briquet’s report also underscored his disregard for the law, for customary formalities, and for order. For instance, she described how when the nuns asked Per ´ efixe ´ to provide them with written copies of his orders, he responded to their requests with mockery and disdain, stating that his word was authority enough. In addition, immediately after the archbishop read aloud the names of the twelve nuns whom he was removing from the house, the nuns protested by declaring their intention to appeal. On hearing their declaration he responded, “What . . . you will appeal your archbishop’s decision? Take care; you’re only making things worse for yourselves. I laugh at such behavior; protest, appeal, do what you will, but you will obey me.”112 In this passage, he not only threatened retaliation against their appeal but he also mocked and laughed at it. When the Visitation nuns arrived an hour or so later to take over the direction of the house, the Port-Royal nuns protested that they could not accept women from an outside community as their superiors and declared themselves “appellants, all with one voice.”113 Once again, Per responded to their protest with disdain: “He said something ´ efixe ´

109

110 111 112 113

Converse nuns were lay sisters who served as servants in the convent. Because they participated in the spiritual routine of the convent and remained in the cloister, the line distinguishing lay sisters such as these and actual nuns was a thin one. Acte du 27 Aoust, 1664. In Divers Actes des Religieuses de Port Royal du Saint Sacrement, 24. These nuns came from the convent of Sainte-Marie housed in the Marais. Louise-Eugenie ´ de Fontaine was chosen among them to serve as Port-Royal’s abbess. Acte du 27 Aoust, 1664. In Divers Actes des Religieuses de Port Royal du Saint Sacrement, 20. Ibid., 24.

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mocking to us in reply, and had [the nuns of Sainte Marie] enter the convent while telling us to go to the chapter room.”114 After Per commanded the Port-Royal nuns in their chapter room ´ efixe ´ to submit to the leadership of the Visitation nuns, Briquet described how Michel Chamillard (the confessor for the Port-Royal nuns appointed by Per was waiting for them as they filed out of the room to convince ´ efixe) ´ some of them privately to accept their new leaders: “He took one of the nuns and had her come up to him so he could whisper in her ear, and after he put his hand on her shoulder, he was very affectionate with her and told her that he wanted to treat her favorably, and that this was why he had not removed her from the house.”115 After Briquet described how he pulled aside this nun in an overly intimate manner – who was no doubt herself – she insisted that she would never accept Mother Eugenie as her legitimate superior: “You well know, Monsignor, ´ that the first commission that you spoke aloud to this nun, and to others in this convent, without having listened to us, is worthless.”116 Spurned by her refusal, Chamillard slapped her: “He gave her a small slap, and then squeezing her hand he said further, ‘You are crazy. Your appeal is craziness, craziness.’”117 To this outburst she replied, As much craziness as you like, Monsignor. We will not fail to appeal our case today, and to protest that we only receive this nun because you order us to, without harming our appeal, which will continue, although she is in our house. This is why we will obey her in purely exterior matters, which do not go against our rules and our appeal. As for the rest, we will treat her as a guest, with the charity and respect that Saint Benedict, in his Rule, requires in the treatment of guests.118

Briquet stressed to Chamillard that it was not the nuns who were crazy, but the situation in which Per and he had put them. She said that ´ efixe ´ the nuns would accept Mother Eugenie only to the extent that her orders ´ conformed to their rule and their appeal. Otherwise, they regarded her only as a guest in their house. To these points, Chamillard responded with a laugh: “Ha, ha, you are talking to me about legal procedures, but you are [really] talking to me about chicanery.”119 Chamillard’s final laugh, after first trying to weaken Briquet’s resolve and then physically assaulting her, encapsulated the message and 114 115 116 117 118 119

Ibid. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 27. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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purpose of her report. Chamillard’s laugh represented the extent to which the nuns’ legitimate superiors had no concern for the violence and disorder that they were causing at Port-Royal. The laugh also represented the personal humiliation that these nuns had to endure in response to their good faith efforts to defend their consciences and their monastic rule. Just as Briquet found it impossible to reason with an unscrupulous confessor who responded to her reason with ridicule, the nuns as a whole found it impossible to seek justice from within the Church. Thus, finding themselves at a dead end, they were forced to turn to the secular courts. Therefore Briquet’s report not only described the course of events under which the nuns filed their appel comme d’abus but it also contained a carefully constructed narrative that justified the appeal by stressing that they were left with no other option. On September 10, the chancellor of Parlement approved the nuns’ appeal, thus indicating that the court would begin examining their case. However, on September 23, Per delivered an e´ vocation de conseil ´ efixe ´ to the Port-Royal nuns, signifying that the Council of State upheld his procedure against them.120 In addition, the nuns’ lawyer was thrown into the Bastille, and a penalty of 10,000 e´ cus was posted against anybody who tried to help their case.121 Nonetheless, the nuns renewed their appeal to Parlement on October 7, 1664, stating that Per had removed Port´ efixe ´ Royal’s novices on September 15, five days after Parlement had agreed to take the nuns under the “protection of the court” and a week before he obtained his e´ vocation de conseil.122 These appeals ultimately failed, however. The Council of State’s action sent the message that the king had no desire to see Parlement take up Port-Royal’s case. Parlement was neither strong nor willing enough to combat this direct pressure from the Crown to abandon the nuns’ case. Appeals to Nicolas Pavillon, the Bishop of Alet At the same time that the nuns were submitting their appeals to Parlement, they also sought help from the bishop of Alet, Nicolas Pavillon. They 120

121 122

Antoine Baudry d’Asson de Saint-Gilles, Plaise a` M. ∗∗ pour les abbess, prieures, et religieuses de Port Royal, appellantes comme d’abus. Contre Monsieur l’Archevesque de Paris, le sieur Chamillard Docteur, et autres, inthimiz (1664). Saint-Gilles was a solitaire at Port-Royal-des-Champs. Besoigne, 581. Requˆete des Religieuses de Port Royal du Saint Sacrement a nosseigneurs du parlement en la chambre des vacations (7 octobre, 1664) (1664).

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contacted him in letters sent via the noblewoman Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne-d’Avaugour de Vertus, companion to Anne-Genevi`eve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville.123 Longueville was one of Port-Royal’s female patrons and had close ties to Pavillon through her brother, Armand de Bourbon, duke of Conti.124 The nuns and their supporters were particularly eager to gain Pavillon’s support. He was a highly respected bishop with a reputation for deep piety. He had supported the formulary when it was first created in 1657, but then began wavering in this support by 1661. Born in Paris on November 17, 1597, the son of an administrator in the Chambre de Comptes and the grandson of a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris, Pavillon had a degree in theology from the Sorbonne and had been an assistant to Vincent de Paul (the future saint, who was canonized in 1737). He spent several years preaching in small villages, teaching in prisons, and tending to the sick and poor. During this time, he gained a reputation for his sermons and was invited to preach at court. His preaching impressed Richelieu’s niece, the duchess of Aiguillon, who recommended him to be nominated the bishop of Alet.125 By the time the General Assembly of the Clergy first issued the formulary in 1657, Pavillon had established his reputation as an erudite and pious bishop. In fact, people looked up to him as France’s model bishop, which is why, during the early debates over the formulary, the different factions worked assiduously to gain his support for their side of the conflict.126 On March 17, 1657, Antoine Arnauld submitted to Pavillon a text detailing his opposition to the formulary.127 Pavillon responded with a defense of the formulary in which he rejected Arnauld’s right/fact distinction and maintained that the pope had attributed the five propositions to Jansen not to claim infallibility on matters of fact, but simply to impose silence on the debate once and for all.128 Thus Pavillon was not a likely ally for Jansen’s defenders in 1657.

123 124 125 126 127 128

Emile Jacques, “Madame de Longueville: Protectrice de Port Royal et les Jansenistes,” ´ Chroniques de Port-Royal 29 (1980): 49. Ibid. 40. Pavillon had converted the prince de Conti to a more penitent lifestyle and helped mend ties between him and Mazarin. The duchess was one of the many people who had been impressed by Pavillon’s sermons at court. See the entry on “Pavillon” in Dictionnaire de Port-Royal. DeJean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 166. Antoine Arnauld, Cas propos´e a` M. l’Evˆeque d’Alet sur la bulle d’Alexandre VII et le formulaire du clerg´e (1657). DeJean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 168.

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However, when Pavillon received a copy of the formulary in April 1661, along with the king’s lettre de cachet ordering its circulation in his diocese, he did not comply. His reason for noncompliance was that the bishops who authorized the formulary had usurped the authority of a national council by ordering their peers to issue the formulary with a common injunction composed by them. Pavillon believed that the small group of bishops who met at court to compose the model injunction displayed all the signs of political intrigue and little of the characteristics of a national council.129 When critics accused Pavillon of contradicting his earlier position on the formulary, he responded that it was not the formulary itself that bothered him, but the procedure of its implementation. However, Pavillon was also starting to revise his earlier position on the content of the formulary. After his exchange with Arnauld in 1657, he began studying in earnest the questions of grace raised by the Jansenist debates, and he developed an appreciation for Saint-Cyran’s viewpoints.130 In 1663, he began a regular correspondence with Arnauld in which he showed his interest in defending Jansen. The nuns knew through private letters that 131 and that he also Pavillon sympathized with their resistance to Per ´ efixe ´ had not yet begun the process of circulating the formulary in his diocese. As far as his fellow bishops were concerned, however, he had made no public statement expressing his views on the formulary since 1661. Therefore, unless he stated his opposition publicly, his silence would be interpreted by his fellow bishops as tacit approval for Louis XIV’s 1664 edict reviving the campaign against Jansenism. In the hope of inspiring Pavillon to show public support for the nuns’ resistance, Angelique de Saint-Jean began writing to him detailing their ´ hardships. She contacted him via Mlle de Vertus, who served as her intermediary. In the first letter, sent in July 1664, she stressed that Pavillon’s silence on the king’s new command for signatures was directly harming the nuns. She explained that Pavillon was the authority that their oppressors were relying on the most to convince the nuns to sign: Chamillard, the confessor commissioned by Per to extract the nuns’ signatures, ´ efixe ´ had shown them a copy of the opinion Pavillon wrote on the bull of

129 130 131

Ibid., 182–3. Ibid., 171–3. Extrait d’une lettre du grand vicaire de M. l’Evesque d’Alet du 2 juin 1664. Copi´e sur l’´ecriture de la M. Ang´elique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly (copie´ par Mlle de Them BPR L.P., 388. ´ ericourt) ´

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Alexander VII and the formulary in 1657.132 She acknowledged that Pavillon formally concluded that one should subscribe to the formulary in this writing,133 but she went on to say that she knew that Pavillon had changed his mind on this matter since he wrote this text: “But we well know that several years have gone by since this was written, and that things have become infinitely clearer since then.”134 She added that the best evidence for his changed opinion was the example Pavillon had set by refusing to demand signatures to the formulary in his diocese in 1661. She then explained that Chamillard had complicated the matter by presenting the nuns with evidence that Pavillon had stated more recently that the nuns should submit to the formulary unconditionally. Chamillard tried to convince the nuns of this point by first rereading to them Pavillon’s entire avis (opinion) on the formulary from 1657. He then read to the nuns an excerpt from a letter by Pavillon in which he allegedly reaffirmed his original opinion. She explained that when the nuns asked Chamillard for the date of this letter, he replied that he could not give it because it did not appear on his copy. However, in an effort to “remove all suspicion for us, that this was no longer M[onsignor] d’Alet’s current feeling on the subject” he showed them a note from the cure´ of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet (the person who gave Chamillard his copies of these letters).135 This note confirmed that Pavillon, having been again consulted since the king’s declaration, and even about the signature demanded of the nuns of PortRoyal, had answered that he had nothing to say that he had not already said to M[onsieur] de St. Nicholas, and that he still had the same feelings on the matter.136 Angelique de Saint-Jean added that she had good reason to doubt ´ the accuracy of Chamillard’s account of Pavillon’s current opinions. In addition to his use of redacted letters without any dates on them, she 132 133 134 135

136

Pavillon’s reasons for supporting the formulary in 1657 are outlined in DeJean, Un prelat 177. ´ independant, ´ Angelique de Saint-Jean to Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne-d’Avaugour Vertus, “vers ´ Juillet,” 1664. BPR P.R. Lettres, 358. Ibid. The cure´ of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet was involved in this matter because Pavillon had published a letter addressed to him on September 20, 1661, outlining his reasons in the three letters he had written to the king, the General Assembly of the Clergy, and the bishop of Chalons. Pavillon published this letter because of his frustrations with the ˆ cure. ´ He had originally entrusted the cure´ with delivering his letter to the king, but the cure´ suppressed the letter instead. In the end, Pavillon had to ask the prince de Conti to deliver his letter to the king. Hermant, 5:305. Angelique de Saint-Jean to Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne-d’Avaugour Vertus, “vers ´ Juillet,” 1664.

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stated that she could tell from the bits and pieces that Chamillard read to her that Pavillon’s letter was at least two years old. She then went on to say that, although she had no trouble doubting Chamillard’s claims, other nuns seemed to be convinced by them. These nuns had become upset at the thought that Pavillon disapproved of their resistance to the formulary. She then explained how beneficial it would be for the nuns if Pavillon would speak up to clarify his position. First, she stated how Pavillon’s silence was painful for the nuns: “I do not know how to stop myself from feeling anything but the evil that they do to us by taking advantage of his silence to make us believe that he condemns us.”137 Next, she stressed how Pavillon’s support would aid the nuns: For our unity and resolve could no longer be called a cabal, as they are now, if we could show that a prelate as important as the one I have named, and even some of the most noteworthy ones in the kingdom, give us a rule by their example, which teaches us what we should do.138

Finally, she closed her letter by pointing out that Pavillon’s silence only worked to their persecutors’ advantage: “I hope that when the time comes, God will inspire this prelate [Pavillon] to speak out, since his silence has been so greatly taken advantage of.”139 Angelique de Saint-Jean implored Pavillon to speak up, not just for ´ the nuns’ sake but presumably for his own reputation, which was being manipulated and misrepresented by their opponents. Although this letter did not result in any immediate action on Pavillon’s part, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean knew from his private letters to Antoine and Henri Arnauld that he was interested in their case. Thus, when Per began formally ´ efixe ´ to discipline the nuns for their refusal to sign the formulary, she sent two more letters to Vertus, detailing the archbishop’s treatment of the nuns. Angelique de Saint-Jean’s letter of August 22, 1664, was a relatively ´ brief one in which she described Per punishment of the nuns. She ´ efixe’s ´ wrote that he had visited Port-Royal the previous day to chastise them for their refusal to sign the formulary. She said that he gathered the entire community in the parlor and “he showed us his extreme displeasure that we had not obeyed his orders.”140 He said that he had been patient 137 138 139 140

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean to Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne-d’Avaugour Vertus, August ´ 22, 1664, BPR P.R. Lettres 358.

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with the nuns up until that time, but now felt obligated to “change his conduct.” He met with them once more individually to determine each nun’s “final resolve.”141 She noted that these meetings went by so fast that “each person was there only for almost an instant.”142 After these meetings, he called the community together again and addressed the abbess “with unusual vehemence; respect prevents using other words.”143 He then turned to the group, declaring “that we were rebels, stubborn and disobedient women” and thus “consequently, unworthy and incapable of receiving the sacraments.”144 He said that he was prohibiting the nuns from receiving the sacraments until “he put our house in order, according to what he judged necessary and what God would inspire in him.”145 She wrote that, as soon as he finished these words, he rushed out of the room before the nuns could respond. While the nuns sat there “in shouts and tears” he quickly returned to the room to add “that he forbade us, on pain of disobedience, to see or speak with anyone from the outside, or to let anyone enter the house.” He then told the nuns that they were “as pure as angels, as proud as Lucifer, and as stubborn as demons.”146 Once again, he rushed out of the room, saying that they would see him soon. She closed the letter with a request for Vertus to keep them all in her prayers. The next day, on August 23, 1664, Angelique de Saint-Jean wrote ´ a second letter to Vertus, one that she composed specifically to be distributed and shared with others. She began the letter by saying that she had “extraordinary news” to tell and asked Vertus to share this news with “everyone who has some charitable feeling for us.”147 Whereas her letter of the previous day had contained a stark description of events in the house as they unfolded, this second letter was more literary in form. Angelique de Saint-Jean avoided unpleasant details and instead described ´ the nuns’ experiences according to themes found in Scripture. For example, to describe the impact of Per refusal of the sacraments to the ´ efixe’s ´ nuns, she compared the prohibition against the nuns’ taking Communion

141 142 143 144 145 146 147

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne´ d’Avaugour Vertus, August 23, 1664. BPR P.R. Lettres 358.

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with the experiences of the two disciples who met Christ during their walk to see Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35): Willingly would I say, that as it was for the two disciples at Emmaus, so it is also for us the third day since Jesus Christ has been in the tomb. No hope is given to us that He will rise from it again. On the contrary, M[onsieur] Chamillard wants to frighten us. He has said to some of us that we should no longer hope to take Communion, unless we resolve ourselves to sign the formulary. But God forbid that His body be given back to us on the condition that we crucify Him again in our hearts. Instead we will suffer and we will die with Him.148

Writing on the third day since Per refused the sacraments to the ´ efixe ´ nuns, Angelique de Saint-Jean compared the nuns to the disciples of ´ Emmaus, who only recognized the resurrected Christ at the moment when he broke the bread at supper and then “vanished” out of their sight. Like the disciples, the nuns were forced to give up the direct experience of Christ in the breaking of the bread at Communion for a situation where they could only know him from a feeling in the heart.149 In this way, she not only described the nuns’ suffering caused by Per denial of ´ efixe’s ´ Communion but also how this suffering had only brought Christ more intimately into their hearts. Angelique de Saint-Jean next reported how, on leaving Port-Royal, ´ Per had promised to return to “put everything in order.” She also ´ efixe ´ described how he said out loud in front of many witnesses to a “person of condition” who was with him that he was going to “push things to every extreme and that he would not be denied.”150 Angelique de Saint-Jean ´ commented, It is true that one could think he was not in control of himself when he said this, no more than one could when he spoke to us all earlier, but especially to our Mother Superior who will be able to share the joy of the apostles when they said to themselves that on the morrow, in doing their duty, they would joyfully return to face the council, because they had been judged worthy to suffer contempt and slights in the name of Jesus Christ.151

She took Per own claim that he wanted to push things to the ´ efixe’s ´ “extreme” to suggest that he was guided by vehement passion. To underscore the nuns’ humility in contrast, she compared their abbess to the 148 149 150 151

Ibid. Luke 24:30–2. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne´ d’Avaugour Vertus, August 23, 1664, BPR P.R. Lettres, 358. Ibid.

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apostles Peter and John in Acts 4, chapters 5–21, who received threats and intimidation from the council of Sadducees for preaching Christ’s resurrection. Angelique de Saint-Jean then turned to the question of the nuns’ inno´ cence. After alluding to Per insults to the nuns, she pointed out that ´ efixe’s ´ the nuns were prepared to endure much worse punishments: But what then are insults to those whom God is preparing for much harsher treatment? After the twenty years that we have constantly been the object of slander, we would hardly have benefited from His treatment of us had we not yet been prepared to suffer from more than words.152

She explained that the nuns were prepared to endure much worse because the treatment they received from Per only confirmed their commit´ efixe ´ ment to God: “We find consolation in the fact that at the same time we are accused of disobedience, we were never disposed blindly to obey anyone except God, whose law alone is without stain.”153 The nuns’ unwavering commitment to God in the face of duress was proof that the nuns were on the right path. She further justified the nuns’ position by describing how Per ´ efixe ´ ignored all proper forms and procedure while disciplining the nuns. She explained that all of his orders were carried out at once, verbally forbidding us all these things, with a great deal of authority, but without any formalities whatsoever, without leaving any written document behind, without any witnesses, except for the pages and lackeys who were close enough to the door to hear in what tone of voice and in what language our crime was exaggerated.154

To conclude the letter, she made a direct appeal to Vertus (and her other readers) to procure support from Nicolas Pavillon: All that matters to us is that He [Jesus Christ] does not abandon us now, and so we need the prayers of everyone who has access to Him; but above all we would ask that you should procure for us more than ever the prayers of the holy prelate [Pavillon], whose episcopal charity should not abandon the poor dispersed sheep that belong to the great flock for which he is one of the shepherds.155

Two days later, on August 25, 1664 Pavillon published a letter protesting the royal edict of April. This was the letter that the nuns had been 152 153 154 155

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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waiting and hoping for all summer. It was different from other protests in the nuns’ favor. Whereas other protests had defended the nuns by raising the specter of papal infallibility embedded within the doctrine of human faith, Pavillon avoided this argument out of necessity. To raise the alarm over papal infallibility now would have contradicted his 1657 defense of the formulary in which he rejected papal infallibility as the motive behind the five propositions. Instead of attacking Per mandement, ´ efixe’s ´ Pavillon spoke up directly against the king’s edict. In attacking the king’s initiative, he shifted the meaning and context of the nuns’ resistance from a struggle against papal power to one against royal power. For Pavillon, the threat at hand was not papal infallibility but unchecked royal power in matters concerning the Church. Pavillon began his letter by affirming the good faith that had been expressed between himself and the king in the past during previous controversies. He then turned to the subject of Jansenism by claiming that there was no such thing as a Jansenist heresy and that the Port-Royal nuns were innocent: The declaration, Sire, presupposes that there is a Jansenist heresy in your realm, which is gaining strength, which is capable of corrupting the faith and religion of your subjects, and which is the cause of the troubles in your State. Nevertheless, nothing can be truer than that this is pure supposition, because it is certain that there is no one capable of this so-called heresy.156

After stating that there was no Jansenist heresy, he went on to defend the innocence of those who refused to sign the formulary. He stated that the only people to refuse to sign it were those who had reasons to harbor doubt about a point of fact or who were completely ignorant: It is quite possible that people exist who refused to sign the formulary drawn up by the Assembly of the Clergy, and who refused to affirm in front of the whole Church, through an act as authentic as the formulary, that they sincerely believe a point of fact (to know whether five heretical propositions are in the book of a bishop who had always lived and who died in Communion with the Church) because they judged that they had evidence to the contrary, or solid reasons to doubt it; or indeed, because they had no knowledge of it, and because they are afraid of acting against their conscience by witnessing in a sort of oath, this fact as something certain.157 156

157

Nicolas Pavillon, Lettre de Monseigneur l’evesque d’Aleth au Roy au sujet de la d´eclaration de Sa Majest´e sur la signature du formulaire (25 Aoust, 1664) (1664), 1–2. Ibid., 2.

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Although he did not specifically mention the nuns here, it was clear that he was referring to them when he mentioned those who refused to sign Jansen’s text out of ignorance and out of fear of bearing false witness. Pavillon then went on to say that the king had overstepped his bounds in Church matters when he issued his edict. The charge was the boldest among Pavillon’s critiques of Louis XIV and the one that sparked the most controversy. He began by saying, “Sire, I beg Your Majesty not to judge the liberty I have taken as a bad thing, in assuring you that it would be creating a heresy in the Church by saying that these persons are heretics.”158 He explained that the king had assumed the right to discipline people for a matter that was purely spiritual and one for which the Church had not yet formally made its decision: Your Majesty would only have been able to order these punishments specified by the declaration after a definitive ecclesiastical judgment, since according to the doctrine and constant custom of the Church, it does not belong to the king and to secular powers to arrange purely ecclesiastical and spiritual matters.159

As for the authority of the bishops whom the king cited in his declaration, he wrote, “General Assemblies of the Clergy have no authority at all, nor do they have any legitimate commission to order it; special assemblies have even less authority.”160 His bottom line was that the formulary caused more harm than good: “Not only is this signature useless for bringing about peace in the Church, but it is this question of the signature that causes all the trouble and ruins the discipline of the Church.”161 It was useless because there was no such thing as a Jansenist heresy, and it “ruined discipline” because it represented an illegitimate use of authority on the part of the General Assembly of the Clergy and of the king. Pavillon did not specify that the treatment of the nuns was the reason he broke his silence in his letter to the king, but he credited their appeals in a private letter to either Antoine or Henri Arnauld for inspiring him to speak up to the king.162 In this letter, sent shortly after he published his 158 159 160 161 162

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 3. Ibid. Nicolas Pavillon, Extrait de deux lettres de M. l’Evˆeque d’Alet, a` Mr. Arnauld, sous nom de Liverdun. Touchant les Filles de P.R., et la d´eclaration du Roi sur le Formulaire (Aoust, 1664) In Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, I:503. DeJean cites the same letter from a copy housed in the Port-Royal collection in Utrecht. According to the copy held in this collection, the letter was addressed to Henri Arnauld and is dated September 6, 1664. DeJean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 185, n. 2.

