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Updated: May 20, 2025
Many and long were the discussions at Rome upon this ideal heresy, invented by the Jesuits solely for the purpose of weakening the adversaries of Molina. To oppose his doctrines was to be a Jansenist. That in substance was what was meant by Jansenism. At the monastery of Port Royal des Champs, a number of holy and learned personages lived in retirement.
In the time of Pascal, Jansenism had a moment when it bade fair to be to France what pietism was to Germany. Later, in the anguish and isolation of the conflict the movement lost its poise and intellectual quality.
The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will that labyrinth in which man holds no clue. A hundred years later Cornells Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, revived these questions. Arnauld supported him.
But the history of the book did not close with the author's death. It was condemned by Pope Clement XI. in 1708 as infected with Jansenism.
I acknowledge that at first sight they seem from their number to be a greater burden to the faith of individuals than are the canons of councils; still I do not believe in matter of fact that they are so at all, and I give this reason for it: it is not that a Catholic, layman or priest, is indifferent to the subject, or, from a sort of recklessness, will accept anything that is placed before him, or is willing, like a lawyer, to speak according to his brief, but that in such condemnations the holy see is engaged, for the most part, in repudiating one or two great lines of error, such as Lutheranism or Jansenism, principally ethical not doctrinal, which are foreign to the Catholic mind, and that it is expressing what any good Catholic, of fair abilities, though unlearned, would say himself, from common and sound sense, if the matter could be put before him.
Cyran, in spite of the entreaties of his powerful friends, remained at Vincennes up to the death of Cardinal Richelieu; the seclusionists of Port Royal were driven from their retreat and obliged to disperse; but neither the severities of Richelieu, nor, at a later period, those of Louis XIV., were the true cause of the ultimate powerlessness of Jansenism to bring about that profound reformation of the church which had been the dream of the Abbot of St.
The first is, that he will have the goodness to give me a pious and methodical successor, sound and firm against Jansenism, which is in prodigious credit on this frontier. The other favor is, that he will have the goodness to complete with my successor that which could not be completed with me on behalf of the gentlemen of St. Sulpice.
Beside them, a small white-haired clerical with a kindly face, Pere la Chaise, confessor to the king, was whispering his views upon Jansenism to the portly Bossuet, the eloquent Bishop of Meaux, and to the tall thin young Abbe de Fenelon, who listened with a clouded brow, for it was suspected that his own opinions were tainted with the heresy in question.
This would be a sure stroke, and almost the only means of establishing it and destroying Molinism. Such is the fatality of any opinions which he embraces.” In the three concluding Letters, as we have said, Pascal reverts to the special subject of Jansenism and Port Royal. These Letters are considerably longer than the opening ones.
"I fear," he wrote in after years to a friend, "that this detestable barter of bishoprics will bring down the curse of God upon the country." A few years later, when civil war, pestilence and famine were devastating France, and Jansenism was going far to substitute despair for hope in the hearts of men, his words were remembered.
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