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letter to the king, Pavillon wrote that he had received the news regarding the exile of the convent’s leadership: “I have received your last packet, where I found the letter the holy daughters [of Port-Royal] addressed to you. You can well imagine how I felt the repercussions of the pain you felt in hearing this wretched news of their dispersion.”163 After expressing his sadness on hearing the nuns’ news, he wrote that he felt sympathy for their struggle: In order to console you, I must tell you that God has seen fit to test us, as well as those holy souls [the nuns], by various contradictions . . . so that we may not forget to observe some very important points of Church discipline; and by His grace, we will not lose the courage to sustain that discipline according to our power, however it may be thwarted by secular powers.164

Pavillon stressed that he not only sympathized with the nuns’ struggle but that he too found himself experiencing “various contradictions” caused by the formulary. In 1664 both Pavillon and the nuns had found themselves in situations where it was impossible for them to remain consistent with positions made earlier during the formulary debates without directly opposing the king. The king’s efforts to create order via the formulary had only generated more disorder for both groups by confronting them with impossible commands. Pavillon then stressed, as the nuns had for many years, that all they can do is hope for God’s grace to turn these impossible situations into a form of positive discipline, one that would renew their determination to combat sin. After asserting his participation in the nuns’ struggle, Pavillon wrote that he had finally sent a letter to Louis XIV about the formulary: “I also inform you that I wrote a letter to the king, about the declaration, in which I express my feelings to him.”165 He stated that he did not know what would come from sending the letter (“Je ne sais quel en sera l’ev but that he felt it had been necessary to satisfy his ´ enement”) ´ conscience: “Whatever the outcome may be, it will let me discharge and satisfy my conscience.”166 He then ended the letter by stating his respect and admiration for the people of Port-Royal, especially the nuns: I will be very grateful if you assure these gentlemen, who so nobly support the side of justice and truth, how much I respect their worth and their virtue, 163 164 165 166

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 503–4. Ibid., 504.

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and if you assure the holy daughters [of Port-Royal] of my admiration for how the abundance of God’s grace manifests itself in the disposition He has given them.167

Pavillon left no doubt that, with his letter to the king, he had joined the nuns in their struggle and wanted to share in their suffering in the name of justice and truth. Pavillon’s prediction that he would soon join in the nuns’ suffering came to pass two weeks later. In mid-September, the king sent M. de Tressan, the Grand Prev ´ ot ˆ of the province of Languedoc, to extract Pavillon’s signature to the formulary under threat of losing control over the temporal income of his benefice.168 Pavillon refused to sign, declaring that he would gladly forfeit his income and even his life because doing so would only free him to focus more on spiritual matters.169 Pavillon’s alliance to the point of imitating the nuns’ pious example in resisting the formulary marked a major success for the Port-Royal nuns. To quote Jacqueline Pascal, “the nuns had acted like bishops,” and now – finally – the nuns had found a bishop who was willing to act like them. Conclusion When Angelique de Saint-Jean told Per that the doctrine of human ´ ´ efixe ´ faith had “reduced people to a strange extremity,” she was commenting on the immediate situation in which she was standing face to face with an archbishop who was in the middle of a temper tantrum. However, her comment could have also applied more generally to the dichotomy that had emerged between court and cloister: To the extent that Louis XIV was staking his claims to divine right monarchy on his opposition to Jansenism, his agents were scrutinizing the inner workings of the PortRoyal convent down to the level of the nuns’ individual consciences. Having reached these extremes, Louis XIV’s anti-Jansenist campaign began to falter. After the king shut the door on loyal opposition in the name of Gallican liberties by proclaiming himself the champion of these liberties, the only people left openly to resist the formulary were the 167 168 169

Ibid. DeJean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 186. This visit took place either on September 20 or 21, 1664. Nicolas Pavillon, Extrait d’une lettre de Toulouze du 29 octobre 1664. Cited in Dieudonne, ´ 51.

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Port-Royal nuns, who as cloistered women could not join their male allies in hiding to escape the double bind of either recanting their previous signatures or disobeying a royal command. Seeing no other option, the nuns repeated their previous argument that as ignorant women they had to refrain from passing judgment on Jansen. In the context of Per ´ efixe’s ´ command for signatures out of human faith, this resistance now had the force of defending women’s spiritual equality through a feminist paradox. Feminism had become the logical consequence of the nuns’ positions in the context of Louis XIV’s 1664 initiative against Jansenism. The nuns chronicled their resistance to the formulary in letters and journals that they shared with bishops and members of Parlement in an effort to cultivate their allegiance. These writings provided an opportunity for these men to reassert their defense of Gallican liberties, not by engaging the formulary but by engaging the more emotionally charged spectacle of women struggling to preserve their consciences and religious discipline against male authorities who had become corrupt and violent under Jesuit influence. When the highly respected bishop, Nicolas Pavillon of Alet, finally publicly defended the nuns, he spared them from the remarkable task of staking their individual selves to defend doctrinal truth and restored a patriarchal order in which saintly bishops set the examples for the Church’s daughters to follow. Pavillon’s alliance also set into motion the events that led to the Peace of Clement IX, which forced Louis XIV to abandon the formulary. The nuns’ feminism – which highlighted the contradictions of the king’s policies through the lens of gender – limited the king’s attempt to subject individual consciences to his personal rule and exposed a weakness in the edifice of power that he and Mazarin had built on the persecution of Jansenism. For some of the Port-Royal nuns, the heroic defense of their female consciences was an operation of divine grace. For others, it was the product of human self-interest. A group of nuns led by Flavie Passart – a nun closely involved in the Holy Thorn miracle – concluded that Agn`es and Angelique de Saint-Jean had become motivated more by politics than ´ religion in their opposition to the archbishop of Paris. Flavie and her followers signed the formulary, declaring that it was better to obey their archbishop than their disingenuous sisters. Per put these signing nuns ´ efixe ´ in charge of Port-Royal-de-Paris and sent the rest of the community to live at Port-Royal-des-Champs. When Louis XIV appointed one of the Paris nuns, Dorothy Perdreau, abbess in perpetuity in 1667, the two convents

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became permanently divided. The formulary crisis took its toll on the community by turning long-standing internal divisions among the nuns into a permanent schism. It also confirmed for the nuns at Port-Royal-desChamps their long-standing belief that there was no distinction between defending Jansen and defending Port-Royal’s reform.

6 The Unsettled Peace, 1669–1679

When Pavillon came under royal sanction for his letter protesting Louis XIV’s 1664 edict, he set in motion the events that led to the Peace of Clement IX (1669), which ended the formulary crisis. Louis XIV’s attempts to discipline Pavillon backfired when a group of French bishops – who had until then supported the king – balked when he asked Pope Clement IX to help him. The pope’s role in sanctioning Pavillon and the three other bishops who came to his defense sparked Gallican resistance among other French bishops to the point that Louis XIV feared they might revolt against Rome. To defuse the situation he began negotiations with the pope, the Gallican bishops, and Jansen’s defenders. These groups forged a compromise known as the Peace of Clement IX, which ended the formulary crisis by pardoning those who had refused to sign the formulary and silencing the debates over Jansen’s text. The king and pope heralded the Peace of Clement IX as a great achievement, but in reality, the call for silence on Jansen’s text did little to secure peace because Pavillon’s resistance to Louis XIV’s edict of 1664 had already shifted the Jansenist debates away from the five propositions and toward the problem of unfettered royal power in the affairs of the French Church. Fear of this royal power increased during the peace negotiations after Louis XIV nominated Dorothy Perdreau as abbess to Port-Royalde-Paris in perpetuity. When Clement IX confirmed this nomination, he also approved one of Louis XIV’s first ventures in seizing control of a Church benefice that had been previously exempt from royal control. Five years later, Louis XIV made this authority official with the declaration of the r´egale of 1673, which proclaimed his right to appoint officers 182

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to all vacant benefices, including those that were traditionally exempt from royal nominations.1 Pavillon renewed his critique of royal power after the declaration of the r´egale on the grounds that the king had compromised ecclesiastical reform. Clement IX’s successor, Innocent XI (r. 1676–89), supported Pavillon’s position and responded to Louis XIV’s 1673 declaration by creating a Congregation of the R´egale dedicated to blocking this initiative. Over the next decade, tensions between the Crown and pope escalated to the point that Innocent XI refused to confirm any candidate nominated by Louis XIV for episcopal office. By the time Innocent XI died in 1689 more than forty episcopal sees (nearly one-third of the total) in France were vacant, threatening to paralyze the administration of the French Church. The regalian rights controversy marked a new phase in the meaning and context of the Jansenist debates. Although usually treated as a separate affair, the controversy had its roots in the formulary crisis and, from the perspective of the Port-Royal nuns, who had never separated their reform from Jansen’s defense, was a continuation of the old quarrel. Before the Peace of Clement IX, these nuns had defended Jansen by resisting the formulary. In its wake, they defended their reform as Louis XIV sought to follow the precedent set at Port-Royal-de-Paris by appointing an abbess in perpetuity at Port-Royal-des-Champs as well. The Peace of Clement IX Because it ended the Jansenist conflict in 1669, the Peace of Clement IX was heralded by the king and pope as a great achievement.2 However, rather than genuinely solving the problems over grace, this peace was forged out of intrigue and stopgap measures calculated to silence the debates. Jansen’s defenders were responsible for much of the intrigue – holding secret meetings, composing letters of submission to the pope with obscure language that rivaled that of any casuist, and trying to conceal the contents of these letters at the same time that they submitted them to Rome. For his part, Pope Clement IX willfully ignored much of this subterfuge for political reasons. He needed peace not only to silence rumors that the French bishops were going to separate from Rome but also to help secure Louis XIV’s aid in protecting the island of Crete 1 2

Lossky, 205–7. Dieudonne, ´ ix.

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(which contained the historically significant diocese of Candia) from the Ottoman Empire.3 The Peace of Clement IX, therefore, was an illusionary solution to the problem of the five propositions forged out of political concerns. Nicolas Pavillon’s refusal to obey the royal edict of April 29, 1664, which commanded all bishops to collect signatures to the formulary in their dioceses, triggered negotiations that led to the Peace of Clement IX. Although Louis XIV did his best to intimidate Pavillon into following his commands, there was little he could do to discipline Pavillon because the edict never required signatures from the bishops themselves.4 In an effort to close this loophole, Louis XIV pressed Pope Alexander VII to issue a new bull demanding the bishops’ signatures to the formulary. This bull, Regiminus apostolici (February 15, 1665), renewed the call for signatures to the formulary and contained its own formulary that was essentially the same as that used before.5 When Parlement registered the bull on April 29, 1665, the chancellor Seguier gave a speech stressing ´ that no ecclesiastic was exempt from the command to sign it, not even “bishops or archbishops.”6 Although most bishops published the new bull and signed the formulary without incident, four bishops opposed the new formulary by including the right/fact distinction in their mandements. These bishops were Nicolas Pavillon of Alet, Henri Arnauld of Angers, Nicolas Choart de Buzanval of Beauvais, and Franc¸ois de Caulet of Pamiers. In addition to insisting on the right/fact distinction, these bishops also stressed that the new bull proclaimed papal infallibility by ordering faith on facts that were not the products of divine revelation.7 The king responded to these bishops’ signing with the right/fact distinction by asking the pope on November 7, 1666, to issue two papal briefs, one to condemn the mandements of the four bishops and one to grant permission to prosecute them.8 However, the pope delayed issuing these two briefs as a way to pressure the king to revoke the Sorbonne’s declaration against papal infallibility.9 According to Louis XIV’s ambassador in Rome, the pope 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ibid., 244–5. Ibid., 123–4. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 63. Rome had made it clear on an earlier occasion that the pope would regard a revocation of the Sorbonne’s censure as an invaluable service to him. Ibid., 41.

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“is less zealous about fighting this heresy than he is desirous of ruining the privileges of the Gallican Church.”10 After this period of strained relations, Alexander VII finally condemned the mandements of the four bishops in 1667 through the Congregation of the Index.11 When the order from the Index arrived in France on January 8, 1667, it became a catalyst for broader resistance to the formulary among French bishops. This resistance was delayed initially by the death of Alexander VII in March 1667 and by questions over whether his successor would renew his rulings.12 However, several months after the election of Clement IX in June 1667, nineteen bishops signed two letters (one to the pope and one to the king) outlining their discontent over how Alexander VII had condemned their four colleagues, emphasizing how the pope had violated the traditional liberties of the Gallican Church in his procedures. This resistance was notable: Since 1653, most bishops had gone along with the Crown’s policy of mutual cooperation with the pope in suppressing Jansenism because their fear of being labeled “Jansenist” had outweighed their concern for the liberties of the Gallican Church. By 1667, however, a distinct cohort of French bishops believed that the traditional liberties of the French Church were in peril. These bishops not only dared to speak up against the king’s policies but to support their case, they also willingly borrowed the arguments, especially those against papal infallibility, that had been forwarded by Jansen’s defenders over the past several years.13 Their resistance made it clear that Louis XIV had reached a limit in his campaign against the Jansenist heresy. The solidarity shown by these nineteen bishops for the four “Jansenist” bishops aroused fear that the French Church was on the brink of a schism with Rome akin to that which had happened in England. This fear, along with other concerns, prompted many, including the king and the pope, to begin searching for a solution to defuse the crisis. Secret negotiations for a peace agreement began in the spring of 1668 in the hotel of Mme de Longueville, largely on the initiative of M. de Gondrin, the archbishop of Sens.14 Gondrin convinced the king that the negotiations were necessary and that they must be kept secret from the most vehement anti-Jansenists in France. Among those at the meetings were Antoine Arnauld (who 10 11 12 13 14

Ibid., 67. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 125–7. Ibid., 158. These were not the only set of negotiations taking place at the time. Another set was going on at the same time in the Cardinal de Retz’s hotel in Paris.

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had been in hiding under Mme de Longueville’s protection) and Pierre Nicole. Also in attendance were several bishops with ties to Port-Royal: M. de Vialart of Chalons-sur-Marne (uncle of Madeleine Sainte-Agn`es de ˆ Ligny, Port-Royal’s former abbess); M. de Ligny of Meaux (Madeleine de Ligny’s brother); M. de Laval of La Rochelle (Laval’s mother, Mme de Sable, ´ was a patron of Port-Royal); and M. de Choiseul of Comminges (a close friend of Mme de Sable). ´ Mme de Longueville and her companion Catherine de Vertus, both patrons of Port-Royal, also attended these negotiations.15 The result of these negotiations was a plan for peace in which the four bishops signed a proc`es verbal declaring their submission to the pope that they attached to their signed copies of the formulary.16 In exchange, the pope would drop his demand that they retract their earlier mandements along with his sanctions against them for refusing to sign his formulary.17 However, this plan was difficult to execute because Pavillon resisted it up through early September 1668 out of fear that the proposed compromise was a “trap” for Jansen’s defenders.18 There was also a problem with the proc`es verbaux themselves, which had to express the bishops’ obedience to the pope without actually retracting the right/fact distinction contained in their mandements. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole tackled this problem by composing a highly nuanced letter that affirmed the text of their mandements but in ways that they hoped would elicit the support of the pope.19 Finally, when the proc`es verbaux were sent to Rome, there was the task of presenting them to the pope without raising suspicions. Once again, Antoine Arnauld took on the task of composing an obsequious but highly ambiguous “act of attestation” that a French ambassador presented to the pope as testimony to the four bishops’ sincerity in their submission to Rome.20 In addition to these challenges, those seeking to implement this plan for peace faced opposition from friends and foes alike. Among the “friends” were the “extreme” defenders of Jansen such as Abbe´ Le Roy, who once again critiqued Arnauld. In Le Roy’s opinion, the proc`es verbaux signed by the four bishops was a “shell game.”21 As for their “foes,” even 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Sainte-Beuve, 2:819. Dieudonne, ´ 173–4. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 164–5. Ibid., 173. Ibid., 234–5. Ibid., 174.

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though the peace negotiators were able to keep their activities secret from important anti-Jansenists such as Annat in France, they became public once the bishops’ letters of submission reached Rome. A movement of opposition within the pope’s entourage developed under the initiative of the Cardinal Albizzi, who characterized the peace agreement as a “trap” for the Holy See.22 However, the alarms raised by the pope’s closest advisors ultimately fell on deaf ears. Partly out of a genuine desire for peace in the Catholic Church and partly out of an immediate desire to satisfy Louis XIV who had requested this peace, Clement IX accepted the four bishops’ proc`es verbaux as a sincere mark of their obedience.23 On January 19, 1669, the Peace of Clement IX, which ended the formulary crisis and ordered silence on all debates over Jansen, was declared official. Port-Royal and the Peace of Clement IX Although the Peace of Clement IX was forged by members of the highest offices in the Church and state, this peace was only made possible by the cooperation of the nuns who had resisted Per At least, such ´ efixe. ´ was the opinion of those negotiating this peace. Soon after the peace process began, Mme de Longueville contacted Pavillon, urging him to insist that the Port-Royal nuns be included in the agreement.24 Pavillon made the case to his fellow bishops that the conflict of the nuns (and the Port-Royal theologians) was the same as his own and should not be kept separate.25 Pavillon’s position was supported by Gondrin, archbishop of Sens, who predicted that if the nuns’ conflict with their archbishop was left unresolved, it could be rekindled in the future.26 The other members of the assembly agreed that the nuns should sign a proc`es verbal and attach it to the formulary in the same manner as the four bishops.27 To this end, Antoine Arnauld sent a requˆete to the king on behalf of the nuns. 22 23 24 25

26 27

Ibid., 238. Ibid., 244. Pierre Guilbert, M´emoires historiques et chronologiques sur l’Abbaye de Port-Royal des Champs. 9 vols. (Utrecht, 1755), 1:18. Dejean, Un prelat independant, 217. Pavillon wrote, “How can we give the name of ´ ´ peace to an arrangement that will abandon those who fought best and suffered most in the war to the hostility and revenge of their enemies: the virgins who edified the Church with their courage, the theologians who enlightened and powerfully defended it with their excellent writings . . . They fought the war with us, you cannot make peace without them.” Guilbert, 1:18. Ibid., 1:19.

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As soon as Angelique de Saint-Jean learned of Antoine’s request to ´ the king, she wrote a letter of protest to him. In her letter of May 17, 1668, she wrote that, like Pavillon, the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs harbored doubts about the peace negotiations and worried that the settlement would merely serve as a trap: “We know very well that our enemies will never suffer to allow [this peace] to succeed.”28 She warned that, given this attitude of their enemies, any agreement to remain silent on the debate in the name of peace would simply silence the truth and allow error to spread unhindered.29 Furthermore, she argued that the four bishops, who were in a position to openly defend Jansen, should not compromise their authority by signing the formulary with a restrictive clause: I do not know how I have understood things up until now, but I have always held certain that the only people we counseled to sign with restrictions were those who we did not believe were strong enough to refuse it altogether; and that certainly doctors, principally those who have taken part in defending the truth of M. of Ypres’ [Jansen’s] book, should never sign with a restriction, having enough other avenues for enlightening the Church of their ideas on the subject of the five propositions.30

Her position reflected Antoine’s argument made to Le Roy in 1661 when he justified the inclusion of the right/fact distinction in the first mandement of the vicars general of the Cardinal de Retz. Arnauld had insisted that the restrictive clause was necessary for subordinates within the Church who could not defend Jansen on their own. Angelique de Saint-Jean insinuated ´ that, if the four bishops signed the peace agreement with this restrictive clause, they would be acting like nuns. As for the nuns’ role in the peace agreement, she admitted that they had always signed with the right/fact distinction in the past. However, she added that she had always regretted signing this way and only felt justified by it through her hope that doing so would add to the nuns’ suffering: Had I not bore with [the signature] such great hope that it assured me that the persecution against us would not diminish, and that it would lead to such public sufferings that nobody could doubt what our true sentiments were, and that 28 29 30

Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, May 17, 1668. BPR P.R. ´ Lettres, 358. Guilbert, 1:21–2. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Antoine Arnauld, May 17, 1668. BPR P.R. ´ Lettres, 358.

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malicious inventions could never take advantage of our signatures to distort our intentions.31

Angelique de Saint-Jean confided that she had accepted the right/fact ´ distinction only because it exerted a force of opposition in the context of the Jansenist debates. She never accepted the compromise it entailed at its propositional level of meaning. Her point was that she did not want to sign the formulary with the right/fact distinction because it would now have the effect of compromising Jansen rather than defending him. Antoine responded to her letter with reassurances that nobody would interpret the nuns’ signatures as a compromise on Jansen at this point. The nuns had suffered four years of persecution for making this distinction, and there was no reason to believe that anybody could doubt their belief in Jansen’s innocence. Thus the distinction had successfully worked to defend Jansen. Now, he argued, the time had come for it to serve peace: “I never would have been able to imagine, nor can I imagine now, that if the peace of the Church depended upon this manner of signature that one could refuse to sign in good conscience.”32 He added that, along with peace, Port-Royal’s future was at stake. Because the nuns’ refusal to support the peace was tantamount to seeking the convent’s destruction, he cautioned that “everyone who supports you now, would condemn you terribly if they knew that you were of this opinion.”33 Antoine’s arguments had little effect on the nuns at Port-Royal-desChamps. Throughout the formulary crisis, friends and family had tried to convince them to forego their resistance in the service of preserving their convent. Over the years the nuns had dismissed these pleas as forms of seduction sent to test their faith. After six years of persecution and four years of exile for refusing to compromise on the formulary, the nuns remained steadfast in their refusal to sign it. The nuns’ intransigence soon became a source of embarrassment for Jansen’s defenders when the four bishops, including Pavillon, agreed to sign the formulary with the ambiguous and highly obsequious proc`es verbaux. The nuns remained steadfast against the peace for an additional two years. Then, in what appeared to be a stunning reversal of their position, they signed a statement in February 1669 swearing adherence to the bishops’ agreement with the pope. In response, Archbishop Per ´ efixe ´ 31 32 33

Ibid. Antoine Arnauld to Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly. In Arnauld, Œuvres ´ 1:588. Ibid.

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issued a formal pardon that terminated his sanctions of the nuns and cleared them of his charges against them. The Peace of Clement IX could now be declared official. Port-Royal’s Division After vehemently opposing the peace agreement, why did the nuns at PortRoyal-des-Champs suddenly accept its terms? The answer to this mystery can be found in Angelique de Saint-Jean’s letter to Antoine, in which she ´ explained that she only signed with the right/fact distinction when she believed it would lead to Port-Royal’s persecution. By the time the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs agreed to the peace in 1669, they had become confident that their signature would not diminish their persecution. Louis XIV had already nominated Dorothy Perdreau as the perpetual abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris at the end of her triennial term in May 1668, and it was clear he was not going to reverse the nomination.34 He was also in the process of dividing Port-Royal into two separate communities. When the nuns signed onto the peace agreement in February 1669, they had already started taking legal action against these initiatives. Signing the peace agreement in February meant that, by the time Louis XIV would officially announce Port-Royal’s division one month later, the nuns would have already been pardoned and cleared of any wrongdoing. The peace agreement thus removed the king’s rationale for dividing the community and underscored the injustice of his initiatives. The only explanation left for the Crown’s violation of Port-Royal’s traditional rights and privileges was that the nuns were victims of an illegitimate use of authority. The nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs protested Perdreau’s nomination in the fall of 1668 by filing an act of opposition with the pope.35 They also petitioned their former sisters at Port-Royal-de-Paris to reject the king’s nomination with a formal declaration of protest and a letter. The nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs were under house arrest at the time, so they had a servant smuggle the two documents out of the house in secret.36 In the declaration of protest, the nuns at Champs critiqued the system

34 35

36

Brevet du Roi, May 18, 1668. BN F. fr. 15808. BN F. fr. 15808. Acte d’opposition en cour de Rome de la part des Abbesses et Religieuses de PR des CH. A tout ce qui pourront eˆ tre entrepris par la Sr. Doroth´ee ou autre contre la triennalit´e ou pour la division des deux maisons (October 18, 1668). Actes des Religieuses des Champs du 11 Juin 1668 envoy´e le 18 a` la Soeur Doroth´ee sur sa qualit´e pr´etendue d’abbesse, reprinted in Guilbert 1:108–16. These documents were hidden in a piece of furniture belonging to Sister Ther` ´ ese Collard, who requested a transfer to Port-Royal-de-Paris.

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of nominations for being rooted in worldly ambition. Women sought the position of abbess under this system because of their desire for “honor” and “individual advantage” and not because God had infused them with the “disinterested charity” that would make them “true mothers.”37 After stressing the inherent corruption within the system of royal nominations, the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs reminded their sisters in Paris that they were still bound to an act that they had signed on August 11, 1664 defending Port-Royal’s rights to hold elections.38 They then stressed that the conflicted status of Perdreau, in which she accepted a commission that she herself had protested, could only be a sign of God’s negative judgment toward her.39 After advising her to save herself “by voluntarily renouncing the charge that you have wrongly entered and the new nomination that will perpetuate your crime,”40 they reprimanded the nuns at Paris for allowing their personal failings to undermine the integrity of Port-Royal’s reform: The house that we grieve the ruin of is a spiritual temple built of living stones that elevates itself from day to day by a succession of people who would have served God there in holiness and justice across the many ages. You had already been placed . . . in this holy edifice, but having not remained firm in the truth, you have fallen from your place, and have created a breach to our union that allowed free entry to those whose only hope for the last thirty years has been to destroy down to its foundations a place over which they had not the slightest bit of control.41

When the Jansenist debates first erupted in 1640, Angelique and Agn`es ´ Arnauld had stressed the connection between the spiritual disposition of the nuns, the integrity of Port-Royal’s reform, and the defense of Jansen. They had argued that the nuns must embrace Jesuit persecution as an opportunity for spiritual renewal and to combat sin. The nuns at Champs now charged the nuns of Paris for failing in this task, arguing that when these nuns in Paris indulged their moral weaknesses, they exposed the entire convent to its enemies. The nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs also stressed how the Paris nuns ruined Port-Royal’s reform by losing their right to election: [The right to election is] the most important of our rights for that which deals with maintaining discipline and reform in our monastery, and that it should be 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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preferred without comparison above all else that is connected with the temporal, because the salvation of souls depends upon it.42

Gaining the right to elections had been the last step in Angelique’s reform. ´ The nuns at Champs now argued that this step was the most important one because elections were fundamental to the entire reform project; to lose this right meant to lose the entire reform in both its spiritual and temporal aspects. After her nomination in 1668, Abbess Dorothy Perdreau’s response to these appeals was to reject them and to petition the king to confirm PortRoyal’s division by legally separating the two communities. She asked the king to divide the convent’s property so that the nuns at Port-Royaldes-Champs would receive two-thirds of Port-Royal’s annual revenues (worth 30,000 livres in rentes) and the nuns at Paris would receive the remaining third.43 When Louis XIV announced Port-Royal’s division into two houses on March 12, 1669, he confirmed the financial arrangement proposed by Dorothy Perdreau.44 Port-Royal’s division remained a matter of tension between the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs and Louis XIV for the remainder of the century. Immediately after the king received the papal bull confirming Port-Royal’s separation of the two houses in September 1671, the nuns filed an appel comme d’abus with the Parlement of Paris. However, when the king’s council (the Grand Conseil) registered the bull in April 1672, Parlement dropped the nuns’ appeal.45 Port-Royal’s division confirmed for the nuns at Champs that they were victims of royal persecution. The formulary crisis, which had taxed their consciences, had ended, but was supplanted by an attack on the convent’s temporal holdings. Throughout the 1670s, the nuns at Champs fought a legal campaign to reunify the two communities in the name of preserving Angelique’s reform. They started backpedaling in the 1680s once they ´ discovered that Louis XIV too wanted to reunite the two houses, but 42 43

44 45

Lettre de Port-Royal-des-Champs a` Port-Royal-de-Paris, June 18, 1668, Guilbert 1:118– 21. Antoine Arnauld, M´emoire sur le partage qu’on pr´etendoit faire du revenue des Religieuses de Port-Royal entre le Monastere de Paris et celui des Champs, (December 1665). In Arnauld, Œuvres, 24:29. F. Ellen Weaver-Laporte, “Le Patrimoine de Port-Royal: Seigneuries, fermes, et rentes,” Chroniques de Port-Royal (2005), 41–50. The nuns’ appeal was against two errors that they detected. The first was the clause in the bull stating that both houses had requested the separation. The second error was the claim that Chamillard had performed the inquiry on the “commodite´ and incommodite” ´ of the division when in fact he had not. Journal de Port-Royal, 1679. UPR 10–13.

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by nominating the abbess of Paris to their house as well. From then on, the nuns at Champs remained on the defensive and fought against reunification as a way to preserve their system of elections. Jansenist Debates after the Peace, 1669–1679 The peace of Clement IX ended the formulary crisis by silencing the debate over Jansen’s propositions. However, once this thread of debate was suppressed, other threads associated with the Jansenist debates took on new prominence – most notably, the debates over moral theology because of the controversies over Pavillon’s commentaries on the 1614 ritual published by Pope Paul V, known as the Rituel d’Alet (1667), and over Port-Royal’s translation of the New Testament, known as the Nouveau Testament de Mons (1667). These controversies led to the publication of new editions of On Frequent Communion and of Saint-Cyran’s letters in the 1670s.46 The election of Cardinal Odescalchi as Pope Innocent XI also fueled these debates as he was known to sympathize with the self-identified “disciples of Augustine.”47 After his election, a delegation of theologians from the University of Louvain traveled to Rome to solicit condemnation of sixty-five propositions drawn from the writings of the Flemish Jesuit priest and theologian, Leonard Lessius (1554–1623). The pope set up a congregation to examine the theses, and on March 2, 1679, they were condemned for promoting moral laxity. Catholic polemicists were not the only ones to adjust their focus in the years following the Peace of Clement IX. The Crown too had dropped its demand for signatures to the formulary and began instead to assert its right of r´egale as a way to supervise the French Church. When Louis XIV came to power, the Crown had two privileges that gave the king influence over Church offices and the benefices attached to them. The first privilege was the king’s right to nominate officers to Church benefices. The pope then approved these nominations. The second privilege was the right of r´egale, which allowed him to appoint officers to administer these benefices in commendam (“in trust”) when vacant. However, these privileges, which had been spelled out at the Concordat of Bologna under Francis I in 1516, did not extend to “royally exempt” benefices, most 46

47

Emile Jacques, Les ann´ees d’exil d’Antoine Arnauld (1679–1694) (Louvain: Publications Universitaires et ed. ´ Nauwelaerts, 1976), 10. Saint Cyran’s letters were published under the title Instructions chr´etiennes tir´ees par M. Arnauld d’Andilly des deux volumes de Lettres de Messire Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, abb´e de Saint-Cyran. Jacques, 21.

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of which were female monasteries and the dioceses annexed by France at the end of the Italian Wars. In 1673, Louis XIV attempted to abolish these exemptions by issuing a “Declaration of the Regale,” which asserted ´ his right to administer vacant benefices throughout his realm.48 Included in this declaration was the command for all archbishops and bishops to make an oath of fidelity to the king within two months. Failure to comply meant that their benefices would be “declared vacant and obtainable for the r´egale.”49 The extension of the r´egale, although rooted in a long-held desire of the Crown to increase its control over Church properties, was made possible in part by the newfound strength of the monarchy under Louis XIV. The strategy, first adopted by Mazarin and Pierre de Marca, of cooperating with the pope to combat Jansenism had been a useful one for shoring up royal authority along with that of French bishops. This strategy had reached its effective limit during the formulary crisis, and Louis XIV adapted by turning his energies away from doctrinal matters and toward his privileges as seigneurial lord of France. Most bishops supported this move by signing the oath required by his declaration of the r´egale. Two bishops who resisted were Nicolas Pavillon and Etienne Caulet, both of whom had also resisted signing the formulary.50 As the bishop of a royally exempt diocese, Pavillon argued that the Declaration of the R´egale violated the traditional privileges of his office and of the Church more generally.51 His first petitions of protest were directed to his fellow bishops. However, when the only supporter he gained was Etienne Caulet, bishop of Pamiers, Pavillon took his case to Pope Innocent XI shortly after his election in 1676. Innocent XI supported Pavillon and Caulet’s resistance to the r´egale by creating a Congregation of the R´egale in Rome to combat Louis XIV’s new policies.52 Thus began a new alliance in which these so-called Jansenist bishops allied themselves with the pope against the king. The rest of France’s bishops responded by 48 49 50

51 52

Louis XIV, D´eclaration pour la r´egale, Feb. 10. 1673. Cited in Dejean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 231. Ibid., 231. Of 130 bishops in France only Pavillon and Caulet protested the r´egale. Victor Martin, Le gallicanisme politique et le clerg´e de France (Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1929), 298. Dejean, Un pr´elat ind´ependant, 249. Jean Orcibal, Louis XIV contre Innocent XI: Les appels au futur concile de 1688 et l’opinion franc¸aise (Paris: J. Vrin, 1949), 5. M. Dubruel, “Les Congregations des Affaires de France sous le Pape Innocent XI,” Revue ´ d’histoire e´ ccl´esiastique 22 (1926): 273–310.

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defending the king and by validating his policies in four articles, known as the “Declaration of the French Clergy” of 1682.53 Although the pope’s Congregation of the R´egale focused on the cases of Pavillon and Caulet, the other cases to fall under its jurisdiction dealt with female convents: the Cistercian convent of Notre-Dame-de-Charonne in Lorraine in 1673 and several convents of the Urbanists of Saint Claire in 1674.54 Louis XIV had appointed abbesses to these houses even though they had been practicing triennial elections. Both groups of nuns appealed to the pope, who then turned their cases over to the Congregation of the R´egale for consideration.55 Through these cases, female convents became centers of conflict for the regalian rights controversy. While the cases of Pavillon, Caulet, and these groups of nuns were under dispute, Louis XIV began devising secret plans to assert his right of nomination at Port-Royal-des-Champs. The king’s dispatches to his ambassadors in Rome reveal that, as early as 1676, he began blaming Joseph du Jansenists for ruining his relations with the pope.56 Sebastien ´ Cambout de Pontchateau (1634–90), the son of a wealthy noble family ˆ from Brittany and a long-time solitaire at Port-Royal, went on two diplomatic missions to Rome to lobby on behalf of the bishops Pavillon and Caulet and the Port-Royal nuns. He chronicled the king’s suspicions in his journal: “[The king] blames Jansenists for the pope’s steadfastness in refusing those things that the king wishes from him.”57 Fueling the king’s suspicions of a new Jansenist plot was Port-Royaldes-Champs’ rapid growth in the early 1670s. Several of the solitaires who had gone into hiding during the formulary crisis moved back to the convent farm to resume their studies and communal living practices. Many of Port-Royal’s patrons abandoned their apartments at PortRoyal-de-Paris to build or visit new ones at Port-Royal-des-Champs. These patrons included Mme de Longueville, Mlle de Vertus, the duke and duchess of Liancourt, the princess Guem e. ´ en ´ ee, ´ and Mme de Sevign ´ ´ Among those to visit the nuns and their patrons were the Cardinal de Retz 53 54 55

56 57

Martin, Le gallicanisme, 313. Dubruel, 278–9. Dubruel, 279. Martin, Le gallicanisme, 307. R. Bocquet, “Louis XIV et le droit d’election ´ dans les monast`eres des Clarisses Urbanistes,” Bulletin de Litt´erature Eccl´esiastique 51 (1950): 41–58. Aime-Georges Martimort, Le gallicanisme de Bossuet (Paris: Editions du ´ Cerf, 1953), 363–4, 481–2. ˆ Bruno Neveu, S´ebastien Joseph de Cambout du Pontchateau (1634–1690) et ses missions a` Rome (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1969), 159. Jacques, 10–31. Neveu, 159.

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and the bishops of Beauvais, Angoulˆeme, Chalons, Meaux, Grenoble, La ˆ Rochelle, and Tournai. The Oratorian priests Pasquier Quesnel and Jean Joseph Duguet, who went on to become Jansen’s most vigorous apologists at the turn of the century, also began visiting the convent in these years.58 Even though Louis XIV tried to keep his plans for Port-Royal’s destruction secret, his cousin Mme de Longueville found out about them and was able to deflect them for two years.59 Yet shortly after her death on April 15, 1679, these plans went into motion. In May, the new archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Champvallon (Per had died in 1671), sent a ´ efixe ´ group of archers to the convent to remove the pensioners and postulants. Archbishop Harlay claimed that he was removing these girls to bring Port-Royal into compliance with a recent law issued by the king limiting the population of convents to fifty women.60 By August 7, the nuns had learned from “a good source” that the king wanted to appoint an abbess to Port-Royal-des-Champs.61 Indeed, on August 18, 1679, Louis XIV sent a m´emoire to his ambassadors to request permission from the pope to assert his right of nomination at Port-Royal-des-Champs.62 Jansen’s critics had long denounced Port-Royal as a “nest” of error, and Louis XIV’s m´emoire elaborated on this metaphor by describing how the nuns nurtured heresy by recruiting potential Jansenists and by providing material support for those already allied to the movement. He described how the Jansenists who had recently built new apartments at Port-Royal were using the nuns to lure potential families to Jansenism by first recruiting their young daughters as pensioners. These apartments had been built to house more than fifty pensioners so that they could “draw their families into their camp.”63 Louis XIV explained that the Messieurs (i.e., solitaires) called themselves “disciples of Augustine” as a way to make these families more receptive to the religion practiced there. These families then became “seized by the spirit of the ninety-three nuns who made up the convent.”64 According to this account, the nuns served 58 59 60

61 62 63 64

Saint-Beuve famously refers to this period of growth as Port-Royal’s “Autumn.” SainteBeuve, 3:27. Neveu, 172. The nuns sent an appeal to the archbishop stating that they had the same number of nuns as the king had allowed in 1669 and that there was no reason for now reducing the size of their community. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Sebastien Joseph de Cambout du ´ ´ Pontchateau, August 7, 1679. BPR P.R. Lettres 358. ˆ Neveu, 171. Ibid., 486. Ibid., 487.

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as the gateway for the movement. They lured potential families into the Jansenists’ midst under the pretense of educating their children and then infected them with a false religious zeal that prevented their escape. The king included in his m´emoire, a list of eight maxims that characterized the nuns’ fanatical religion. These maxims had been taught to the nuns by their “former directors,” who used examples from ecclesiastical history and Scripture to justify their rebellion against the pope. The first maxim was the notion that the nuns “should not be surprised” that recent popes erred in condemning Jansen because in the past “Liberius, Honorius, and several other popes had fallen into heresy.”65 Another maxim stated that the nuns were not required to follow the pope, their archbishop, and “all the others who were in error” because Christ taught them that “a blind man who lets himself to be led by another blind man will roll into the precipice with him.”66 In addition to detailing how the nuns fostered a religious environment conducive to heresy, the m´emoire also stressed that the nuns provided material support for established Jansenists. The king described how the nuns sacrificed their religious observances to cater to “several secular ladies who were associated with their conspiracy and who had built several large houses around and inside this monastery.”67 In addition to these women, there were also “a great number of men” who built large houses and who “were almost all fed, laundered, and maintained as pensioners or otherwise by the same nuns, which consumed their time considerably.”68 Thus the m´emoire charged that the Port-Royal nuns had been reduced to servants for members of the Jansenist sect. In these ways, the convent “nourished” a “fire capable of causing much trouble over time and under a reign with less authority than his [Louis XIV’s] own.”69 Louis XIV argued that the only way to destroy this conspiracy down to “its least remains”70 was to reduce the number of pensioners, remove their confessors, and to nominate an abbess of his choosing to direct the house. He acknowledged that his father, Louis XIII, had agreed to relinquish his right of nomination at Port-Royal in 1629, but stressed that this agreement had been made when Port-Royal was “in perfect submission to all of the church’s orders” and before Saint-Cyran 65 66 67 68 69 70

Ibid., 488. Ibid., 489. Ibid., 488. Ibid. Ibid., 487. Ibid.

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had introduced his “new doctrines” there.71 Now that the convent had fallen irreparably into error, the only way to salvage it was for the king to regain his right of nomination. As soon as the nuns learned of this m´emoire they commissioned Pontchateau to plead their case before the pope. Angelique de Saint´ Jean, (who had been elected abbess in August 1678) wrote him a letter on September 4, 1679, describing what happened when Archbishop Harlay came to remove the pensioners and postulants. This narrative, like so many of those composed by the nuns during the formulary crisis, stressed the injustice and inhumanity of their male superiors’ actions. She described how the men removing the pensioners made the same mistake as those did in 1661 of removing girls who had recently taken the habit.72 She also described how they removed the nuns’ confessor at a time when their prioress was extremely sick and was very likely to need her last rites. In spite of her desperate situation, the archbishop refused to let their confessor stay and then dragged on the process of installing a new confessor by rejecting all of the candidates proposed by the nuns. When the archbishop finally did send a confessor to them, the confessor came “full of repugnance” for the nuns.73 After relaying this information to the pope, Pontchateau sent an account of his papal meeting to the nuns on September 13, 1679. He said that the pope showed much sympathy for the nuns’ situation.74 When he told the pope that imposing a royally nominated abbess would go against “your rights that had been confirmed by the pope and the king himself,” the pope requested a copy of Port-Royal-des-Champs’ constitutions (the customary practices and procedures developed by an individual convent in its observance of the monastic rule).75 After promising to oversee the translation of the constitutions into Italian for the pope, Pontchateau pledged to help the nuns solicit papal protection should Louis XIV push his persecution of them any further. Louis XIV was furious when he learned that the nuns had contacted the pope and received this favorable response from him.76 On October 26,

71 72 73 74 75 76

Ibid. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly to Sebastien Joseph de Cambout du ´ ´ Pontchateau, September 4, 1679. BPR P.R. Lettres 358. ˆ Ibid. Neveu, 491. Ibid., 492. Ibid., 174. In a letter to Archbishop Harlay on October 17, 1679 M. Rose, the royal secretary, wrote, “[The king] is scandalized by the nuns’ secret communications with the pope as if they were a tacit revolt . . . ” Ibid., 175.

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1679, he sent a personal letter to Rome requesting the pope’s sanction of his right of nomination at Port-Royal: I would not seek to return to it [the right of nomination] if this was only a matter of my own interest. But since returning these nuns under perpetual abbesses, who are not engaged in the liaisons and maxims that elections has thrown them into, is absolutely of great consequence for the good of religion throughout my domain, I swear that the deepest wish in my heart is to see myself reestablished in the enjoyment of this right. I thus, supplicate His Holiness by this letter in my own hand [emphasis in original] to allow the harmony between his authority and the justice of my request to receive his favor.77

Louis XIV stressed that his request was not motivated by personal or secular reasons, but that he wanted to safeguard religion in France. However, by arguing that the “elections” had “thrown” Port-Royal into dangerous “liaisons and maxims,” Louis XIV suggested that this particular form of governance favored error, whereas the royal right of nomination, in contrast, was an effective tool for preventing heterodoxy. By saying that the protection of religion was the deepest wish in his heart and that he was writing in his own hand, Louis XIV evoked the concept of a unified heart and hand, or concordia, to stress his sincerity. His reasoning and his declaration of sincerity, thus, gave the right of nomination – the royal power under dispute in the regalian rights controversy – a powerful boost by grounding it in his moral imperative as king to prevent heresy. Innocent XI’s response to the missive was to request that the king agree to give the Port-Royal nuns a chance to respond “to that which he had alleged on their subject.”78 This refusal of his personal request prompted Louis XIV to insist further on Port-Royal’s danger as a center of heresy. Over the next several months, as the pope continued to review PortRoyal’s constitutions, Louis XIV sent numerous letters to his ambassador in Rome exhorting him to push the pope to support his rights on PortRoyal’s nomination. These letters became more urgent in tone; the king wrote that “this affair . . . is of extreme consequence for me in my efforts to uproot such novelties from my kingdom,”79 and he needed “to cut off the head of a hydra that has done nothing but sprouted too many others for nearly thirty years.”80 The king’s letters also grew impatient in tone: In a letter to his ambassador on November 9, 1679, he even threatened to assert his right of nomination without the pope’s permission: “You also 77 78 79 80

Ibid., 177–8. Ibid., 180. Michaud, 420. Ibid., 421.

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tell Cardinal Cibo that if the pope persists in this very strange resolution and refuses me this grace that I ask of him to reestablish this abbey to the same state that it was in before the year 1629, then I will not be able to stop myself from using my right.”81 Louis XIV’s efforts to push his regalian rights through Port-Royal and other cases met with strong opposition from Rome. The pope sent him several briefs condemning his conduct, including one dated December 27, 1679, threatening the king with excommunication.82 After receiving this last brief Louis XIV decided not to follow through with his threat of taking over Port-Royal and instead responded with an impatient letter on January 23, 1680, emphasizing his desire to do what was best for the Church: “I am waiting for your response to my dispatch of . . . November, for changing the status of the abbey of Port-Royal-desChamps . . . [a change that is] absolutely necessary for the good of religion and for removing all seeds of renewal that might foster division over a matter that is as important as that of grace.”83 Louis XIV’s efforts to use the threat of Jansenism to persuade the pope to sanction his right of nomination at Port-Royal, and potentially at other convents, failed. The nuns went ahead with their next elections in August 1681, albeit with apprehension. Delays on the part of Archbishop Harlay to authorize their elections for a week after they were due caused them to fear that he would not let them take place84 When the elections finally took place on August 7, 1681, they described them as “miraculous.”85 Nevertheless, for the remainder of the decade, every time elections were due to be held, the nuns worried that the king would ban them and assert his right of nomination. However, largely because of the breakdown of diplomatic relations between France and Rome, the king never asserted this right.86 A Time for Renewal When Louis XIV began arguing in 1679 that he should reassert his right of nomination at Port-Royal-des-Champs, the nuns adopted two 81 82 83 84 85 86

Neveu, 182. Lossky, 206–7. Michaud, 428. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 198. Ibid., 199. Neveu, 626–7. Pontchateau also continued to lobby hard for Port-Royal-des-Champs in Rome in these years.

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strategies. As mentioned earlier, one was to turn to their agent, Pontchateau, to defend their interests in Rome. The other strategy was to embrace this persecution as an opportunity to rededicate themselves to Angelique Arnauld’s reform. This spiritual renewal at Port-Royal was ´ largely initiated by Angelique de Saint-Jean on her election as abbess in ´ the summer of 1678. Her election took place shortly after rumors of Jansenism resurfaced in polemical texts, and in response to these rumors, from September 1678 through March 1680 she delivered a series of commentaries on Port-Royal’s constitutions to her fellow nuns.87 In her discourses, Angelique de Saint-Jean stressed the same themes that ´ her aunt had stressed in the earliest years of the Jansenist debates: “the return to a strict observance of the Rule, devotion of the Eucharist, and the teachings of Saint-Cyran and his successors on penitence and grace.”88 When she finished her commentaries on the constitutions, she followed them with a series commenting on Agn`es Arnauld’s Instructions . . . given to the nuns on how they should conduct themselves in the event of a change in government to the house (Avis . . . donn´es aux religieuses sur ˆ du changement la conduite qu’elles devaient garder au cas qu’il arrivat dans le gouvernement de la maison) in the spring and summer of 1680.89 Then, from July 1680 until 1682, she delivered a series of discourses on the Rule of Saint Benedict.90 In a letter to Antoine Arnauld, one of the nuns described Angelique de Saint-Jean’s campaign for spiritual renewal: ´ “It is apparent that God has revived in her the spirit of Mother Angelique ´ and Mother Agn`es.”91 These devotional discourses, many of which were printed in the eighteenth century, reveal how Angelique de Saint-Jean sought to use Port´ Royal’s persecution to inspire her fellow nuns to rededicate themselves to their reform. In referring to events such as the removal of the postulants and Antoine Arnauld’s departure into exile (he moved permanently to the Netherlands in 1679), she stressed that these were opportunities for the nuns to abandon their worldly fears, to embrace the possibility 87 88 89 90

91

Carr, Voix des abbesses, 178. Ibid., 178–9. Abbess Agn`es Arnauld composed these instructions in June of 1664. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Discours de la R´ev´erende M`ere Marie ´ Ang´elique de Saint-Jean, Abbesse de Port Royal des Champs, sur la R`egle de Saint Benoˆıt. 2 vols. (Paris: Charles Osmont [et] Charles-Jean-Baptiste Delespine, 1736). In addition to these three cycles, she delivered numerous other discourses, most notably her mis´ericordes, or prayers for deceased nuns and their families. Carr, 174. Jeanne de Sainte-Domitille Personne to Antoine Arnauld, December 31, 1678. Cited in Carr, Voix des abbesses, 173.

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of persecution, and to protect Port-Royal’s reform, especially its right of election.92 It is not surprising that Angelique de Saint-Jean stressed the importance ´ of elections in all three series of discourses, as that was the primary issue over which the nuns fought with Louis XIV. For instance, in her first commentary on the Benedictine Rule, which concerned Saint Benedict’s preface to the rule, Angelique de Saint-Jean focused on the problem of ´ the commenda (the practice of appointing a cleric or layman to a vacant Church office to manage its funds). She began by discussing the concept of obedience, pointing out that Benedict wrote his rule to define and establish obedience for those adopting the religious life. She exhorted her nuns to follow the Benedictine Rule because “obedience is the character and the mark of God’s children.”93 She added that this obedience was not meant to be oppressive, but was liberating, and by submitting to the rule, they submitted themselves entirely to God and to His justice. To illustrate this freedom, she contrasted it with the evils that accompanied the commenda. First, she described how the commenda came about because of the early successes of the Benedictine Rule. The rule inspired the faithful to pour their money into monasteries to the point that these communities became extremely wealthy: We saw [the rule] extend throughout all Christendom; and then the piety of the faithful seemed inspired by emulation to found monasteries, so that they deprived themselves in order to enrich these holy houses; in such a way that the riches of the world poured like a flood into this order.94

Once these houses became wealthy, they became prey to material corruption: “But alas! What then happened! The riches of the earth took the place of the riches of Heaven.”95 Virtue was undermined, and “base and human interest” replaced “holy poverty.” The effect of this reversal of morals was the decline in the number of monks and the introduction of commendatory abbots: “The revenue of these abbeys, which were destined to nourish the poor of Jesus Christ were given instead to the commendatory abbots.”96 In other words, the commenda arose out of the loss 92 93 94 95 96

Ibid., 184. Angelique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Discours . . . sur la R`egle de Saint Benoˆıt ´ (Paris: Charles Osmont [et] Charles-Jean-Baptiste Delespine, 1736), 1:4. Ibid., 1:17. Ibid., 1:18. Ibid.

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of discipline among abbeys, and rather than being free, the Church was oppressed and exploited by commendatory abbots. Angelique de Saint-Jean then cautioned her nuns that the threat of ´ corruption remained and that they must stay perpetually vigilant not to allow it to infiltrate their ranks: We ought to fear this [unruliness] for ourselves very much and to understand that the world cannot corrupt us, but that the source of any corruption will derive from ourselves by allowing the spirit of the world to enter into the monastery. May each nun think for herself, out of fear that if she neglects herself in the slightest thing, that she might give entry to the enemy.97

Although she spoke generally of the history of the Benedictine order, her comment on the individual responsibility of each nun to shut out “the enemy” resonated with Port-Royal’s more recent history. Her call for each nun to now “think for herself” closely paralleled the language the nuns used in their act of protest of June 11, 1668, in which they admonished their sisters at Port-Royal-de-Paris for “creating a breach to our union” that allowed “free entry” of Port-Royal’s long-term enemies de Saint-Jean delivered this discourse in into the convent.98 Angelique ´ July 1680 just after the nuns had learned that the king had nominated Archbishop Harlay’s sister abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris and had talked about nominating her to Port-Royal-des-Champs as well.99 Therefore, her cautionary words were calculated to fortify the nuns against the threat of royal nomination that they all felt at this time. Her comments on chapter sixty-four of the Benedictine Rule (the chapter on elections), which she delivered on August 13, 1681, just days after her reelection, affirmed the superiority of the triennial election system. She stressed that elections should be a time of renewal in convents. She also discussed the progression of government among the ancient Hebrews, explaining that before there were kings, God gave His people judges. These judges came to exist “according to [God’s] pleasure” and “in no way entered into their charge by [hereditary] succession, by ambition, nor even by the will of the people.”100 During this period, “it was the glory of his people to not be dependent on anybody but God alone.” However, in time, the Israelites wanted to “be like other nations” and put their 97 98 99 100

Ibid., 1:18–19. Gilbert, 1:108–16. Sainte-Beuve, 3:187–8. Carr, Voix des abbesses, 306.

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confidence in men by “demanding a king.” When they did this, “they lost their advantage of being subject only to God.”101 After affirming the superiority of judges in this way, she asserted that elected abbesses are like judges: “God chooses them according to his pleasure, and they are in no way chosen because of rank or dignity.”102 These abbesses “represent the authority of God who remains the only master.” She added that nuns are at risk of behaving like nations and subjecting themselves to the human qualities of their leaders. She warned that, God “who is just,” will give them “a government similar to that which the spirit of ambition and of the world has established.”103 She affirmed that the nuns needed continuously to renew themselves at the time of elections to prevent the more corrupt form of human government – in this case, the system of royal nominations – from taking over the convent. Angelique de Saint-Jean’s discourses, which called for spiritual renewal ´ and a commitment to triennial elections, were the antithesis of Louis XIV’s dispatches to the pope. Louis XIV argued that elections were a vehicle for heresy that allowed the nuns to maintain their dangerous “liaisons and maxims.” The only way to prevent these dangerous people and ideas from gaining power and spreading in his realm was to nominate an abbess to Port-Royal-des-Champs who would eradicate the errors perpetuated in the convent. In contrast, Angelique de Saint-Jean cited royal ´ nominations and the commenda as avenues of corruption within abbeys. Elections were a superior form of government as they placed the nuns firmly within God’s directives and shielded them from the corruptions of the material world. Conclusion For the Port-Royal nuns, there was no break between the end of the formulary crisis and the beginning of the regalian rights affair. By the time the nuns signed the formulary as part of the Peace of Clement IX, Louis XIV had already renewed his attack on the convent by dividing it into two houses and by appointing an abbess to Port-Royal-de-Paris. Port-Royal was one of the king’s earliest targets for extending the r´egale, and, after his relations with the pope deteriorated, the nuns’ Jansenism 101 102 103

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 307.

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became one of his excuses for justifying his regalian rights. Louis XIV tried to forge an agreement with Innocent XI over this controversy by upholding Port-Royal as an example of why he had to extend the power of royal nominations. The pope was not persuaded, however, and rather than cooperating with the king to destroy Port-Royal, he protected the nuns as a way to undermine and infuriate Louis XIV. One common theme in the decade following the Peace of Clement IX was the belief that the Jansenist problem could not be resolved without attending to the Port-Royal nuns. Those who met in secret to forge the peace process included the nuns in the settlement out of a belief that the formulary crisis would reignite if the conflict at Port-Royal remained unresolved. Ten years later, Louis XIV similarly argued in secret dispatches to Rome that the nuns had to be dealt with to end the Jansenist conflict permanently. For him, Port-Royal represented the last head of the hydra of heresy. He wanted to destroy the reform Angelique instituted under ´ Saint-Cyran by appointing an outside abbess to govern the convent. As the consensus emerged among all those involved in the Jansenist conflict that Port-Royal was a tinderbox that could reignite the flames of controversy, the nuns became more insistent than ever that the cause of truth was inseparable from Port-Royal’s reform, especially its system of elections. At the same time as Louis XIV focused his energies on abolishing these elections, which allowed heresy to persist in his view, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean revived her aunt’s memory by exhorting her nuns to embrace this persecution as an opportunity for spiritual renewal.

7 A Royal Victory, 1679–1709

Throughout the regalian rights controversy, Port-Royal was able to thwart Louis XIV’s efforts to impose a commendatory abbess in the 1670s and 1680s by appealing to Pope Innocent XI for help. Relations between Church and Crown were at their worst during Innocent XI’s reign, and it was not until after this pope’s death that Louis XIV was able to begin mending relations with Rome under his successors Alexander VIII (1689–91) and Innocent XII (1691–1700).1 In 1693, Louis XIV and Innocent XII finally reached an agreement in which the pope confirmed forty-three bishops nominated by Louis XIV in exchange for the French bishops’ renunciation of the Gallican articles of 1682.2 Louis XIV and the bishops capitulated on these articles because of the crippling effect the vacant sees had on the Crown’s ability to raise funds for its war chest and on the Church’s ability to administer these dioceses.3 The international and domestic concerns that led Louis XIV to settle with the pope were among a host of problems that plagued him in the 1690s and 1700s. In these final decades of his reign, Louis XIV’s hold over France weakened noticeably, and the fault lines of both old political conflicts and new economic tensions began to reveal themselves.4 This 1 2 3

4

Lossky, 216–17, 279–80. Ibid., 280. These handicaps were becoming urgent problems as the threat of war brewed in the Mediterranean and a subsistence crisis hit France in the 1690s. Lossky, 251. Louis XIV also needed papal support for his grandson’s bid to become heir to the Spanish throne at the expense of the Hapsburg candidate supported by Queen Maria Anna of Spain. Lossky, 257–60. Ibid., 282–3.

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crisis in royal authority also resonated in the realm of literature and culture. As Joan DeJean has demonstrated, the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries was the first modern fin de si`ecle, one marked by a “continual climate of intellectual confrontation that not only brought about new ideas about human psychology and emotions but also introduced the notion of a public sphere.5 ” The Acad´emie franc¸aise, which Richelieu had established in 1637 to monitor the republic of letters, was being eclipsed by a new “public” made up of independent readers.6 This public was no longer “[represented] as a harshly judgmental power, but as a potentially beneficent force to be appealed to and well worth winning over.”7 Absolute power was quickly losing its hold over publishing with the rise of the public sphere. The struggle between the nuns of Port-Royal-de-Paris and the nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs over control of the convent’s assets was one of the many long-standing political controversies to be revived in the context of this new public sphere. This struggle was renewed when the nuns of Paris sued to regain the rights to Port-Royal-des-Champs’ property during the subsistence crisis of the 1690s. The population at Champs had shrunk by the turn of the century because of the king’s ban on receiving new members. In contrast, the convent in Paris had continued to grow. Unable to support themselves, the nuns at Paris hoped that they could regain control over the assets of the already doomed convent at Champs. Another old fault line was the debate over the five propositions. This debate reemerged when a provincial priest submitted a cas de conscience to the Sorbonne in 1701 asking the doctors for their position on respectful silence on the matter of fact. Fearing that this revival of the Jansenist controversy might encourage resistance among Gallican bishops and Parlement, Louis XIV acted swiftly to solicit a new anti-Jansenist bull from Pope Clement XI (r. 1700–21) to settle once and for all the question of the five propositions. Louis XIV had built much of his power on fighting Jansenism. When the papal bull Vineam Domini was circulated in France in 1706, Louis XIV hoped that it would secure his legacy as the fighter of Jansenism. The king supported the initiative of the nuns of Paris to claim their rights over the assets of Champs. If the convents were to reunite, then

5 6 7

Joan DeJean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Si`ecle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), xv. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 36.

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the Jansenist nuns would be vanquished and his ambition to nominate an abbess at Champs fulfilled. Yet as Louis XIV prepared to tie up the loose ends of the Jansenist controversy, the handful of nuns at Champs fought back by once again embracing persecution rather than losing any of their reform. Prioress Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux stepped forward to lead Port-Royal-des-Champs with the help of a laywoman named Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux.8 These women fought off the advances of Port-Royal-de-Paris by stressing the continuity of Angelique’s reform at Port-Royal-des-Champs in more than ´ fifteen published letters and requˆetes (petitions) and dozens more legal briefs, resolutions, and declarations filed in civil and ecclesiastical courts.9 Throughout the controversies of Angelique’s childhood nomination, the ´ Zamet affair, and the separation of the houses at the Peace of Clement IX, Angelique’s reform had always been the basis of her family’s control. ´ Even though no more members of the Arnauld family remained at PortRoyal-des-Champs, proof of the continuity of reform continued to help the nuns maintain institutional autonomy and ward off accusations of heresy. The final persecution of Port-Royal-des-Champs began after the archbishop of Paris asked the nuns to sign a certificate affirming that Vineam Domini had been read to them and that they submitted to its contents. The nuns signed the certificate but only after inserting an explanatory clause that highlighted the contradiction between the Peace of Clement IX, which ordered silence on the question of the five propositions and this new bull, which now broke that silence. The nuns’ resistance to Vineam Domini complemented their defense of their convent. While they documented their institutional continuity, their restrictive clause highlighted the patchwork of contradictions underlying the fac¸ade of royal and papal authority. During their fight to save Champs, the nuns knew that they were pushing the Crown to its limits. When the archbishop approached them with offers to compromise, they refused, saying that they would prefer to be destroyed than to see any loss in their monastic discipline. Throughout this final conflict, the nuns published letters and reports defending their position. In these publications, they upheld the continuity of their reform by adopting their predecessors’ strategy of contrasting their feminine 8 9

Ellen Weaver, Mademoiselle de Joncoux: pol´emique jans´eniste a` la veille de la bull Unigenitus (Paris: Cerf, 2002). Journal of Port-Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781.

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obedience and innocence against the irrationality of their male superiors. At a time when the king was most concerned with securing his legacy as a leader by divine right, the nuns’ appeal to public opinion had the force of undermining all that Louis XIV had done to this end through his persecution of Jansenists. When he finally shut down Port-Royal-desChamps by force, it was not clear who had won the battle. The nuns had become martyrs to their reform, and Louis XIV had acted like a tyrant. Paris Renews its Assault Throughout the 1680s the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs continued holding triennial elections in spite of rumors that the king wanted to appoint over them the abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris. As described in Chapter 6, they escaped this fate partly because of the crisis in relations between Pope Innocent XI and Louis XIV. Another factor was the nomination of Mme Harlay de Champvallon (Archbishop Harlay’s sister), as Port-Royal-de-Paris’ abbess on Dorothy Perdreau’s death in 1685. Archbishop Harlay wanted to help the king reunite the two Port-Royal houses under his sister’s leadership, but she refused to cooperate with their plans, even after the death of Innocent XI in 1689 made them more feasible.10 When her niece, Marie-Anne de Harlay, the prioress at Saint-Aubin near Gournai, succeeded her after her death in January 1695, news spread that the king and Archbishop Harlay were going to reunite the two Port-Royal houses by the end of the year. Yet Archbishop Harlay’s death in August 1695 prevented the plan from being implemented. Archbishop Harlay was succeeded by Louis-Antoine de Noailles (1651–1729). Noailles was a client of Mme de Maintenon, who had arranged his nomination with the hope that he would validate her secret marriage to the king and thus allow her to become the official queen of France.11 Over the years, Mme de Maintenon took great pains to monitor Noailles’ activities as archbishop of Paris by sending him letters of information and advice.12 In spite of Noailles’ close rapport with Louis XIV and Mme de Maintenon, his appointment inspired optimism among the nuns at Port-Royaldes-Champs that he might protect them from initiatives to reunite them 10 11 12

Sainte-Beauve, Port-Royal, 3:261. M. Langlois, “Madame de Maintenon et le Saint-Siege,” Revue d’histoire eccl´esiastique 25 (1929), 254–99. Lucien Ceyssens and J. A. G. Tans, Autour de l’Unigenitus: Recherches sur la Gen`ese de la Constitution (Leuvain: Leuvain University Press, 1987), 663.

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with Port-Royal-de-Paris. As a youth, he had studied under the Oratorian Denys Amelote (1609–79) who cultivated in him a dislike of the Molinist position on free will.13 Shortly after assuming his office, Noailles also raised hopes among the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs by ruling in their favor in disputes brought by the nuns at Paris. In 1695, the nuns at Paris submitted a requˆete to the king asking him to revise the terms separating the division of property between the houses of Paris and Champs on the grounds that the Paris house was larger in size and in greater need of funds. After commissioning his vicars general to inventory the two houses, Noailles ruled that the Paris house had been negligent in its finances and recommended that its requˆete be rejected.14 In 1702, the nuns of Paris tried a new strategy after Louis XIV issued an edict allowing all ecclesiastics to regain previously alienated property by making a tax payment. Using this edict as a new rationale for reuniting their property with that belonging to Champs, the nuns of Paris summoned the nuns at Champs before the king’s council (Grand Conseil) to hand over all their papers, titles, and goods to Port-Royal-de-Paris. The judges of the Grand Conseil rejected the Paris nuns’ summons on February 22, 1703, stating that the separation of the houses had nothing to do with the alienation of goods.15 When Noailles did nothing to challenge this decision, the nuns at Champs again suspected that he supported them. Vineam Domini (1705) The nuns’ faith in Noailles dissolved after 1705, however, once debates over the five propositions rekindled in Paris and Louis XIV asked Pope Clement XI to issue a new bull condemning Jansen. When bishops began asserting loyal opposition to the king on the grounds of Gallican liberties, Noailles came under pressure to prove his determination to combat Jansenism. As proof of this determination, he led a campaign to destroy Port-Royal-des-Champs. Clement XI’s bull stemmed from a cas de conscience in 1701 in which a provincial priest asked doctors of the Sorbonne if one could 13 14 15

Ibid., 653. Guilbert, 1:599–602. Jer Besoigne, Histoire de l’abbaye de Port-Royal, 6 vols. (Cologne [Amsterdam], ´ ome ˆ 1752–3; Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), 1:609–10. Olivier Pinault, Histoire abr´eg´ee de la derni`ere pers´ecution de Port-Royal. Suivie de la vie e´ difiante des domestiques de cette sainte maison. 3 vols. (1750), 1:73.

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maintain respectful silence on the matter of fact in the five propositions.16 The question came up when one of his colleagues admonished the priest for absolving a parishioner with “incorrect opinions regarding the five propositions condemned by Innocent X and Alexander VII” because this parishioner had allegedly claimed that the most the Church could demand on questions of fact was respectful silence.17 Not sure whether this was true or not, the priest wrote to the doctors of the Sorbonne for an answer.18 When forty-one doctors of the Sorbonne signed a response asserting that the Peace of Clement IX had upheld the right to respectful silence, they reignited the debate over Jansenism.19 Archbishop Noailles then issued an injunction admonishing the Sorbonne doctors for usurping his authority to resolve those spiritual questions that arose in his diocese. Noailles’ injunction, which echoed tenets from the Gallican articles of 1682, prompted a meeting with the papal nuncio, who tried to convince him to rephrase his order so that it showed greater deference to papal authority.20 When other bishops learned of this papal interference, they responded with rulings of their own on the cas de conscience that asserted the authority of French bishops even more strongly than had Noailles.21 By 1704, this incident had rekindled opposition to Rome among Gallican bishops to the point of threatening Louis XIV’s efforts to improve relations with the pope. Louis XIV responded by asking Clement XI to issue a bull that would condemn the Jansenist position on respectful silence once and for all. The pope refused to cooperate at first because he wanted assurances that the bishops were not going to reassert the Gallican articles of 1682.22 Louis XIV finally coerced Clement XI to issue a papal bull by threatening to turn the matter over to a council of French bishops if he refused.23

16

17 18 19 20

21 22 23

A cas de conscience is the generic term for a difficulty or question on a point of religious morality. The particular cas discussed here reached a level of controversy to the degree that it became known at the time by its generic name. Albert Le Roy, La France et Rome de 1700 a` 1715 (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1976 [1892]), 96. Ibid. Ibid., 97. Pierre Blet, Le clerg´e de France: Louis XIV et le Saint Si`ege de 1695–1715 (Vatican City: Archivio Vaticano, 1989), 177. Noailles tried to appease the pope with letters expressing his respect for Rome. Blet, 178. Ibid., 179. Ceyssens, Autour de l’Unigenitus, 773. Le Roy, 176.

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However, Clement XI still had to wrestle with the problem that he could not abolish any claims to respectful silence on the question of fact because the bull of Clement IX had called for silence on the debates over the five propositions.24 Clement XI finally ruled that the expressions of sincere obedience made by the four bishops at the time of the Peace of Clement IX to justify their respectful silence needed further elaboration: “In the end we open for the children of disobedience a wide channel for fomenting heresy by allowing silence.”25 Vineam Domini thus destroyed all vestiges of the detente created by the Peace of Clement IX of 1669. Vineam Domini also renewed conflict over the traditional liberties of the French Church. When the bull arrived in France, Louis XIV put Noailles in charge of securing the bishops’ acceptance during the General Assembly of the Clergy. Noailles did not have the political skills of Pierre de Marca, however, and several bishops revived their calls for a national council. Noailles began to fall out of favor with the king and Mme de Maintenon as a result of this turmoil, and as the conflict increased among Gallican bishops, so did the Crown’s pressure on Noailles to prove his commitment to combating Jansenism. Attacking Port-Royal became a way to prove this commitment. As one historian put it, “[Noailles] would betray Port-Royal in order to extend for a few more months a credit that was drying up.”26 He stopped defending the nuns at Champs and commissioned his vicar general to present the bull to the nuns there and to “draw from them a certificate of their acquiescence or acceptance.”27 Sans D´eroger The nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs started recording their resistance to Vineam Domini in a journal in the spring of 1706. In this journal, they described how their confessor M. Marignier arrived on March 16, 1706, with a copy of the bull and a model certificate from the archdiocese for the nuns to sign that read, “The bull [was] read and made public at the grill of Port-Royal-des-Champs, . . . and was received by the [nuns] with the respect due to his holiness.”28 Before their confessor read the bull publicly at the convent grill, Abbess Elisabeth de Sainte-Anne Boulard requested 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid. Clemencet, 9: 23. Le Roy, 203. Le Roy said Noailles “betrayed” Port-Royal because evidence suggests that he was never convinced of the heresy of the convent. Besoigne, 3:145. Ibid.

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permission to read it privately to the nuns in chapter. According to the journal, as soon as the nuns read the mandement, they realized that they faced a new predicament because of the contradiction between the terms of the peace agreement of 1669 and the new bull: To sign the certificate verifying their reception of the bull would mean recanting the positions taken by their former mothers. Considering the gravity of this situation, they asked Marignier for time to think.29 When Marignier returned to Port-Royal a few days later to read the bull, the nuns signed the certificate by adding a clause that stated that they signed “without derogating [sans d´eroger] from that which was done for them in their regard, at the peace of the Church, under Pope Clement IX.”30 With this clause the nuns initiated their resistance to Vineam Domini. By focusing on their own need to remain consistent with their past, they exposed the contradictions between the bulls of Clement IX and of Clement XI and those underlying the king’s new initiative against Jansenism. A few days later M. Gilbert, the vicar general of Noailles, traveled to the convent to convince the nuns to retract the sans d´eroger clause. He told them that, had he known of the nuns’ plans, he would have advised them against using the clause. When he asked the abbess why she had not consulted him first, she responded, “For those matters that regard our conscience, we consult our conscience.”31 She added, “That which we have seen in the times that people have troubled our house has made it clear to us and has taught us well because we have recognized from this that people do not act against us except through passion, interest and political-mindedness.”32 Because there were only four nuns in the house old enough to remember these earlier experiences, the nuns were relying on the record of the persecutions that their predecessors had documented in their journals. These records were essential for the nuns’ sans d´eroger clause because they allowed them to compare the new bull with the old one and to base their resistance on historical precedent. After the abbess insisted that the bull was a symptom of the “passion, interest and political-mindedness” of the convent’s enemies, Gilbert replied, “Yet my mother, things have changed in face; because then some

29 30 31 32

Journal de Port-Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781, fol 2. Le Roy, 243. The nuns signed and dated this clause on March 21, 1706. Journal de Port-Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781, fol. 4. Ibid.

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said that we could sign without believing, but now the pope decides that respectful silence is not sufficient and he has come to write a Constitution, you must obey the pope.”33 He asserted that Port-Royal-des-Champs was not being asked to do anything more than what was asked of other religious houses. He told her that the fathers of the Oratory, the Carmelite nuns in Paris, and the nuns at Notre-Dame-du-Val-de-Gif were all asked to submit to the bull. The abbess responded that her house was different because the Port-Royal nuns had refused to sign the formulary in the past. When he replied that nobody was asking for signatures to the formulary, she responded that they had been asked to sign a certificate confirming that they had received the bull: “To say that we received [these documents] with respect is to say that we approve them and agree with them, in this way we would condemn all that that our . . . anciennes m`eres have done to edify the entire Church.”34 For the nuns, “receiving” the bull and signing it were the same thing. The nuns’ physical demonstration of submission would be “read” as their acceptance as clearly as a written signature. At this point, Gilbert turned to the meaning of the sans d´eroger clause itself. When he asked Abbess Boulard to explain what the nuns meant by this clause, she explained that the nuns wanted to make the distinction between right and fact just as they had at the time of the formulary crisis. Finding the abbess resolute in her response, Gilbert decided to address the other senior sisters. They too affirmed that the clause was meant to differentiate between right and fact. Gilbert then argued that things were now different than at the time of the formulary: “That at that time things were confused with some saying that one could sign without believing, and others saying otherwise. But presently, at the occasion of the unhappy cas [de conscience] the pope made a Constitution where he decides, and one must yield to it.”35 The nuns responded that they still had reason to remain extra cautious because they knew that they were being treated differently from other nuns. They explained that they knew of one community in which, after the reading of the bull, the nuns “bowed and then left without having anything else asked of them.”36 Because they were singled out to mark their acceptance of the bull by signing a certificate, they had reason to be suspicious. In this way, the nuns shifted

33 34 35 36

Ibid., fol. 4–5. Ibid. Ibid, fol. 5–6. Ibid.

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the discussion from the content of the bull to the empirical evidence that gave them reasonable grounds to suspect their enemies. Yet they continued to insist on their ignorance and indifference of current events: “With regards to [the constitution] we are completely ignorant of those sorts of matters and if we know anything, we have been constrained in such a way to instruct ourselves through all that has happened in the past in our house.”37 Gilbert then met with the nuns individually. One nun reported in the journal that he tried to coerce her to reject the sans d´eroger clause by appealing to her youth: “You are still young; you could suffer for a long time.” He threatened another nun, saying, “You are going to bring plenty of hardship onto yourself.” When Abbess Boulard learned of these comments, she confronted Gilbert and stated that he was young himself and did not know all that had passed in their house. She told him that they had suffered much under Per but that God had shown them ´ efixe, ´ signs of His protection. When she added that God had blessed their house and not that of Paris because the nuns of Paris had abandoned the truth, he responded cynically that perhaps Champs had prospered only because they had housed “some noble pensioners.”38 In addition to confronting Gilbert, Abbess Boulard wrote directly to Noailles explaining why the nuns had added the sans d´eroger clause. Noailles never responded to her letters, but the nuns learned of his reaction through Marignier. According to Marignier, Noailles told him “that he has discharged the nuns from his conscience; that whoever it is that counsels them, they have received very bad advice; that he finds them in a state of disobedience that is absolutely criminal.”39 Noailles also told Marignier that he had always hoped to bring peace to Port-Royaldes-Champs, but because the nuns had added the clause, he was forced to understand them as “saying that the pope is a tyrant as well as the clergy, the archbishops, bishops and he himself.” He ended by repeating Per sentiment that “it was strange that out of all of our efforts ´ efixe’s ´ to end the debates, there was only a handful of nuns [filles] who have resisted the Church’s positive efforts towards this end.”40 Once again the nuns were engaged in a battle with their archbishop over his authority and their obedience.

37 38 39 40

Ibid., fol. 7. Ibid. Ibid., fol. 40. Ibid.

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The nuns’ refusal to revoke the sans d´eroger clause resulted in an order from the Council of State on April 17, 1706, prohibiting them from receiving new novices. This order was a blow for them because the original ban on new members in 1679 had been an oral one, giving them hope that it was only temporary.41 Port-Royal-des-Champs soon received another setback when Noailles refused to send a representative to attend the nuns’ elections for a new abbess after the death of Abbess Boulard on April 20, 1706. His refusal had the effect of denying the nuns their right to election because an election could not legally take place without supervision. A few months later, the nuns learned that the king had already made promises to the newly appointed abbess of Paris, Marie-Louise Franc¸oise Rousselet de Chateau-Renault, that she would also be abbess of PortRoyal-des-Champs.42 Shortly before her death, Abbess Boulard appointed Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux (henceforth Dumesnil) prioress. Dumesnil was a strategic choice to direct Port-Royal’s resistance as she was both devoted to its legacy and familiar with court politics, having been a fille d’honneur for Anne-Marie Marinozzi de Conti (the wife of Louis XIV’s cousin, Armande de Bourbon, and a princess of the blood) before joining Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1675. She professed as a nun around the time Angelique de Saint-Jean initiated her campaign to renew ´ the convent’s commitment to reform, and her letters reflect the spirit and strategies of resistance of the former abbess. To implement these strategies, Dumesnil had help from Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, a laywoman supporter of Port-Royal. Born October 23, 1668, Mlle de Joncoux was the daughter of Jean de Joncoux, a lawyer in the Parisian Parlement, and of Genevi`eve Dodun, the daughter of a family of lawyers and tax farmers.43 She was fluent in Latin and had some knowledge of Greek. According to one chronicler, she studied with M. Marmion, a well-known Cartesian professor at the College des

41

42 43

Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat, BN Mss. Ffr. 17780, fol. 117. The order stated that Port-Royal’s censure was due to heresy: “that there has spread already for many years in the monastery of Port-Royal-des-Champs an evil doctrine that is contrary to the Church’s decrees on Jansenism.” Guilbert, 5:410. F. Ellen Weaver-Laporte Mlle de Joncoux: Pol´emique jans´eniste a` la veille de la bulle Unigenitus (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 27–9.

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Grassins.44 How she initially came into contact with the Port-Royal nuns remains obscure,45 but by the time conflict had erupted over Vineam Domini, she had already developed close ties with Port-Royal’s supporters both in Paris and abroad. Before she began corresponding with Dumesnil, Joncoux had spent most of her time collaborating with Jansen’s male defenders in exile and was the author and coauthor of several polemical texts.46 Once conflict erupted over the sans d´eroger clause at Port-Royal in 1706, however, Joncoux turned her energies toward defending the nuns. Her commitment to Port-Royal is evident in her correspondence with Prioress Dumesnil. Ninety letters exist for the periods from May to October 1707 (twenty letters) and from January to October 1709 (seventy letters).47 Of the ninety letters in existence, Dumesnil wrote seventy-four (84%). Fewer letters by Joncoux have survived because Dumesnil burned most of them at the time to protect her identity and those of other friends mentioned in them.48 These letters were in the form of short notes, or billets. They were written in haste, often with messy handwriting and with liberal use of shorthand techniques such as abbreviated words and symbols. They contained few of the literary conventions practiced by nuns to ensure that they would serve as edifying or inspirational texts. Instead, they were devoted solely to the clandestine business of fighting off Port-Royal-deParis’ appropriation of Port-Royal-des-Champs’ temporal goods and to expressing Dumesnil’s and Joncoux’s personal friendship and fears. Dumesnil and Joncoux began corresponding in the late spring of 1707 just a few months after Port-Royal-de-Paris submitted a petition to the 44 45 46 47

48

Pierre Sartre, M´emoire qui indique les principaux traits de la vie de Mademoiselle de Joncoux, et les Ouvrages auxquels elle a eu quelque part, n.d. Weaver-Laporte, Mlle de Joncoux, 101. Ibid., 121–67. The letters from the year 1707 are now housed among the papers of Jacques Le Noir de Saint-Claude in the Archives de la Bastille at the Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal in Paris. Le Noir was a friend and lawyer for Port-Royal-des-Champs, and these letters were in his possession at the time of his arrest by lettre de cachet in November 1707. The 1709 portion of this correspondence is preserved in the Port-Royal collection at the Reijksarchief in Utrecht, Holland. J. Bruggeman and A. J. V. d. Ven, Inventaire des Pi`eces d’Archives Franc¸aises se rapportant a` l’Abbaye de Port-Royal des Champs et son Cercle et a` la Resistance contre la Bulle Unigenitus et a` l’Appel (Anciens Fonds D’Amersfoort) (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972). Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, September 21, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 238–41. In this letter Dumesnil told Joncoux that she burns the letters that she does not send back to her.

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king in December 1706 to reunite the two houses. This petition was different from earlier ones submitted by the Paris convent because it made use of the king’s accusation of Champs’ heresy to justify the request to reunite the two houses. The king responded with an arrˆet de conseil on February 9, 1707, revoking the arrˆet of May 13, 1669, that divided the convents’ property. On receiving the king’s order, Noailles commissioned his vicar general, Franc¸ois Vivant, to take an inventory of the two convents and assess the “advantages and disadvantages” (commodit´e or incommodit´e) of the request to combine the two properties. When the nuns at Champs learned of this order, Dumesnil wrote to Angelique Angran ´ de Fontpertuis, another laywoman friend who was working with Mlle de Joncoux to help the nuns49 : “This arrˆet is given upon a petition submitted by the nuns of Paris a short time ago in which they ask that they be given possession of all of our goods and leave us each with a life annuity of 200 livres a year for the time that lasts before each one of us is dead. There will be only one house governed by the abbess of Paris.”50 Once the nuns at Champs received a copy of the Paris nuns’ petition from the local bailiff, they submitted a petition of their own to the king that refuted its claims point by point.51 When the only response they received to this petition was the news of Vivant’s commission, they turned to the court of the diocesan official and published a m´emoire justificatif (a memorandum of justification) on June 30, 1707. In this m´emoire, they claimed that the archbishop could not initiate steps to combine the two houses without permission from the pope because the pope had issued the original bulls of separation, not the archbishop. They asserted that the two houses could only be reunited if those powers that had divided them reversed their decision. They also argued that administrative changes such as combining two convents could not be performed while both houses were without an abbess.52 The court of the diocesan official heard Port-Royal’s case in eight sessions between July 6 and July 30. In a letter dated July 26, 1707,

49 50 51

52

Weaver-Laporte Mlle de Joncoux, 210. Weaver lists seven women who served as Joncoux’s “lieutenants” in the campaign to defend Port-Royal-des-Champs. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Angelique Angran de ´ Fontpertuis, January 25, 1707, UPR 3047. R´eponse des Religieuses de Port Royal des Champs aux requˆetes que les Religieuses de Port Royal de Paris on pr´esent´ees contre elles au roi et a` son e´ minence M. le Cardinal de Noailles, archevˆeque de Paris, 1707. Nicolas Fontaine, M´emoires pour servir a` l’histoire de Port Royal. (Utrecht, 1763. Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), 37.

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Dumesnil wrote Joncoux expressing her skepticism over the motivations behind Vivant’s commission: “They know very well that they have issued the ordonnance only to maintain some semblance of justice as they rob us.”53 Dumesnil knew that Louis XIV had long wanted to assert his right of nomination at Port-Royal-des-Champs and that the archbishop was doing his part to make his ambitions appear legal. However, her main reason for writing was to discuss how the nuns should proceed if the court of the diocesan official ruled against them. She wrote that she had received two different opinions from their friends with legal expertise. The first consultant advised the nuns to “oppose themselves courageously to all the bad things they do to them” and to appeal against the archbishop at the court of the Primate at Lyon – the ecclesiastical court of the highest ranking bishop for their region. The second opinion was from the lawyer Jacques Le Noir de Saint-Claude, who told her that the convent had friends who did not want them to appeal to Lyon.54 Dumesnil expressed her own opinion by stating that she did not want to allow Vivant entry into the convent because “by consenting to the visit, we are consenting to our ruin; not only in terms of our property, which affects me little, but in terms of our spiritual welfare which is of the essence in our affair.”55 By “spiritual welfare” Dumesnil referred to Port-Royal’s reform. She ended her letter with a sentiment true to the spirit of Angelique ´ Arnauld and Angelique de Saint-Jean regarding Port-Royal’s demise: ´ “Our friends must not worry about endangering our group; we would be happier and more content dispersed than reunited [with the nuns of Paris].”56 The diocesan official dismissed the nuns’ appeal, stating that they could not block their archbishop from investigating the state of their property. Yet he also ruled that Noailles must postpone Vivant’s special commission, stating that any visit could only take place as a regular pastoral visit. The official’s ruling was thus a partial victory for Port-Royal-desChamps’ lawyer, M. Hebert, who had argued that, to allow Vivant’s ´ commission, the court first had to prove whether bishops had the authority to dismantle female monasteries under their own authority.57 Because popes traditionally held authority over royally exempt convents such as 53 54 55 56 57

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, July 26, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 198–9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Guilbert, 4:380.

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Port-Royal, and because the papal nuncio had sent an auditor to attend all of these sessions, the official knew that Rome was wary of any infringement on its jurisdiction in this affair. The diocesan official decided it was most prudent to rule against Vivant’s commission and to avoid any possibility of inciting conflict between the archbishop and pope over PortRoyal. Yet, because this decision merely postponed Vivant’s commission, Le Noir de Saint-Claude used his power of attorney to file an appeal on the nuns’ behalf against Vivant’s visit in the court of the Primate at Lyon.58 The nuns wanted justice, not detente, and were prepared to push their case as far as possible. Noailles’ Attack While the nuns were appealing Vivant’s special commission, he scheduled an ordinary visit to Port-Royal on August 11, 1707. Dumesnil described in a letter that she wrote to Joncoux that day how Vivant had arrived at 7:30 a.m. and informed her in a private meeting that he planned to deliver mass that morning, to “say a couple of words” (nous diroit deux mots) to the community from the convent grill, and then to examine their perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament. He also asked about Havart, PortRoyal’s confessor. When Dumesnil replied that Havart was scheduled to arrive at noon, Vivant told her in confidence that Noailles was going to dismiss Havart from Port-Royal-des-Champs.59 Vivant requested that she not tell anybody else about this dismissal, but when a courier sent by Joncoux arrived later that morning at 9:00 a.m., Dumesnil immediately dispatched a note to Havart warning him of the archbishop’s plans.60 Suspecting that Vivant may spring more surprises on the nuns, Dumesnil wrote that evening to Joncoux: “I wait for the end of this visit that I cannot understand very well if he does not speak more openly.” She then asked Joncoux to send her courier again the next day so that she could send her “an exact account” of Vivant’s visit.61 As promised, on the next day Dumesnil sent Joncoux a detailed narrative of his visit. This letter was a formal report, composed in an impersonal tone, with careful attention to details such as the time and place of 58 59 60 61

Ibid., 4:384. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, August 11, 1707 (“Jeudi au soir”), Ars. 10582, fol. 207–8. Ibid. Ibid.

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each conversation between Vivant and the nuns. In particular, Dumesnil carefully noted those instances when Vivant mentioned Vineam Domini and the nuns’ sans d´eroger clause. She wrote that he made no mention of the bull until evening, when, while she was alone with him, he asked her, “What is your disposition on that which has happened that gave him [the archbishop] pain?”62 She wrote, “I responded to him that we were always of the same opinion and that we cannot change this and that we adhere to the peace of the Church and to the ordonnance of M. 63 Although he tried to persuade her to change her mind, de Per ´ efixe.” ´ Dumesnil remained firm in her position. In assessing her private conversation with Vivant, she wrote, “It passed well enough because he did not persuade me in the least.”64 Yet Dumesnil worried that Vivant would be able to persuade the other nuns to change their minds with regard to the sans d´eroger clause. On the second day of Vivant’s visit, Dumesnil reported that he told her that he had discussed the clause with some of the nuns “not at all as a visitor, but only in conversation.” He told her that they all appeared to agree with what she had told him herself and that “they have not changed their attitude at all.”65 Nevertheless, Dumesnil began to fear that Vivant had weakened the resolve of some of the nuns. On August 21, she wrote to Joncoux, “I do not think that there is any sister who has been shaken, but it is true that M.V[ivant] said to one of them, ‘I think that I can convert you well enough.’ I find this nun to be a very good girl, but extremely simple and she expresses herself poorly. News of this sort is always disturbing.”66 Dumesnil’s fears about other nuns breaking ranks only increased in the weeks to follow after Noailles replaced Havart with a new confessor, Firmin Pollet, the vicar of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet, on September 14, 1707. Pollet subjected the nuns to long sermons in which he chastised them for their disobedience and tried to convince them to retract the sans d´eroger clause. The nuns transcribed these sermons in their journal. In his first sermon, he exhorted the nuns to obey Noailles’ authority without question because he acted according to logic impervious to their 62 63 64 65 66

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, August 12, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 217–18. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, August 21, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 209–12.

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reason. When discussing the removal of the nuns’ previous confessor, he stated, [Noailles] therefore could have removed the person who served as your confessor for personal reasons that have nothing to do with you. But then again, there could have been reasons that concern you. You must submit to this order because he may have treated you in this severe manner, as does a good father, to suggest to you and to press upon you that he is not happy with you and to return you by these punishments to your duty.67

Pollet described episcopal authority as operating according to reasons that were not necessarily visible to or ascertainable by the mind of subordinates. Given the inscrutable nature of such authority, it was the duty of subordinates to obey their superiors without question. Pollet developed this notion of unquestioning obedience more explicitly in the next passage: When one lives in submission, one is always at peace, you must never argue with your bishop, when he asks something of you, you must submit, he will answer for you [before God] . . . one must never compensate for obedience with other virtues; even if we remain faithful in every way, we are still lost if we fail in the single point of submission to our superiors.68

Pollet underscored obedience as the fundamental virtue of all Christians. His phrase “he will answer for you” also echoed Per doctrine of ´ efixe’s ´ human faith. He also asserted the doctrine of infallibility by stating, “The Church is infallible, not only in matters of the faith and in human hearts, but in matters of discipline to which she has reduced the fact of Jansen.”69 He then joined these two doctrines to argue that infallibility meant more than submitting to Church orders on matters of fact. According to Pollet, infallibility meant that the nuns could not compare their present superiors with past superiors because superiors had the right to vary in their orders: “A father can give orders to his children at one time that he does not give at another.”70 Pollet then cited the formulary crisis as an instance where the Church had this right to vary: The Church can vary, and has in effect varied on this point, having been satisfied in 1669 with silence on the matter of fact and is no longer satisfied now by this, but instead orders an interior belief on the matter of fact based upon its authority alone, and . . . the Church has the power to make this new commandment today 67 68 69 70

Journal de Port Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781, fol. 166. Ibid., fol. 169. Pinault, 1:252. Journal de Port-Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781, fol. 169.

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to believe in the fact of Jansen, although it allowed disbelief in the past, because this is a point of discipline for which the Church can vary just as God himself changed the ceremonies and the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and just as the Church changes its ceremonies according to different times and places.71

Pollet’s sermons, with their justifications of the doctrines of infallibility and human faith, failed to convince the nuns to renounce the sans d´eroger clause. Instead, these sermons confirmed their fears that to accept the recent bull would entail rejecting the positions of their former mothers. In addition to the nuns’ transcriptions of Pollet’s sermons into their journal, Dumesnil wrote to Joncoux with her own descriptions of his visit. On September 21, 1707, she reported that Pollet had announced his intention to visit with the nuns individually and that she had protested these interviews on the grounds that individual meetings could only be arranged through a written order from the archbishop. She wrote that Pollet did not insist on having those individual visits and replied only that he would write the archbishop that day to inform him that the nuns would be separating themselves from the sacrament.72 The nuns had been expecting this punishment, and Dumesnil asked Joncoux to begin the process of an appeal: “You tell me that if we receive the slightest order to remove ourselves from the sacraments that we should appeal to Lyon. Would you be kind enough to explain to M. de Saint-Claude the procedure for making this appeal.”73 To help guide the nuns’ lawyer, Joncoux consulted with other experts. For theological help she wrote a letter to a “M. d. G.” and for legal advice she consulted with M. Desessarts and a “M. B.”74 Joncoux’s letter to M. d. G. dated September 29 reveals how she collaborated with male experts by soliciting their counsel and by giving them advice. She included in it an excerpt from Pollet’s speech in which he stated that the “Church could vary.” She pointed out that Pollet was mistaken here because “he claims that this does not pertain at all to faith but is only a point of discipline.”75 Given Pollet’s error, she asked for advice on how the nuns should respond to him. In doing so, however, she also counseled M. d. G. 71 72 73 74 75

Pinault, 1:252. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, September 21, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 238–41. Ibid. “M. d. G.” might refer to the oratorian priest Jacques-Joseph DuGuet, and “M. B.” may refer to M. Benoise, conseiller au parlement and father to one of the Port-Royal nuns. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to M. d. G., September 29, 1707, Ars. 10582, fol. 250–3.

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to customize his response for the nuns: “I want to be precise about the errors in his reasoning without, however, entering too much into the material and without really creating female theologians.”76 She reminded him that the nuns needed a carefully worded response, one that had the force of defending their interests while making them appear uninterested in theological discussions. Joncoux also sent M. d. G. some news she had received about a conversation between Pollet and one of her friends. When this friend asked Pollet about the nuns’ conduct, Pollet confessed that he did not agree with Noailles’ decision to refuse the nuns the sacraments, even though he intended to obey the archbishop’s order.77 Joncoux also reported that Pollet had said “that he was indignant over the manner in which the nuns are treated and that he had come to inform M. the Cardinal of this and to tell him that such conduct can only backfire upon him and will completely dishonor him in the world.”78 Pollet’s personal regard for the nuns was a detail that Joncoux thought would give “pleasure” to M. d. G. She also saw Pollet’s good will toward the nuns as a strategic opportunity. On October 1, 1707, Joncoux wrote Dumesnil that their legal advisors believed that it would be premature for the nuns to appeal Noailles’ refusal of the sacraments, because the refusal was a verbal order. Instead, they recommended that the nuns ignore the order and approach the Communion table at mass with the intention of taking Communion. Joncoux also told Dumesnil that if Pollet refused them Communion, she must summon into the Church those at Port-Royal who are not professed nuns and declare out loud that “M. Pollet has publicly refused you Communion without there having been any legal procedures made against you.”79 In addition, Joncoux advised Dumesnil to seek out Pollet the evening or morning before mass to warn him that the nuns would not defer to his verbal refusal of the sacraments. She recommended that she address him in the presence of the other leading nuns within the convent: “We recommend to you that you take the subprioress with you and some of the elder sisters to make your declaration to M. Pollet.”80 Joncoux even suggested how this declaration should be phrased: Then you should speak to him with all honesty by noting that you are upset that a man of his merit should be charged with such a commission, and that it is up 76 77 78 79 80

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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to him to examine how he would think before God and before men about his conduct in the case that he refuses you Communion when you claim publicly that by the mercy of God you are familiar enough with the rules of the Church to know that a minister of Jesus Christ cannot publicly refuse Communion except to those sinners whose crimes are made known and public . . . and that you believe him to be too enlightened to not be aware of the rules of the Church on this matter.81

Joncoux knew that Pollet had reservations about Noailles’ tactics at Port-Royal. She hoped that the nuns might be able to win him over to their cause by highlighting how he was himself caught in a contradiction between his conscience and the obedience he owed his superiors. Dumesnil followed Joncoux’s advice and approached Pollet before mass to inform him that the nuns were not going to honor his verbal order and planned to approach the Communion table. However, her appeal to his conscience failed, as Pollet merely repeated his intention to refuse them the sacraments. He explained that the archbishop could prevent them from taking Communion by his authority as the head of the convent household and that he denied the nuns the sacraments “just as a mother superior can deprive one of her nuns from taking Communion for a limited time.”82 Dumesnil replied that there was a considerable difference between his refusal of the sacraments and that ordered by a mother superior. In the latter case, the nun’s privation is kept secret, whereas in this case “to deprive an entire community is very obvious and very public.”83 She repeated that she was sure that “M. Pollet would not refuse to communicate a person in his parish who presented himself as long as he was not a public sinner.”84 Pollet responded that the nuns’ disobedience was “public enough and well known; that he could not give them Communion in good conscience.”85 After this exchange between Pollet and Dumesnil, the nuns decided not to present themselves for Communion at mass that day. They waited instead until Noailles sent Pollet a letter confirming his verbal order the following day, and then they drew up a certificate of protest, which they submitted to the diocesan official along with a request for permission to 81

82 83 84 85

Ibid. According to another letter sent to Dumesnil by Joncoux, the necessary procedure for a public refusal of the sacraments involved a public sentence preceded by three warnings and a mandatory waiting period. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to ClaudeLouise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux no date [October 1707], Ars. 10582, fol. 262–3. Journal de Port-Royal, BN Mss. Ffr. 17781, fol. 177. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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sue Pollet in court for his refusal. When the nuns’ agent delivered their request to the official, the official told them that he could do nothing without first consulting with Noailles. A few days later, the official sent word that he could not help the nuns and that the archbishop was going to take care of everything personally.86 Interpreting this response as a denial of justice, the nuns drew up a requˆete to Noailles, which they published. If their disobedience was known “publicly enough,” then they wanted to make sure that the public heard their side of the story. Port-Royal’s Bull of Suppression The nuns published their requˆete to Noailles on October 20, 1707. This substantial document was the result of a collaborative effort of Joncoux, the nuns, and their lawyers. Its purpose was to push Noailles to state “clearly and precisely” his reasons for refusing the nuns the sacraments.87 The requˆete consisted of four sections. The first section was a discussion of Noailles’ letter to Pollet of October 3, 1707, confirming the order to refuse the nuns the sacraments. The second section recounted the history of the formulary crisis and of the sans d´eroger clause. The third section listed the injustices they endured ever since they signed Vineam Domini with their clause. The fourth section contained a review and critique of Pollet’s sermon on obedience. Throughout the document, the nuns stressed their gender as the reason they needed clarification from their archbishop. They claimed that, as innocent and ignorant women, they could not understand why their current archbishop was punishing them for error and disobedience when all they had done was insert the sans d´eroger clause to confirm their submission to the Peace of Clement IX. As “humble daughters” they were confused by his punishment, which contradicted all of the evidence proving their innocence – the most important being Per pardon of them ´ efixe’s ´ in 1669. Noailles responded to this requˆete by issuing a written order on November 18 that formalized the denial of the sacraments to the PortRoyal nuns. A few days later, the king arrested the nuns’ lawyer, Le Noir de Saint-Claude, and put him in the Bastille. For the nuns and their supporters, Noailles’ refusal to explain “clearly and precisely” his reasons 86 87

Fontaine, 42. Requˆete des Religieuses de Port Royal A Son Eminence Monseigneur le Cardinal de Noailles Archevˆeque de Paris (October 20, 1707). Reprinted in Pinault, 1:289.

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for punishing the nuns and Louis XIV’s arrest of M. de Saint-Claude were proof that these men had no legal answer to the nuns’ request. On December 1, the nuns appealed Noailles’ denial of the sacraments to the court of Lyon. This appeal meant that the nuns now had two cases pending in this court. As they waited for the court to review their cases, they turned their attention toward Rome and to the news that Louis XIV had solicited a bull of suppression for Port-Royal-des-Champs from Pope Clement XI.88 In a letter to Mme de Fontpertuis, Dumesnil wrote, “We have been waiting for five months for a bull of suppression which does not arrive and we cannot find out why, and in the meantime we remain in the same state. God is holding off the storm until the time appointed by his providence.”89 The nuns hoped that the delay of the bull might be a sign of Clement XI’s favor toward them, and on March 18, 1708, they sent their own letter to the pope to plead their case.90 However, this letter had no effect, and the pope decided to grant Louis XIV the bull of suppression a few months later. Although Clement XI granted Louis XIV this bull of suppression, the bull did not satisfy the king. In July 1708, Dumesnil wrote to Fontpertuis, “Finally m[y] d[ear] Mad[ame], a copy of the bull has arrived here, but it has not been formally served to us, because the king has found it too favorable towards us and has written to Rome to have some changes made after which, it will be executed.”91 Louis XIV found the bull too favorable because the pope specified that the nuns in Paris could take over Champs only after all the twenty-six nuns living there had died. Until that time, the bull allowed the nuns at Champs to live in their convent with a yearly income of 200 livres each. On reading the bull, Louis XIV supposedly said to the papal nuncio that “if he received this bull, he would never have the pleasure of seeing the destruction of Port-Royal in his lifetime.”92 The king was also dissatisfied because the bull made no mention of the Port-Royal nuns’ alleged disobedience and heresy. This was good news for

88

89 90 91 92

Le Roy, 259. The Pope received a request for the bull from the nuns of Paris along with letters of support from the king, Mme de Maintenon, Noailles, and several French Jesuits. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Angelique Angran de ´ Fontpertuis, February 28, 1708, UPR 3047. Pinault, 1:339. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Angelique Angran de ´ Fontpertuis, July 3, 1708, UPR 3047. Le Roy, 260.

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Dumesnil, who wrote to her friend, “The pope mentions nothing about our spiritual status, nor about his constitution, nor about our clause.”93 However, for Louis XIV, the pope’s failure to denounce Port-Royal-desChamps’ Jansenism was an insult. Louis XIV had justified his campaign against these nuns all along as a means of uprooting heresy in his reign. By not supporting Louis XIV’s charge of heresy against the Port-Royal nuns, the pope ignored the king’s claims to be acting in the interests of the Church. After considerable pressure from Louis XIV, Clement XI issued a revised bull of suppression in November 1708.94 The bull was more to Louis XIV’s liking as it described Port-Royal-des-Champs as the “nest from which error had grown so perniciously.”95 He issued his lettres patentes immediately on November 14, 1708, and a month later, Parlement registered them without protest. The new bull assigned Noailles the responsibility for dismantling the community of nuns according to his “discretion and conscience.”96 Yet the bull conceded one request of the nuns by not requiring the nuns at Champs to live under the direction of the abbess of Paris. In a letter to Fontpertuis, Dumesnil wrote that the nuns were at peace with the bull: “We feel the separation but in the end, this will be a means to purify us, and it is infinitely more advantageous for us to end this way than to see laxity introduce itself among us through a union with the nuns of P[aris].”97 Dumesnil’s letter echoed the advice that Saint-Cyran had given Angelique Arnauld more than sixty years earlier: ´ to prefer Port-Royal’s destruction over any lapse in its reform. Dumesnil’s task – now that destruction was imminent – was to make sure that Angelique’s reform remained intact up to the end. ´ Pushing the Limits Although the bull gave Noailles the option to disperse the nuns into other convents, he had decided by January 1709 that he wanted to avoid this violent solution. He sent one of his vicars general to Port-Royal-desChamps to propose a compromise in which he would promise to allow 93 94 95 96 97

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Angelique Angran de ´ Fontpertuis, July 3, 1708, UPR 3047. Le Roy, 260–2. Le Roy, 263. Ibid. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Angelique Angran de ´ Fontpertuis, November 26, 1708, UPR 3047.

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the nuns to live peacefully and independently in their convent for the rest of their lives in exchange for their dropping their legal proceedings against reunification. Noailles tried to persuade the nuns to accept his proposal by adding that if the Crown revoked the prohibition against their receiving novices before they died, then they might never be reunited with Paris.98 Dumesnil, who had been warned in advance that Noailles would propose this compromise, wrote to Joncoux that she would refuse it: “I would respond that I could not, out of a love for a repose that could last only as long as I live, to consent to such an injustice.”99 In another letter she expressed her belief that Noailles’ compromise was a trap: “I cannot see this expedient as anything other than a trap that they lay before us to make us take a false step. I am convinced that they are very eager to cover up the injustice of their procedure against us.”100 In November and in December 1708, the nuns published open letters to the king, the pope, Noailles, and Cardinal Cesar d’Estrees. ´ ´ 101 A few weeks later, Joncoux sent Dumesnil a report on a conversation that took place between Noailles and the Cardinal d’Estrees ´ in which Noailles confessed that he had tried to convince the king to drop his campaign against Port-Royal.102 In response, Dumesnil wrote, “The people who are making us suffer have more to complain about than us. How will they get themselves out of this affair [?], I do not see how they can because it appears that they do not want to use absolute authority.”103 The nuns’ resistance was having its desired effect. They had forced Noailles into a double bind where his only choices were to submit to his king and become 98 99 100 101

102

103

Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux, January 19, 1709, UPR 227. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, January 21, 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. These letters were also published together as a collection in 1709. Lettres des Religieuses de Port Royal des Champs au Pape, au Roi et a` MM. Les Cardinaux de Noailles et d’Estr´ees. Touchant les bulles de N.S.P. le Pape Cl´ement XI, du 27 Mars 1708, portant la suppression du titre de l’Abbaye de Port Royal des Champs et union des biens qui en d´ependant au monast`ere de Port Royal de Paris (25 Novembre-14 D´ecembre, 1708), 1709. Cardinal d’Estrees ´ had played a pivotal role in negotiating the Peace of Clement IX as the bishop-duke of Laon in 1668–9. Dieudonne, ´ 208–10. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux, January 19, 1709, UPR 227. When Noailles asked Louis XIV if he were “more inclined to withdraw from an affair that is causing him so much aggravation” the king responded that he “would consider nothing of the sort . . . that [the nuns] were rebels and disobedient ones.” Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, January 30, 1709, UPR 677.

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a persecutor of nuns or to side with them and share in their suffering and sacrifice. Dumesnil and Joncoux were determined to stand firm to the very end, but they were not as confident about the determination of their fellow nuns, as Dumesnil confessed to Joncoux: I see several people here who would gladly enter into this proposition to do nothing to remain here, but I explained to them that they would never let them remain without bringing in nuns from Port-Royal-de-Paris so that the nuns who are exiled will be happier than those who stay, and that they will not stop until they have won them over and made them sign and accept the abb[ess of Paris] as their superior.104

Dumesnil knew she could count on the determination of the older nuns but worried that some of the younger nuns might take Noailles at his word. She also feared that these nuns would not be able to hold their ground should Noailles attempt to persuade them in individual interviews during a pastoral visit. She wrote that such a visit would “without doubt cause much harm. The majority of people here being extremely simple, they explain themselves with difficulty and have trouble remembering what they are told to respond, they will certainly become confused.”105 She knew from Port-Royal’s history with Per that success depended ´ efixe ´ as much on her ability to maintain her authority over her fellow nuns as on her ability to combat her enemies outside the convent. The conflict between the nuns at Champs and Noailles quickly escalated in February 1709 after the nuns at Paris sent them a copy of Noailles’ order renewing the commission of Franc¸ois Vivant to make an inventory of the two houses.106 As described earlier, the nuns at Champs had appealed to Rome – via the papal nuncio – against Vivant’s commission in 1707. This avenue was now closed in 1709 because the pope himself had authorized Noailles to dismantle Port-Royal-des-Champs with a bull. The nuns instead turned to the Primate of Lyon and filed an appeal on March 12. The court accepted the nuns’ appeal, and while it was 104 105 106

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, January 1, 1709, UPR 677. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, [day not specified] April 1709, UPR 677. Dumesnil’s primary fear regarding this visit was that Vivant might get an opportunity to speak with the nuns individually: “I fear these private meetings, especially if he promises to leave us in peace [in exchange for our retraction], there is a strong love for the roof that is over our heads among some of the nuns.” Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, February 9, 1709, UPR 677.

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officially in motion, Noailles sent Vivant to Port-Royal on April 13 to take his inventory. On his arrival, Dumesnil handed him an act of protest and informed him that they would not unlock the office in which they kept their records while their appeal was in process. If he wanted to see the records, he would have to force his way into the office. Vivant decided not to force the door at that time. In addition to submitting their appeal to Lyon, the nuns also began preparing a factum (legal brief) describing Noailles’ refusal of the sacraments on November 18, 1707. They had appealed against this order in December 1707 and were considering initiating a new appeal at this time, also before the Primate of Lyon. Joncoux and Dumesnil had also published several petitions and open letters by this time. Their exchange over the factum provides a candid view on how they prepared their documents and weighed their options for publication.107 Joncoux prepared the first draft of the factum, which she sent to Dumesnil for review. Dumesnil wrote back with approval: “The fear alone that the factum might not appear at all is what alarmed us because this piece is excellent.”108 She did have some suggestions, however. She wrote, “I beg you to cross out the line that states that we are in the same fervour that we were at the beginning of our reform because this is well far from the truth and furthermore it is we ourselves who are giving us this praise.”109 After a few more exchanges about the wording and content of the factum, Dumesnil and Joncoux discussed its publication. Joncoux had consulted with her male colleagues and sent this advice: We would be as happy as you to see it appear publicly. But in the end, since you are the mistresses of bringing this case before the judges at Lyon, it would not appear with good grace that you publish a piece like this one while the channels of justice are open to you. . . . We think that it would be more appropriate to make an attempt to have this judged and if we run into some difficulty there, as I imagine we will because [Noailles] might not want to be judged by the official, then we can publish the factum.110

Joncoux advised the nuns not to publish the factum before filing their case with the court. The consensus was that this brief was different from 107 108 109 110

Factums could be published without going through the official approval process as long as they were signed by a lawyer or prosecutor. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, [day not specified] April 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux, June 5, 1709, UPR 227.

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their open letters and petitions and that the nuns should not target it to the public directly before giving the judges the opportunity to review it in the courts. Because these advisors were confident that Noailles would block their access to the court, the nuns would be able to publish it soon anyway in response to a refusal of justice. Meanwhile, a new twist in their case sent the Port-Royal nuns scrambling into their archives. The search began after the nuns at Paris informed those at Champs that they had filed an appel comme d’abus against Clement X’s bull of 1671, which confirmed the original division of the two houses. This appeal was apparently an attempt by the nuns at Paris to bypass the gridlock created by the legal wrangling between the nuns at Champs and Noailles. Hearing that the nuns of Paris were seeking to overturn this bull, Dumesnil wrote Joncoux in amazement: “Can the nuns of Paris [appeal against] the bull of Clement X that they solicited themselves in the first place?”111 The irony of the situation was that the nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs had never dropped their appeal against the bull granting Dorothy Perdreau the abbacy of Port-Royal-de-Paris. They had argued in 1671 that the bull was not legitimate because of procedural problems. Now, the nuns of Paris were appealing against their own bull for the same technical reasons. The result was a puzzling loop of litigation, in which opposite sides pushed for the same outcome using the same arguments. Dumesnil wrote to Joncoux that this conundrum presented Port-Royal-des-Champs with a good opportunity to hasten the convent’s inevitable demise and thus avoid the sin of losing their reform: I do not think that we can wait for a better time to attack the bulls of Sister Dorothy. . . . I hope for nothing, however, from this defense, because all that you tell me that will impress the judges’ minds will lead them without a doubt to prefer our destruction rather than the community of Paris, especially when they consider that we are regarded by the pope, the king, and by our archbishop as heretics, rebels, stubborn, etc. It is therefore not in the hope of winning our case that we make our opposition before the Grand Conseil, but to avoid as much as possible what is for us the injustice.112

Renewing their appeal against Dorothy’s bull took some time, however, because the nuns had to locate their records from 1671. Joncoux 111 112

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, May 14, 1709, UPR 677. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, June 10, 1709, UPR 677.

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and Dumesnil were hard-pressed to find these documents as many of the convent’s original papers had been moved to Holland for safekeeping during the persecution of 1679. In one letter Dumesnil wrote to Joncoux, “My Sister Sincletique assures me that there is no information ´ here about the . . . separation [of the houses in 1669]. We have none of the original papers for what happened at that time.”113 Unable to find these documents, Joncoux finally went to the record office of the Grand Conseil to have copies made of the documents authorizing Port-Royal’s division.114 In the meantime, Vivant continued taking an inventory of Port-Royal’s property. His inventory prompted more acts of opposition from the PortRoyal nuns, who hoped that the courts would rule favorably and cancel Vivant’s investigation altogether. The nuns of Champs had no such luck, however. On August 7, they learned that the ecclesiastical court at Lyon had rejected their case. Normally, a plaintiff would react to such rejection by moving the case over to Parlement via an appel comme d’abus. However, Joncoux and Dumesnil decided against this form of appeal because they knew that Louis XIV had great influence over Parlement.115 Instead, they submitted three sommations to Lyon for the denial of justice between September 2 and 11, all of which were ignored. By the fall of 1709, the letters between Dumesnil and Joncoux begin to show signs of fatigue. Dumesnil worried that Joncoux was pushing herself too hard and thanked her “for the errands that you run day and night to support a house that all of the powers want to turn over.”116 She also wrote that “the good heart with which you act is worth more to me that all of the appeals and oppositions that delay our destruction.”117 Dumesnil’s letters also foretold the end that she suspected was near: “I have no doubt that the abbess prefers Paris to Champs, but sooner or later, she will come here; hunger will make her come out from where she is.”118 113 114 115 116 117 118

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, May 21, 1709, UPR 677. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux, June 5, 1709, UPR 227. Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux to Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux, August 8, 1709, UPR 227. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, September 17, 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, September 20, 1709, UPR 677.

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The abbess of Paris finally paid Champs a visit on October 1, 1709. Dumesnil described for Joncoux how Mme de Chateau-Renault arrived that day at 11:15 in the morning with two notaries, two sisters from her house, a Bernadine nun (the abbess’ sister), and one laywoman.119 On her arrival, the abbess asked Dumesnil if she had read the order from Noailles that ordered the nuns of Champs to open their doors to her so that she could take possession of their monastery. Dumesnil replied that they would not open the doors because they had appealed against the arrˆet from Parlement that granted Mme de Chateau-Renault the right to take possession. The abbess then stated that their opposition “was worth nothing because it was not made in correct form.”120 Dumesnil responded, “I told her that until the case has been heard we will have to wait to see if we have proceeded incorrectly.”121 The abbess tried again to take possession by insisting on entering and obtaining the key to the room where the nuns kept the title to their house. After Dumesnil’s second refusal, the abbess called on her notaries to help pressure her. When the notaries asked Dumesnil to grant the abbess access to the archives, she again refused. At this point, the notaries drew up a proc`es verbal of the abbess’ request and Dumesnil’s refusal. Dumesnil told Joncoux that she read the proc`es verbal carefully before signing it. Then, one of the notaries told Dumesnil that the nuns at Champs could expect the abbess to use force against them because Noailles’ order gave her permission to “break down the doors” (de faire rompre les portes) if necessary. The abbess interrupted the notary to remind him that she had no intention of using violence, saying, “As far as this is up to me, I will only use gentle methods.”122 The abbess spent two days visiting Port-Royal. At night, she traveled to the neighboring convent of Saint-Cyr where she slept as the guest of Mme de Maintenon. On October 2, Dumesnil wrote Joncoux again, informing her that while the abbess was resting at the neighboring convent, they sent for a court clerk to submit a formal appeal against her attempted possession of the house. She asked Joncoux, “Is it possible that this trip will not be followed by an order of the king or of an act of authority? Our sisters are

119 120 121 122

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, October 1, 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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a bit frightened by this visit.”123 The nuns’ fear that the king would order the nuns to open their doors to the abbess by force prompted Dumesnil to write Joncoux again a few days after the abbess had left: Our sisters are still in fear of the return of a certain lady, they pressure me heavily to ask of those persons who have the charity to give us advice as to what we should do if this abb[ess] comes here with a lettre de cachet to enter and if it would be permissible to refuse her.124

Dumesnil explained that the nuns were in a state of “terrified panic” (une terreur panique) because just before the abbess left, she told them that she had informed Mme de Maintenon of their refusal to obey her orders. She told them that Mme de Maintenon found their refusal “very bad” and that she “promised her to speak of this to the king.”125 The tension in the house grew such that Dumesnil wrote on October 17, 1709, that she was losing control over the nuns in her house. On the one hand, she feared that some nuns were on the verge of caving in to the abbess’ demands: “We can fear a weakening among certain people by their natural pliancy.”126 On the other hand, she was afraid that other nuns were becoming too militant: “I fear no less for some others who will take on lofty, conceited airs and who will make reproachful comments with bitterness and will utter stinging words.”127 As for herself, she wrote that she was trying to prepare the nuns to follow the example set by their anciennes m`eres when they had outside directors imposed on them during the formulary crisis: Our mothers have always believed that it is necessary for us to defend ourselves against injustice as much as we can, but that if after doing all that we can to prevent domination from the outside, and when there is nothing left for us to do, then we must obey the person who has taken control in all that is not contrary to our Constitutions and our rule.128

She worried that not all of her nuns would be able to follow the directions of their anciennes m`eres because the temptation to relax their observance of the rule would be strong once they were living among the nuns of Paris: 123 124 125 126 127 128

Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, October 2, 1709, UPR 677. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, October 13, 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie Du Mesnil des Courtiaux to Franc¸oise Marguerite de Joncoux, October 17, 1709, UPR 677. Ibid. Ibid.

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“I see certain people who will find certain peril in independence.”129 She also added that, under the current circumstances, she wished that she could eliminate one of the observances set out for the nuns by their rule and constitutions: I know of only one observance that I strongly wish we could suspend, which is the conf´erence [discussion period] because familiarity and conversation are to be feared for many people whereas in the other observances we are obligated to remain silent and if one fails in these, one cannot hide the fact that one has made a mistake.130

As the leader of the convent, Dumesnil feared the conf´erence more than any other practice because this observance allowed the nuns freedom to talk and influence one another. The rest of the time, their vow of silence made it easier for her to control their communication with one another. In addition to worrying about the nuns, Dumesnil wrote to Joncoux for information about the progress of their protests and appeals in court. She asked Joncoux what the nuns should do if Noailles accompanied Mme de Chateau-Renault on her next attempt to take over the convent. She pointed out that they could not refuse to open the door to their bishop so she wanted to know if there was any other way in which they could resist. Dumesnil’s fears that the bishop might accompany the abbess to take possession of their house turned out to be for naught. Six days later, on the morning of October 29, the activity within Port-Royal-des-Champs came to a full stop when the nuns heard the sounds of several horses and carriages approaching their house. Their visitor this time was not the abbess of Paris, but the lieutenant of police M. d’Argenson. He surrounded the convent with two hundred men on horses and entered the convent courtyard. He posted guards on either sides of the doors and prevented all of the servants from leaving the premises. He then proceeded to the area outside the convent parlor and informed the doorkeeper that he had come under orders of the king to speak with the prioress. When he met with Dumesnil in the parlor he told her that he brought her orders from the king to open the convent doors and to confiscate the convent’s archives. Dumesnil obeyed his orders and allowed him to enter the convent. He then proceeded to the chapter room where he assembled the nuns and read them his orders from the king to disperse the nuns into 129 130

Ibid. Ibid.

A Royal Victory, 1679–1709

237

separate convents across France for the “good of the state.” He handed each nun a lettre de cachet and gave them three hours to prepare for their departure. In this way, with the use of armed guards and lettres de cachet, Louis XIV singlehandedly destroyed Port-Royal. Conclusion When d’Argenson arrived at Port-Royal, he was acting on the authority of Louis XIV alone. The king had clearly lost his patience with the nuns and with Noailles. The latter’s attempt to compromise with the nuns had drawn out the affair, giving them extra time to appeal their case in the courts and to publish more of their documents for the public to review. However, Noailles’ strategy had merit because the longer the conflict went on, the harder it was for Dumesnil to control her fellow nuns. There was a chance some of them might have submitted to him with time. However, Louis XIV’s exercise of absolute power preempted any schism among the nuns. Thus, in some sense, his violent act was a victory for Dumesnil and Joncoux for whom the goal had been to prevent a lapse in Port-Royal’s reform at all costs. The nuns’ final battle has been criticized by some as too legalistic. The historian Augustin Gazier remarked, “It can be said that there was too much [legal] procedure because martyrs never before had summoned their executioners to appear in court.”131 Yet the nuns were following in the footsteps of their anciennes m`eres, who had never separated Jansen’s defense from the institutional integrity of Port-Royal’s privileges and constitutions. Just like the earlier generation of nuns, these later nuns resisted their persecutors through every legal channel available to them, thus embracing their imperative to prevent sin. Finally, the nuns upheld the tradition of using gender along with paradoxes and contradictions to defend their position and to push theological debates to their extremes. When they signed Vineam Domini with the sans d´eroger clause, the nuns became the only ones to point out that this bull contradicted the Peace of Clement IX. By asserting that as ignorant women they needed this clause to erase their confusion, they put Noailles in the difficult bind of either having to explain the political nature of the bull to the nuns or using force to silence them.

131

Augustin Gazier, Histoire g´en´erale du mouvement jans´eniste depuis ses origines jusqu’a` nos jours (Paris: Honore´ Champion, 1922), 227.

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Although the nuns’ final struggle was a difficult one, with threats to their unity coming from both inside and outside the convent, Dumesnil and Joncoux successfully kept the Port-Royal nuns firm in their stance against their opponents and true to the legacy of their anciennes m`eres. The nuns at Champs had proven that they would rather see themselves destroyed than to take one step toward error.

Conclusion

Louis XIV destroyed Port-Royal-des-Champs in the fall of 1709 because the few elderly nuns living there had pushed him to his limits. They refused to compromise with Archbishop Noailles and insisted on their innocence in published documents that revived the formulary crisis of 1661. In the context of the emerging eighteenth-century public sphere, this strategy threatened Louis XIV’s legacy of divine right leadership by suggesting that his religious policies had all along been implemented through illegitimate uses of authority. The nuns’ resistance had the potential to tarnish Louis XIV’s legacy because he had built his claims to divine right authority on the back of a campaign to suppress Port-Royal. This campaign began under Mazarin, who first targeted the convent to undermine both the jurisdiction and the religious credibility of the rebellious Cardinal de Retz. Under Louis XIV, the convent took on greater importance as the king established personal rule by persecuting Jansenism as a matter of his own conscience. Even though only a few dozen women at Port-Royal resisted him in the early years of his personal rule, he singled them out as a major threat. Treating the nuns as a serious threat helped Louis XIV justify policies that extended his authority over the French Church. Ever since Mazarin allied the interests of the Crown with those of Jansen’s critics, the campaign against Jansenism and Port-Royal had become a way for the Crown to establish strategic alliances with the papacy while simultaneously shutting down opportunities for loyal opposition from French bishops and Parlement in the name of Gallican liberties. Mazarin was able to tame French bishops rather quickly by convincing them to tie their interests to the Crown’s own claims as the defender of the French Church. In contrast, 239

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Parlement put up more resistance because of the attempts made by Louis XIV and the bishops to undermine the appel comme d’abus, one of its most important privileges. Louis XIV finally overcame Parlement’s resistance by moving cases relating to Jansenism directly to his own council. As the Crown erected this final barrier to resistance from its own courts, it turned the Port-Royal nuns’ resistance to its advantage. Jansen’s critics had always used misogynist discourses to denounce the Port-Royal nuns as weak women vulnerable to seduction by false prophets. The Crown now adopted these discourses to argue that the nuns were the pawns of Jansenists at large and were part of a widespread plot against the Church. This plot then justified royal policies – such as circumventing Parlement – that promoted swift and unimpeded action in religious affairs. However, when the Crown inflated the threat posed to it by the PortRoyal nuns, it inadvertently made itself more vulnerable to a resistance strategy that the nuns had refined a decade earlier in response to the Jesuit attack on their reform. Under the leadership of Angelique and ´ Agn`es Arnauld, the Port-Royal nuns synthesized their vows of monastic obedience with Saint-Cyran’s theories on religious renewal. They saw the accusations of heresy leveled against them by Jesuit priests as signs of divine grace sent to purify their spirits and to remind them of their duty to combat sin. Rather than separating human politics outside the convent from their religious experience within, they embraced the link between the two and treated the pressures caused by these politics as necessary and inevitable for the perpetuity of Angelique’s reform and the development ´ of their own faith. The result was that the nuns’ more disciplined reform turned the tables on those who accused them of unruliness by making these accusers, and not the nuns, appear guilty of creating disorder. Underlying the nuns’ strategy was their understanding of the science of saints, which involved a belief that, when theologians taught the truth about religion, they did so equally through their words and through their actions. The science of saints meant that, even though nuns were barred from reading theological texts by the Church, they still could appropriate the truths within them by following the pious examples of their authors. By logical extension, when the nuns imitated the pious examples of saintly theologians, they too were communicating their theological truths. The nuns thus participated in the Jansenist debates by modeling behaviors that, when viewed in the context of the debates, always had the force of confirming the arguments leveled by Jansen’s male apologists. In some cases, the nuns’ behavior had the effect of pushing these apologists to

Conclusion

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a more radical, uncompromising position in their polemics. Such was the case in 1643, when Angelique Arnauld urged her brother Antoine to ´ embrace persecution by adopting a more belligerent tone in his polemical writings. Angelique de Saint-Jean similarly pushed Antoine to help the ´ nuns cultivate an even more intransigent stance against the formulary in November 1661, after their first signatures to the formulary with the right/fact distinction were dismissed as invalid. Later, as negotiations for the Peace of Clement IX were under way, she again tried to convince Arnauld to resist all compromise. When Louis XIV began persecuting the Port-Royal nuns himself after declaring personal rule in 1661, he ended up pitting himself against Jansen’s most determined defenders. The nuns became even more determined after Archbishop Per tried to exacerbate internal divisions ´ efixe ´ within the house and thus weaken the convent. His efforts ultimately strengthened the leading faction of nuns by removing from their midst those nuns who did not follow them. The strategy of these leading nuns, represented by the testimonies of Gertrude Dupre, de Saint´ Angelique ´ Jean, and Christine Briquet, was to limit Louis XIV’s personal rule in matters of religion by defending their rights as women to follow their individual consciences. The nuns’ defense of individual conscience also had the effect of opposing the doctrine of papal infallibility in that particular time and context. By linking their right to conscience to the defense of Port-Royal’s traditional liberties in letters to influential bishops and in published reports directed to members of Parlement, the nuns reopened the door for bishops to resist Louis XIV’s anti-Jansenist policies in the name of these liberties. From that point on, the Crown backed down on its attempts to dictate individual conscience and redirected its efforts toward controlling the Church through the extension of its regalian rights. Although scholars typically treat the regalian rights affair as a separate conflict from the Jansenist one, the case of Port-Royal reveals continuity between the two episodes. Louis XIV took his first step toward overturning the privileges of royally exempt institutions at Port-Royal-de-Paris while negotiating the Peace of Clement IX. His correspondence with Rome in the ensuing years, which he kept secret out of respect for the terms of the Peace of Clement IX, shows that he continued to press charges of heresy against Port-Royal-des-Champs to convince the pope to support his regalian rights. Port-Royal-des-Champs was his proof that allowing institutional autonomy from royal oversight in the Church promoted breeding grounds for heresy. The nuns at Port-Royal-des-Champs were aware of the continuity that Louis XIV stressed between Jansenism

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and the regalian rights affair. Knowing that the king continued to accuse the nuns of unruliness to justify establishing his right of nomination over Port-Royal-des-Champs, Abbess Angelique de Saint-Jean initiated an ´ intensive campaign to prepare the nuns for persecution by stressing PortRoyal’s legacy of reform and renewal. She delivered many speeches on the Benedictine Rule, emphasizing the nuns’ need to obey the rule, especially its provision for triennial elections. For the nuns, little had changed since the formulary crisis. They still felt the imperative to stress the continuity of Port-Royal’s reform to combat the accusations of heresy that the Crown used to justify its attacks on their corporate and institutional privileges. When the Jansenist debates resurfaced as part of the general legitimacy crisis at the end of his reign, Louis XIV decided once and for all to suppress Port-Royal. He was able to convince the necessary ecclesiastical and legal institutions to support him in this goal, but when faced with the nuns’ persistent appeals to Parlement and the public at large, he decided to shut down the community in a show of force. He was not going to take any chances again with these women, knowing too well from past experience their ability to attract allies and build coalitions against him. However, what Louis XIV had hoped was the crown’s coup de grace against Port-Royal became for his eighteenth-century detractors something more akin to the Rape of Lucretia. Port-Royal became a symbol of moral outrage against the French monarchy and the banner under which Jansenist magistrates and lawyers in Parlement rallied to fight for their jurisdictional rights and integrity during the controversy over the bull Unigenitus.1 They invented the “myth” of Port-Royal in which the nuns cared for nothing but their reform.2 They adopted the nuns’ strategy of passive obedience and provoked the Crown until it exiled them on several occasions.3 They defended other groups of nuns who resisted the bull and allied themselves with convulsionary women who claimed that their bodies “trembled” like the falling stones of Port-Royal.4 When the 1 2 3

4

Maire, De la cause de dieu a` la cause de la nation, 182–3. Ibid. J. H. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968). Julian Swann, “Parlement, Politics and the parti jans´eniste: The Grand Conseil affair, 1755–56,” French History 6 (1992): 435–61. B. Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early EighteenthCentury Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Catherine Maire, Les convulsionnaires de Saint-M´edard: Miracles, convulsions et proph´eties a` Paris au XVIIIe si`ecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). Mita Choudhury, Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

Conclusion

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magistrates expelled the Jesuit order from France, one of them noted that it was the “stones of Port-Royal which were falling on [the Jesuits’] heads to crush them.”5 A Feminist Legacy The myth of Port-Royal, forged in the aftermath of its destruction, has shaped the convent’s legacy. The convent’s ruins are now a national monument where visitors are invited to experience the solitude of the nuns in its bucolic setting and to explore the inspired genius of the solitaires in a museum displaying evidence of their writings and science experiments.6 However, when we examine Port-Royal’s destruction, a different legacy emerges, one that highlights women’s agency in a struggle to define their own consciences, to maintain control over their institution, and to combat sin in their community. This agency can be traced to the period immediately after the Wars of Religion when Angelique Arnauld was one of many women reshaping ´ the religious landscape of France following the wars’ upheaval. Anxieties over women’s influence were already pervasive, but in Angelique’s case, ´ they were particularly heightened because of the ways her path to reform promoted the values of the emerging robe elite and challenged social distinctions. In the early years of her reform, Angelique clashed with other ´ reformers who rejected her belief that wealth or social status should not be a prerequisite for admission to the convent. By 1633, her disagreement with others over this and other issues led to accusations of heresy against her. As Angelique and her sister Agn`es redoubled their efforts to promote ´ the ideals of her early reform over the next decade, the accusations of heresy only intensified, escalating in concert with an increase in the size and social diversity of Port-Royal’s population. The accusations of heresy also coincided with Angelique’s partner´ ship with Saint-Cyran. After her failed effort to establish the Institute of the Holy Sacrament, he helped her reassert control over Port-Royal by advising her to embrace persecution as an opportunity to renew her original reform. When the accusations of heresy against the nuns turned into accusations of Jansenism in 1643, he repeated this message, urging them more than ever to see these troubles as God’s way of renewing their 5 6

Cited in Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 1. Musee ´ nationale de Port-Royal des Champs self-guided tour handout.

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dedication to the Benedictine Rule. From that point on, the Jansenist debates and Angelique’s reform became bound together in a dynamic ´ loop. As polemicists employed anti-Jansenist discourses against PortRoyal within new political and ideological contexts, they gave new meaning to the anxieties surrounding Angelique’s reform. The nuns responded ´ by strategically forwarding their own discourses, which were grounded in the figurative language of pious example and thus created new meanings and ideological contexts for the Jansenist debates in their turn. This focus on the nuns’ agency in the Jansenist debates sheds light on a new form of agency, not recognized in other studies of early modern nuns. Until recently, women historians and feminist scholars have either misunderstood or oversimplified the modalities of agency among early modern cloistered women. In an analysis of recent scholarship on the subject, Barbara Diefendorf notes that a more comprehensive view of cloistered women is emerging because scholars have shifted their focus from outside the convent walls to what took place inside them. Although scholars in the 1970s and 1980s tended to focus on the enclosure decrees of the Council of Trent, which they characterized as a male initiative to control women, more recent scholarship looks at the communities of women within convents as centers of female authority and of spiritual, intellectual, and artistic development.7 These newer works also focus on convents as complex institutions in which women’s experiences of the religious life were mitigated by the religious, social, political, and economic climate of surrounding communities.8 As a result of this newer scholarship, we now recognize agency for cloistered women in ways that go beyond male–female power struggles and take into account the full array of religious, social, and cultural parameters within which these women operated. For instance, in considering the work of Moshe Sluhovsky on demonic possessions in convents,9 Diefendorf points out that past scholars have tended to treat women in these cases as either “passive victims of clerical manipulation or as artful, self-promoting schemers.”10 Women’s actions were reduced to these two choices by scholars who only took gender into account when assessing 7 8

9 10

Barbara Diefendorf, Rethinking the Catholic Reformation, 31. The decision to enforce the cloister, for example, varied by locale, and often had as much to do with the attitudes of individual nuns and local bishops, family influences, financial concerns, and racial and ethnic tensions as it did with council decrees. Ibid, 32. Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Barbara Diefendorf, Rethinking the Catholic Reformation, 45.

Conclusion

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women’s options for action. In contrast, Sluhovsky’s thesis, which takes women’s own religious views and experiences into consideration, “gives women agency both as concerned spiritual directors and as spiritually afflicted individuals seeking to make sense of their afflictions.”11 In other words, by considering religion as its own category of analysis, Sluhovsky is able to go beyond a male–female power struggle to assess female agency according to such criteria as individual conscience and selfreflection. In turn, these criteria help us appreciate women as full beings living on their own terms, because the capacity for self-analysis and transformation are central to Western constructions of the individual self.12 The case of the Port-Royal nuns confirms this recent trend in scholarship. It reveals a more dynamic relationship between the cloister and the outside world and considers power relationships beyond a simple male-female dichotomy. The Port-Royal nuns themselves underscored this complexity when they defended their right to conscience through a gender paradox. Their resistance marks an early moment in the feminist use of gendered-based paradoxes, as defined by Joan Scott, yet one that differed from the paradoxes she studied because the nuns used it to defend Christian spiritual equality as opposed to an equality based in natural law.13 However, the nuns’ timing was significant. It marked a critical juncture in the history of gender in which France’s “woman problem” intersected with the rise of absolute power to make the feminist position in the querelle des femmes fertile ground for outlining the fundamental elements of a rational self that would go on to become the modern individual. At this moment, the male–female dichotomy was not only a clash between male oppression and female resistance but also a heuristic device for understanding universal principles about the human condition. Siep Sturrman found evidence of this juncture in his study of Poulain de la Barre. Within five years of the formulary crisis, Poulain de la Barre published three feminist works that turned pro-women arguments from the querelle des femmes into a systematic social philosophy grounded in Cartesian principles.14 In giving feminism a theoretical foundation, 11 12

13 14

Ibid. Webb Keane, “From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (1997), 674–93, p. 676. Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Siep Stuurman, Franc¸ois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 8.

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Poulain de la Barre turned pro-women arguments into a radical defense of human equality.15 Through his feminist philosophy he also defended many of the same values that the Port-Royal nuns upheld: a society based on merit,16 freedom of conscience, the compatibility between religion and rationalism and the right to speak up against illegitimate uses of power.17 Philosopher Denise Riley too has noticed this juncture in her analysis of a number of sources in literature, philosophy, and the history of science. She asserts that a “slow loss of the sexually democratic soul” began in the late seventeenth century.18 By the end of that century, the concept of “women” was becoming increasingly sexualized, thus losing its heuristic capacity for exploring universal principles of the human condition such as rationality and equality. For some scholars, the Port-Royal nuns will never be candidates for the term “feminist” because they always upheld patriarchy as the natural order of the universe. However, when we consider their resistance to Louis XIV in the context of feminist discourses by contemporary secular authors such as Poulain de la Barre, we see that their actions upheld the unquestionably feminist positions of women’s equal capacity for reason and right to individual conscience. In conjunction with the more radical feminists of their day, they defended female rationality as a way to uphold a universal principle of individual equality. The nuns understood quite well that the command for female obedience, which they believed was meant to maintain a divine order, was being exploited to justify domineering uses of illegitimate authority by their male superiors. They may have disagreed with the secular feminists of their day on many issues, but they agreed on this point: A belief in women’s inferiority was no excuse for committing a sin or injustice against them. If we allow them to speak to us through their language – the figurative language of pious example – we can be sure that they wanted to leave the strategy of a gender paradox for defending women’s rights as part of their legacy. 15 16 17 18

Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 180. Denise Riley, Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 18.

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Index

Absolutism, 17, 87–88, 207 Individualism and, 106, 245 Jansenism and, 14–15, 79, 159 See also Divine Right, Louis XIV Acad´emie Franc¸aise, 207 Acarie, Barbe, 12 Ad Sacram (papal bull), 100–102, 142 Agency, 14 Nuns and, 11–12, 13, 243, 244–245 See also Cambridge School of Political Thought, Feminism, Speech acts Akkerman, Tjitske, 16 Albizzi, Francesco, Cardinal, 187 Alexander VII, Pope, 89, 95, 100, 141, 144, 184, 185 Alexander VIII, Pope, 206 Annat, Franc¸ois, 92, 93–94, 107, 108, 187 Anne of Austria, 71, 72–74, 96, 108, 118 Anti-Jansenism. See Jansenist Polemics Appel comme d’abus, 89, 101, 144, 164, 168, 233, 240 Aquaviva d’Aragon, Marie-Angelique d’, ´ 57 Arnauld, Agn`es, 21–22, 25, 28, 54–55, 56, 66, 76, 97, 108, 119, 128, 137, 148, 165–166 Author of Secret Chaplet, 31, 42, 55, 98 Avis . . . donn´es aux religieuses, 201 Letter to Louis XIV, 109–110 Speeches to the nuns, 129–132, 157–158 On Christian monarchy, 110

On conscience, 109, 130, 131, 132 Arnauld, Angelique, 6, 8, 9, 15, 19, 20–21, ´ 23, 25, 26–28, 119 Anti-mysticism of, 98 Authority of at Port-Royal, 23, 25–26, 29, 31–32, 34, 52, 54–55, 58, 76, 97, 99 Benedictine Rule, her attitude towards, 20, 21, 26, 29, 32, 80 Heresy, accused of, 20, 21, 34–35, 243 Institute of the Holy Sacrament, founder of, 27–30 Jansenist apologist, as, 63, 65, 68–70, 90–91, 240, 241 Letter-writer, as, 59–76, 81–83, 90–91 Monastic reformer, as, 19, 20–21, 25, 26–27, 28, 61–62, 243 On Christian monarchy, 71–74 On miracles, 98–99 On redeemed language, 67–68 Relationship with Sebastian Zamet, 27, 29, 31–32, 33 Renews Port-Royal’s reform with Saint-Cyran, 32, 52–57, 76, 240, 243 Rhetorical strategies of, 63–68, 70, 75–76 Speeches by, 59, 80, 97 Spiritual development of, 24, 33–34, 52, 77 See also journ´ee du guichet Arnauld, Antoine, Sr., 2, 19, 22–23, 25 Franc et veritable discours au Roy, 25 See also journ´ee du guichet

263

264

Index

Arnauld, Antoine (Le Grand), 2, 4, 101, 201 Apologie de M. Jans´enius (first and second), 41, 48, 64, 67, 69–70 Apologie pour M. l’Abb´e de St. Cyran, 41, 43 Apologie pour les Religieuses de Port-Royal, 124 Angelique Arnauld, advice from, 63–70 ´ Censored by Sorbonne, 95 Consid´erations sur l’entreprise de M. Cornet, 45 De la fr´equente communion (On Frequent Communion), 41, 42, 64, 193 Denounces Jesuit plots against Church, 45–46 Disagreement with Blaise Pascal, 133 La nouvelle h´er´esie des J´esuites, 148 Lettre a` une personne de condition, 92 On Cornet’s propositions, 45, 87, 94 On Per doctrine of “human faith,” ´ efixe’s ´ 147 Peace of Clement IX and, 185, 186, 187 Port-Royal nuns, advice and attitudes towards, 119, 127–128, 129, 189 Refutes Habert, 40–41, 64, 70 Right/fact distinction and, 94, 113, 115–116 Seconde lettre a` un duc et pair, 93–94 Saint-Cyran and, 40–41 Arnauld, Henri, Bishop of Angers, 15–16, 159, 172, 184 Arnauld, Jeanne-Catherine de Sainte-Agn`es de Saint-Paul. See Agn`es Arnauld Arnauld, Marie-Angelique de Sainte ´ Madeleine. See Angelique Arnauld ´ Arnauld d’Andilly, Angelique de ´ Saint-Jean, 82, 106, 119, 198, 201 As Angelique Arnauld’s successor, 125, ´ 201 Chronicler of Port-Royal’s reform, 24, 80–81, 111 Her concern for contradictions in nuns’ behavior, 126, 134–135 Her concern for schisms among nuns, 126–127, 134–136 Interrogated by Per 152–156, 241 ´ efixe, ´ On the commenda (commendatory appointments), 202–203 On compromise, 128, 188

On elections, 202, 203–204 On martyrdom, 125–127, 129 On reasonable doubt, 155 On Port-Royal’s persecution, 155, 172–175, 188–189, 198, 201–202 On “weak” friends, 125, 126 Resists Peace of Clement IX, 188–189 Relation against Flavie Passart, 163 Speeches to the nuns, 201–204 Urges Pavillon to speak out against Formulary, 170–172, 175 Arnauld d’Andilly, Robert, 56, 96 Augustine, Saint, 3, 9, 29, 99, 122 In Jansenist polemics, 39–40, 41, 90, 93 On equality of sexes, 8, 123 On innocence, 8, 75 On patriarchy, 9, 75 On pressurae mundi, 9, 52 Political ideas of, 8–9, 13–14 See also City of God Augustinus, 15, 18, 38, 39, 61, 62, 63, 159 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 39, 147 Austen, J.L., 11 Bail, Louis, 148 Baius, Michael, 18 Barcos, Martin de, abbe´ de Saint-Cyran, 40, 81, 137 Bellegarde, Octave de, Archbishop of Sens, 30–31, 32 Benedictine Rule, 3, 15, 21, 159 Port-Royal and, 19, 20, 21, 28, 33, 93, 201, 202 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint 37, 122 Berulle, Pierre de, 98 ´ Bignon, Jerome, 40 ´ Bignon, Joseph, 157 Binet, Etienne, 31 Bishops, 101 Align interests with Crown, 101, 107, 194 Compose the formulary, 100–101 Declaration of the French Clergy (1682), 195, 206, 211 Demand a national council, 105, 143 Divine right of, 88 Gallican liberties and, 10, 86–87, 88, 100, 241 Ordered to sign formulary, 184 See also General Assembly of the Clergy, names of individual bishops

Index Book of Foundations,373 Bosquet, Franc¸ois, Bishop of Lod`eve, 88 Boulard, Elisabeth de Sainte-Anne, Abbess of Port-Royal-des-Champs, 212, 214, 215 Bourbon-Soisson, Charlotte de, Abbess of Maubuisson, 26, 27 Briquet, Christine, 106, 157–161, 164–168, 241 Brisacier Affair, 44, 74, 78 Brisacier, Jean de, 44, 45, 46–48 Le Jans´enisme confondu (Jansenism Confounded), 44, 46 Callaghan, John, 44–45, 46–47, 49 Capuchin monks, 23, 24, 25 Calvinism, 1–2, 47–48 Cambridge School of Political Thought, 10–11, 14, 15 Carr Jr., Thomas M., 59 Cas de conscience (1701), 207, 210–211 Catholic Church Asceticism within, 21, 24, 34, 84 Authority of, 4, 94, 109, 158, 222 (See also Papal Infallibility) Benefices within, 107 Charitable works of, 34 Loyalty of Jansenists to, 4 Moral theology within, 33, 193 Quarrels between regular and secular clergy within, 18, 61 Suspension “ipso facto,” 138 Tradition of female silence within, 17, 75, 117 (See also Pauline Interdictions) Visual marks of, 39 Women reformers within, 7, 20, 61–62, 243 Catholic polemics Common tropes in, 43 Rhetorical methods in, 39 Structure of, 41–42 Ceyssens, Lucien, 51 Chamillard, Michel, Vicar of Saint-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, 167–168, 170, 171–172 Chateau-Renault, Marie-Louise Franc¸oise Rousselet de, Abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris: 216, 234, 235, 236

265

Cheverny, Anne Hurault de, the marquise d’Aumont: 44, 45, 49, 57, 75 Chigi, Fabio, Cardinal. See Alexander VII Choart de Buzanval, Nicolas, Bishop of Beauvais, 15, 159, 184 Choiseul, Gilbert de, Bishop of Comminges, 138, 186 Citeaux, abbey of, 21, 26, 27, 28 Cistercian Order, 2, 21, 26 Strict observance movement, 21, 27 City of God, 8, 13, 75 Clairvaux, abbey of, 21. See also Denis Largentier Clement IX, Pope, 182, 185, 187. See also Peace of Clement IX Clement XI, Pope, 207, 210 Issues bull of suppression for Port-Royal-des-Champs, 227, 228 See also Vineam Domini Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 164 Company of the Holy Sacrament, 28 Concordia, Medieval ideal of, 12, 199 Condren, Charles de, 31, 98 Congregation of the r´egale. See Regalian Rights Controversy Conrius, Florent, 46 Conti, Anne-Marie Marinozzi de, 216 Conti, Armand de Bourbon, Duke of, 169, 216 Convulsionary women, 242 Conseil de conscience (Council of Conscience), 107, 108 Conseil d’´etat (Council of State), 107, 124, 168, 216 Cornet, Nicholas, 45, 87, 94, 161 Corsican guards, affair of, 139 Council of Trent, 244 Cum Occasione (papal bull), 86, 88, 90, 100–102, 142 D’Argenson, Rene, ´ Lieutenant of Police, 236, 237 De Caulet, Franc¸ois, Bishop of Pamiers, 184, 194 Declaration of the r´egale. See Regalian Rights Controversy De Contes, M., Vicar General of Cardinal de Retz, 125 De Gouges, Olympe, 16 DeJean, Joan, 207 De la Barre, Poulain, 245–246

266

Index

De la Motte-Houdancourt, Henri, Bishop of Rennes, 107 De Marca, Pierre, Bishop of Conserans, Toulouse, and Archbishop of Paris, 88, 107, 124, 138, 212 As political theorist, 87–88, 141 Convinces bishops to approve papal bulls, 87, 100 De Sacy, Isaac-Louis Le Maistre, 68–70 Des Mares, Toussaint-Joseph-Guy, 73 D’Estampes-Valenc¸ay, Henri, 85, 86 D’Estree, Abbess of ´ Angelique, ´ Maubuisson, 23, 26, 27 D’Estree, ´ Gabrielle, 23 D’Estrees, Cardinal, 229 ´ Cesar, ´ Diefendorf, Barbara, 244 Divine Right Of monarchy, 7, 14, 84, 104–105, 110, 239 Of bishops, 88 Dodun, Genevi`eve, 216 Dowries, monastic Angelique Arnauld’s rejection of, 27 ´ Benedictine rule and, 21 Cheaper than marriage dowries, 22 Du Fargis d’Angennes, Marie de Sainte-Madeleine, Prioress of Port-Royal-des-Champs, 119, 149 Duguet, Jean-Joseph, 196, 223 Dumesnil, Claude-Louise de Sainte-Anastasie des Courtiaux, Prioress of Port-Royal-des-Champs, 208, 216, 225, 236 Correspondence with Joncoux, 217, 220–221, 229, 233 Concern for schism among nuns, 221, 230, 235–236 On publishing, 231–232 Prefers Port-Royal’s destruction to lapse in discipline, 219, 228, 229, 232, 237 Dupre, ´ Marguerite de Sainte-Gertrude, 150–152, 157, 241 Duvergier de Hauranne, Jean-Amboise. See Saint-Cyran, Duvergier de Hauranne, abbe´ de Elections, monastic, 28, 29, 191–192, 193, 197, 199, 202, 203–204, 205, 216 Equality. See Individual Self, Feminism Feminism, 15, 159

And agency, 16 And individual equality, 17, 150, 162, 245–246 As gender paradox, 16, 17, 245 Definitions of, 15–16, 159 See also Port-Royal nuns, querelle des femmes Five Propositions. See Jansen, Formulary Crisis Flesselles de Bregy, Anne-Marie de ´ Sainte-Eustochie de, 106 Fleury, Franc¸ois, 71, 90 Foissy de Chamesson, Anne de, 31, 32 Fontpertuis, Angelique Angran de, 218, ´ 227 Formulary Crisis, 4, 105, 222 Cardinal de Retz and, 112–113, 125 First mandement of vicars general of Retz, 113–114, 124, 125 Mandement of archbishop Per ´ efixe, ´ 145–146 Port-Royal nuns and, 14, 17, 105–106, 142, 156, 161–162, 163 Second mandement of the vicars general of Retz, 124, 133 Schisms among Jansen’s defenders during, 114, 116–117 See also Bishops, Papal infallibility, Nicolas Pavillon, Right/fact distinction Francis I, King of France, 193–194 Free will. See Grace French Monarchy Aligns interests with bishops, 101, 107, 143 Attacks on Port-Royal, 10, 15 Curtails powers of Parlement, 107 Divine right of, 14, 85, 104, 143, 239 Gallican resistance to, 10 Motivations for persecuting Jansenists, 10, 79, 102, 105, 143, 144–145, 199, 239–240 Nominations to Church benefices, 107, 190–191, 193 Regulates individual consciences, 105, 143, 241 Right of r´egale, 193 Tensions with papacy, 141 See also names of individual kings and ministers, Gallicanism, Regalian Rights Controversy

Index Fronde, 10 Migration of nuns to Paris during, 78, 81 Politicizes Jansenist debates, 79–80, 102–103 Religious Fronde, 85 Gallicanism, 10, 15, 79, 141 And defense of Port-Royal nuns, 180 Linked to Jansenist heresy by Crown, 145 Bishops and, 10, 79, 86–87, 88, 100, 106, 182, 185, 211, 241 Parlement and, 10, 79, 89, 94, 101, 106, 164 Monarchy and, 87–88, 142, 239 Loyal opposition to Crown and, 10, 86, 102, 106, 142, 145, 239 Gazier, Augustin, 237 General Assembly of the Clergy, 13, 100, 101, 107, 122, 124, 177, 212 Gilbert, M., Vicar General of Archbishop Noailles, 213, 214–215 Gondi, Jean Franc¸ois de, Archbishop of Paris, 74–75 Gondrin, Louis-Henri de Pardailhan de, Archbishop of Sens, 88, 89, 94, 101, 122, 164, 185, 187 Gonzaga-Cl`eves, Louise-Marie de, princess of Mantua and Queen of Poland: 56, 57, 70–74 Grace, 18, 33, 39, 47–48, 64 Efficacious, 3 Sufficient, 3 Saint-Cyran’s description of, 65 Grand Conseil, 232, 233 Greenblatt, Steven, 106 Guyart, Denis, 95 Habert, Isaac, Theologian of Notre-Dame and Bishop of Vabres, 40–41 Accusations against Saint-Cyran, 40 Defines Jansenism in sermons, 38–40 Petitions Rome to censor Jansen’s propositions, 46, 85, 90 Refuted by Antoine Arnauld, 40–41, 64, 70 Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris, 196, 198, 200, 209 Harlay de Champvallon, Mme, Abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris, 209

267

Harlay, Marie-Anne de, Abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris, 209 Havart, M., 220 Hebert, M., 219 ´ Henry IV, King of France, 22–23 Hermant, Godefroy, 23, 25, 91, 138 Heresy Associated with “blind passion,” 42–43 Associated with system of elections, 199, 205 Definition of, 39 Jansenism as, 3, 7, 18, 144, 176–177 “Singularity” as mark of, 39 Women and, 3, 8, 20, 35, 46, 49, 50, 197 See also Angelique Arnauld, Calvinism, ´ Isaac Habert, Saint Paul, Secret Chaplet Hibernian Affair, 45, 46 Human Faith (doctrine of), 17, 146–147, 223 See also Hardouin de Per ´ efixe ´ Human Faith (in Port-Royal Logic), 147 In Eminenti (papal bull), 86 Individual self As source of certainty in moral questions, 104, 132 As response to absolute authority, 106, 245 Defense of conscience of, 105 Equality of, 17, 246 Western constructions of, 245 Ines ´ de la Cruz, Juana, 12 Innocent X, Pope, 86, 89, 144 Innocent XI, Pope, 193, 209 Examines Port-Royal’s constitutions, 198, 199 Refuses to confirm French bishops, 183 Threatens Louis XIV with excommunication, 200 See also Regalian Rights Controversy Innocent XII, Pope, 206 Institute of the Holy Sacrament, 26, 28, 29, 30, 33, 52, 76. See also Angelique ´ Arnauld, Saint-Cyran, Secret Chaplet, Sebastien Zamet Irish priests, 45, 46. See also John Callaghan, Hiberian Affair

268

Index

Jansen, Cornelius, Bishop of Ypres, 2, 3, 8, 10, 17, 69, 79 Critique of Jesuits by, 18, 51 Propositions attributed to, 4, 38, 46, 48, 85, 88, 91, 95, 100, 144, 159, 160, 207 Relationship with Saint-Cyran, 3, 32 Respect for Church authority, 15, 159 Jansen, Paule, 85, 91 Jansenism Absolutism and, 14–15, 21, 102, 159 As a querelle des femmes, 19, 20, 44, 50, 94, 140 Associated with Irish priests, 46 Early definitions of, 38–40 French Revolution and, 6, 14 History of, 6–7 Synonymous with Port-Royal, 44 See also Heresy, Jansenist polemics, Jansenists Jansenist polemics, 7 Anti-Jansenist positions in, 20, 39, 42–43, 49, 91 As debates over moral theology, 193 As defense of individual conscience, 105, 116 As dogmatic dispute, 3, 6, 18 As ecclesiastical conflict, 18 As political conflict, 6, 79 As struggle over female conscience, 140 Children in, 91, 98, 196 Fronde and, 79–80 Jansenist critiques of Jesuits in, 41, 43, 45, 99, 145–146 Women in, 2, 3–5, 8, 11, 13, 19, 43, 52–53, 71, 92–94 See also Franc¸ois Annat, Antoine Arnauld, Jean de Brisacier, Formulary Crisis, Isaac Habert, Papal Infallibility, querelle des femmes, Secret Chaplet, Jer Seguin ´ ome ˆ ´ Jansenists As “disciples of Augustine,” 3, 4, 53, 90, 93, 193, 196 Accused of Calvinism, 47–48, 51 As historians, 5 Attitude towards king, 4, 116 Loyalty to Catholic Church, 40–41 Jesuits, 3, 4, 6, 13, 23, 25, 91 Accused of Pelagianism, 18 Of Louvain, 18, 38 See also Franc¸ois Annat, Jansenist polemics, Molinism, Jer Seguin ´ ome ˆ ´

Joncoux, Franc¸oise Marguerite de, 208, 216–217, 218 Correspondence with Dumesnil, 217, 220–221, 224–225 Correspondence with Port-Royal’s male advisors, 223–224 Joncoux, Jean de, 216 Journ´ee du guichet, 20–21, 24, 25, 26 Labadie, Jean de, 48 Largentier, Denis, Abbot of Clairvaux, 27 Laval de Boisdauphin, Henri de, Bishop of La Rochelle, 186 Le Maistre, Antoine, 68–69, 80, 81, 82, 111 Refutes Zamet’s M´emoire, 36–38, 43, 92 Le Roy, Guillaume, Abbot of Hautefontaine, 114–115, 123, 186 Lessius, Leonard, 193 Le Tardif, Marie-Genevi`eve de Saint-Augustin, Abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris, 28, 98 Letters, as genre, 59–60, 74 Liancourt Affair, 90, 91–94, 103 Liancourt, Roger Du Plessis, Duke of, 195 Ligny, Madeleine de Sainte-Agn`es de, Abbess of Port-Royal, 125, 137 Ligny, Dominique de, Bishop of Meaux, 186 Lionne, Hugues de, 95 Longueville, Louise-Marie de Bourbon, the first duchess of, 30, 31 Longueville, Anne-Genevi`eve de Bourbon, the second duchess of, 57, 169, 185, 186, 187, 195, 196 Lougee, Carolyn, 19 Louis XIII, King of France, 107 Allows triennial elections at Port-Royal, 28, 197 Louis XIV, King of France Champion of Gallican liberties, 142, 145 Continues Mazarin’s anti-Jansenist policies, 106, 139 Crisis in final years of reign, 1–2, 206–207, 242 Declares personal rule, 104, 139, 239 Demands signatures to the formulary, 105, 107, 145 Disciplines Pavillon, 179, 182

Index Edict of April 29 (1664), 142–145, 175–177, 182 Establishes his conseil de conscience (council of conscience), 106–107 Persecution of Port-Royal, 1–2, 107–109, 196–199, 218, 227–228, 234, 236–237, 239, 241, 242 Personal conscience of, 10, 17, 106, 139, 142, 239 Retz, Cardinal and, 102, 124–125, 137 Pursues right of nomination over Port-Royal-des-Champs, 195, 196–198, 199–200, 208 Solicits Vineam Domini, 211 See also Regalian Rights Controversy Macquet, Louis, 51, 61, 62–63, 69–70 Maignelay, Claude-Marguerite de Gondi, marquise de, 30 Maintenon, Mme de, 209, 234, 235 Maire, Catherine, 15 Marignier, Guillaume, 212, 215 Marion, Catherine, 19 Marion, Simon, 23, 25 Marmion, M. (Cartesian scholar), 216 Maubuisson, abbey of, 23, 26–27 Mazarin, Jules de, Cardinal, 10, 73, 100, 180 Conflict with Cardinal de Retz, 85, 89–90, 102, 108 Exploits Jansenist debates for political purposes, 79, 85–86, 88, 91–92, 94–95, 102, 145, 239 Need to improve relations with Rome, 86 Persecutes Port-Royal, 95–96 M´emoires d’Utrecht, 81 Miracle of the Holy Thorn, 98, 108, 180 Molinists, 3 Mysticism, 98 New Historicists, 106 Nicene Creed, 47 Nicole, Pierre, 2, 133, 147, 186 Les pernicieuses consequences de la nouvelle h´er´esie des J´esuites contre le Roi, 148 Noailles, Louis-Antoine de, Archbishop of Paris, 209, 234, 236 Blocks elections at Port-Royal-des-Champs, 216

269

Critiques sans d´eroger clause, 215 Early support for Port-Royal-des-Champs, 209–210 Motivations for persecuting Port-Royal-des-Champs, 212 Offers compromise to Port-Royal nuns, 228–229, 237 Nobles Of the robe, 18, 21, 22, 24, 36, 59–60 Of the sword, 18, 36 Social mobility among, 18–19, 22 Relations between, 18–19, 22 Nouveau Testament de Mons, 193 Nuns Agency of, 11–12, 13, 243, 244–245 Annunciation (Boulogne), 61. See also Louis Macquet Carmelites (Paris), 30 Converse sisters, 166 Notre-Dame-de-Charonne, abbey of, 195 Notre-Dame-de-Tard, abbey of, 28 Saint-Cyr, abbey of, 22, 23, 25, 234 Urbanists of Saint Claire, 195 Visitation nuns, 166 See also names of individual nuns, Port-Royal-de-Paris, Port-Royal-des-Champs, Port-Royal nuns Obedience, 12, 116, 139, 222 Passive obedience, 59, 242 Oratorian priests, 98 Papal infallibility, doctrine of Condemned by Sorbonne, 14, 184 In formulary crisis, 145, 148, 158, 164, 176, 184, 241 Papal Inquisition, fear of in France, 101 Parlement Appel comme d’abus, 89, 101, 144, 164, 168, 233, 240 Gallican liberties and, 10, 79, 89, 94, 101, 106, 164 Powers curtailed by monarchy, 107, 168 Pascal, Blaise, 2, 97, 113 Adopts Jacqueline’s critique of Arnauld, 132–133 Dowry affair and, 84 Ecrit sur la signature, 133 Provincial Letters, 97, 133 Pascal, Etienne, 84

270

Index

Pascal, Jacqueline, 5, 83, 98, 106, 119, 128, 163 On bishops, 122, 179 On female martyrdom, 121–122, 127 Opposes right/fact distinction, 120–123, 132, 140 Signs first mandement, 123, 124 Passart, Flavie, 98, 135, 163, 180 Patriarchal authority, 9, 75, 180 Paul of Tarsus, Saint, on heretics, 34–35. See also Pauline Interdictions Paulette, edict of (1604), 19 Pauline Interdictions, 4, 11–12, 13, 60, 105. See also Catholic Church Pavillon, Nicholas, Bishop of Alet, 169 Aligns interests with Port-Royal nuns, 177–179, 187 As model bishop, 169, 179, 180 Disciplined by Louis XIV, 179, 184 Early support for the formulary, 169, 171 Louis XIV’s edict of April 29 (1664), his opposition to, 175–177, 182, 184 Peace of Clement IX and, 180, 182, 183–184, 186–187, 189, 229 Port-Royal nuns and, 168–169, 170–179, 187–190, 205, 226 Refuses to circulate formulary, 15, 138, 159, 170, 171 Refuses to sign formulary, 184 Rituel d’Alet, 193 See also Regalian Rights Controversy Perdreau, Dorothy, Abbess of Port-Royal-de-Paris, 164, 180, 182, 190, 191, 192, 209 Per Hardouin de, Bishop of Rodez ´ efixe, ´ and Archbishop of Paris, 139, 141, 241 And papal infallibility, 145, 147, 161, 164 Disciplines Port-Royal nuns, 163, 164–168 “Human faith” and, 145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 162, 180 Interrogates Port-Royal nuns, 150–161 Pardons Port-Royal nuns (1669), 189–190 Perier, Marguerite, 98, 124 ´ Petit, Thomas, Cure´ d’Herblay, 112 Pius V, Pope, 18

Pocock, J.G.A., 147. See also Cambridge School of Political Thought Poland, 71. See also Louise-Marie de Gonzaga-Cl`eves Pollet, Firmin, Vicar of Saint-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, 221–223, 224, 225 Pontchateau, Sebastien Joseph du Cambout ˆ ´ de, 195, 198 Port-Royal as Jansenist seminary, 156 Port-Royal-des-Champs, 2, 19, 80, 208 Archives of, 231, 232–233, 234, 236 As “nest” of heresy, 196, 216, 228 Constitutions of, 56, 198, 199, 201 Elections at, 28, 29, 191, 197, 202, 203–204, 216 Legally separated from Port-Royal-de-Paris, 190–192 Myth of, in memory, 5–6, 7, 51–52, 242, 243 Prohibited from recruiting new members, 216 Property and estates of, 54 Renovations of by Arnauld family, 22, 54, 56 Unhealthy living conditions at, 27 See also Angelique Arnauld, Louis XIV, ´ Port-Royal Nuns Port-Royal-de-Paris, 27–28, 80 Financial problems, 207 Governed by Visitation nuns, 166 Houses nuns that sign the formulary, 164, 180 Louis XIV claims right of nomination over, 164, 182, 190 Legally separated from Port-Royal-des-Champs, 190–192 Solicits reunification with Port-Royal-des-Champs, 207, 210, 217–218, 232 Port-Royal Logic, 147 Port-Royal Nuns, 27–28, 105, 106, 111, 138 As rational beings, 128, 132, 149–150, 155, 158, 160 Conflicts with male Jansenists, 126–128, 137, 189 Corporate versus individual identity of, 117, 132, 140, 162 Gallicanism and, 180 On royal nominations, 190–191

Index Defense of conscience, 17, 119, 149, 157, 180, 213, 241, 245 Defense of elections, 191–192, 193 Feminism of, 17, 105, 162, 180, 245–246 Fronde, charitable activities during, 78, 81, 82, 103 Formulary crisis and, 14, 17, 105–106, 117–119, 126, 136, 142, 161–162, 163 Jesuit critiques and rumors against, 42–43, 44, 47–49, 72, 75, 91–94, 95, 103, 108 Journals and reports composed by, 80–81, 111, 149, 155, 212, 213, 221 Malaria among, 27, 54, 80 Martyrdom of, 58–59, 111, 124, 156, 209, 237, 238 Miracles among, 96, 98–99, 100, 108, 163 Mission to combat Jesuit sin, 52–53, 57, 74–75, 77, 78, 237 Pascal family, influence among, 100, 134, 135, 136, 163 Patrons of, 56–57, 71, 195–196 Papal infallibility and, 148–149, 164, 241 Pavillon and, 168–169, 170–179, 180 Peace of Clement IX and, 187–190 Persecution of, by monarchy, 95–96, 102–103, 107–109, 196–199, 207–208 Political actions of, 3, 14 Political theory of, 8–9, 74, 240 Population of, 27, 83, 91, 103, 195, 196, 207 Publications by, 226, 229, 231–232 Querelle des femmes and, 20, 36–38, 105 Recruit new members to the convent, 78–79, 82, 196–197 Port-Royal-de-Paris, and 190–193, 218, 229, 233, 234 Responses to persecution, 9, 15, 76–77, 99, 111, 149–150, 162, 189, 190, 191, 200–201, 208, 225–226, 231, 235, 237–238, 240–242 Rhetorical strategies of, 12, 13, 112, 240–241, 244, 246 Saint-Cyran, confessor of, 32, 33

271

Schisms among, 10, 57, 58, 59, 98, 100, 103, 117, 126–127, 132, 134–136, 163–164, 180–181, 237, 241 sans d´eroger clause by, 213–214, 215, 226, 237 Solicit help from potential allies, 164–169, 170–179, 198, 206, 227 Theological knowledge of, 13, 92–93, 117, 118, 123, 159–160, 240 See also names of individual nuns Pr´ecieuses, the, 106 Preclin, Edmund, 6 ´ Primate of Lyon, court of, 220, 227, 230, 231, 233 Public sphere, 207, 239 Quesnel, Pasquier, 196 Querelle des femmes, 16 as symptom of social anxieties, 19, 36 Feminist positions within, 20, 38, 162 Jansenism as a, 19, 20, 44, 50, 94, 140 Misogynist arguments within, 19, 20, 36 Port-Royal nuns and, 20, 36–38, 105 Secret Chaplet affair as, 36–38 Within Catholic Church, 19, 20 Redeemed language, 67, 70 Regalian Rights Controversy As part of Jansenist debates, 183, 200 As continuation of formulary crisis, 204, 241 Congregation of the r´egale, 183, 194, 195 Declaration of the r´egale, 182–183, 193–194 Pavillon’s resistance to the r´egale, 183, 194 Regiminus apolsolici (papal bull), 184 Religious Fronde. See Fronde Renewals (penitential exercises), 32–33, 52, 240 Retz, Jean-Franc¸ois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris, 10, 195 Conflict with Mazarin, 85, 89–90, 102, 108 Formulary crisis and, 112–113, 125 Settlement with Louis XIV, 102, 137 Richelieu, 15, 41, 207 Arrests Saint-Cyran, 34, 36, 155 Richer, Edmund, 6

272

Index

Richerism, 85 Right/fact distinction, 4, 88, 94, 95, 113 Antoine Arnauld’s defense of, 115–116 Critiques of, 114–115 (Guillaume Le Roy), 120–123 (Jacqueline Pascal), 133 (Blaise Pascal), 113, 120 In episcopal mandements, 88, 113–114, 184 Port-Royal nuns and, 4–5, 140 Riley, Denise, 246 Rohan, Anne de, the princess of Guemen e, ´ ´ 56, 195 Sable, ´ Madeleine de Souvre, ´ the Marquise de, 56, 186 Saint-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 5–6, 105 Saint-Claude, Jacques Le Noire de, 217–218, 219, 220, 223, 226, 227 Saint-Cyran, Jean-Ambroise Duvergier de Hauranne, Abbot of, 8, 9, 15, 32, 41, 58, 106, 155, 159 Arrest of, 34, 36, 47–48, 155 Catechism by (Theologie famili`ere), 40, ´ 62–63 Defends the Secret Chaplet, 31 Jansen and, 3, 32 Isaac Habert and, 40 Letters by, in print, 193 On contrition, 33, 99 On episcopal authority, 61 On grace, 65 On monastic decline and renewal, 54 On scholastics, 13 On self-sacrifice, 58–59 On spiritual renewals, 32–33, 52, 240 On the “science of saints,” 12–13, 37 Petrus Aurelius, 61 Polemical attacks against, 34–36, 42 Port-Royal and, 32, 33, 52–57, 76, 240, 243 Prisoner, 39, 41, 51, 56–57 Salons, 19 Seguier, Pierre, Chancellor of Parlement, ´ 101, 184 Jer 42–43 Seguin, ´ ome, ˆ ´ Critiques On Frequent Communion, 42

Publishes Saint-Cyran’s “maxims,” 42 Revives Secret Chaplet controversy, 42–43 Sevign e, ´ ´ Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de, 57, 60, 195 Scholasticism, 12, 13 Science of Saints, 12, 13, 37, 60, 64, 240 Scott, Joan Wallach, 16–17, 162, 245 Secret Chaplet Agn`es Arnauld, author of, 31, 98 Affair of, 20, 30–31, 33, 36, 52 In querelle des femmes, 36–38 In Jansenist polemics, 42, 49 Singlin, Antoine, 58, 82, 84, 107, 108, 126, 137 Sinnich, John, 46 Skinner, Quentin, 10, 11, 100 Sluhovsky, Moshe, 244 Solitaires, 6, 56, 72, 73, 96, 243 Publications of, 41 Sorbonne, 23 Censors Antoine Arnauld, 95 Censors Jesuit thesis on papal infallibility, 141 Censors the Secret Chaplet, 31 Speech acts, 11, 17, 76 Spirituality. See Catholic Church Strict observance movement (Cistercian order), 21, 27 Stuurman, Siep, 16, 245 Suireau, Marie des Anges, Abbess of Port-Royal, 55, 97, 98 Taignier, Claude, 112 Teresa of Avila, Saint, 12, 37 Th´eologie famili`ere, 40, 62–63 Th´eologie morale des J´esuites, 41 Tradition de l’Eglise sur la penitence, 64 Unigenitus (papal bull), 5 University of Louvain, 18, 193 Van Kley, Dale, 6, 14 Vertus, Catherine-Franc¸oise de Bretagne-d’Avaugour de, 169, 170, 173, 186, 195 via notarum, 39 Vialart de Herse, Felix, Bishop of Chalons, ´ ˆ 125, 126, 137, 186

Index Vineam Domini (papal bull), 207, 208, 212 Vivant, Franc¸ois, Vicar General of Archbishop Noailles, 218, 219, 220–221, 230 Wars of Religion, French 7, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23 Women As agents of Catholic reform, 7, 20, 61–62, 243 As patrons of ecclesiastical institutions, 30, 56–57 Associated with heresy, 3, 8 Convulsionary, 242 Letter-writing practices of, 59–60 “Precious women” (pr´ecieuses), 106

273 Role in Jansenist polemics, 3–5, 8, 11, 13 Theological knowledge of, 37, 123, 160 (See also Science of Saints) See also Agency, Feminism, Pauline Interdictions, querelle des femmes

Zamet, Sebastien, Bishop of Langres, 58, 98 M´emoire against Saint-Cyran and Angelique Arnauld, 34–36 ´ Refuted by Antoine Le Maistre, 36–38, 92 Relationship with Angelique Arnauld, ´ 29, 31–32, 33 Institute of the Holy Sacrament, founder of, 27 Monastic reforms of, 28