§ 27. The Papal Bulls against the Jansenists, 1653 and 1713.

The remaining doctrinal decrees of the Roman Church relate to internal controversies among different schools of Roman Catholics.

Jansenism, so called after Cornelius Jansenius (or Jansen), Bishop of Ypres, and supported by the genius, learning, and devout piety of some of the noblest minds of France, as St. Cyran, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Tillemont, the Mother Angelique Arnauld, and other nuns of the once celebrated Cistercian convent Port-Royal des Champs (a few miles from Versailles), was an earnest attempt at a conservative doctrinal and disciplinary reformation in the Roman Church by reviving the Augustinian views of sin and grace, against the semi-Pelagian doctrines and practices of Jesuitism, and made a near approach to evangelical Protestantism, though remaining sincerely Roman Catholic in its churchly, sacerdotal, and sacramental spirit, and legalistic, ascetic piety. It was most violently opposed and almost totally suppressed by the combined power of Church and State in France, which in return reaped the Revolution. It called forth two Papal condemnations, with which we are here concerned.

I. The bull 'Cum Occasione' of Innocent X. (who personally knew and cared nothing about theology), A.D. 1653. It is purely negative, and condemns the following five propositions from a posthumous work of Jansenius, entitled Augustinus.¹⁹⁹¹⁹⁹   The book is called after the great African Church Father, whose doctrines it reproduced, and was published by friends of the author in 1640, two years after his death. On Jansen, comp. the Dutch biography of Heeser: Historisch Verhaal van de Geboorte, Leven, etc., van Cornelius Jansenius, 1727. He was born near Leerdam, in Holland, 1585, studied in Paris, was Professor of Theology in the University of Louvain, Bishop of Ypres 1635, and died 1638. He read Augustine's works against Pelagius thirty times, the other works ten times. His book was finished shortly before his death, and advocates the Augustinian system on total depravity, the loss of free-will, irresistible grace, and predestination. In his will he submitted it to the Holy See. He resembles somewhat his countryman, Pope Adrian VI., who vainly endeavored to reform the Papacy.

(1.) The fulfillment of some precepts of God is impossible even to just men according to their present ability (secundum præsentes quas habent vires), and the grace is also wanting to them by which they could be observed (deest illis gratia, qua possibilia fiant).

(2.) Interior grace is never resisted in the state of fallen nature.

104(3.) For merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature man need not be exempt from all necessity, but only from coercion or constraint (Ad merendum et demerendum in statu naturæ lapsæ, non requiritur in homine libertas a necessitate, sed sufficit libertas a coactione—that is, from violence and natural necessity).

(4.) The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of prevenient interior grace for every action, even for the beginning of faith; but they were heretical (in eo erant hæretici) in believing this grace to be such as could be resisted, or obeyed by the human will (eam gratiam talem esse, cui posset humana voluntas resistere, vel obtemperare).

(5.) It is semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died and shed his blood wholly (altogether) for all men.²⁰⁰²⁰⁰   'Semipelagianum est dicere, Christum pro omnibus omnino mortuum esse aut sanguinem fudisse.' This supralapsarian proposition is condemned as falsa, temeraria, scandalosa, impia, blasphema, et hæretica. See the five propositions of Jansen in Denzinger's Enchir., pp. 316, 317.

The Jansenists maintained that these propositions were not taught by Jansenius, at least not in the sense in which they were condemned; that this was a historical question of fact (question de fait), not a dogmatic question of right (droit); and, while conceding to the Pope the right to condemn heretical propositions, they denied his infallibility in deciding a question of fact, about which he might be misinformed, ignorant, prejudiced, or taken by surprise.

But Pope Alexander VII., in a bull of 1665, commanded all the Jansenists to subscribe a formula of submission to the bull of Innocent X., with the declaration that the five propositions were taught in the book of Cornelius Jansen in the sense in which they were condemned by the previous Pope.²⁰¹²⁰¹   'Ego N. constitutioni apostolicæ Innocentii X., datæ die 31. Maji 1653, et constitutioni Alexandri VII., datæ die 16. Octobris 1665, summorum Pontificum, me subjicio, et quinque propositiones ex Cornelii Jansenii libro, cui nomen Augustinus, excerptas, et in sensu ab eodem auctore intento, prout illas per dictas constitutiones Sedes Apostalica damnavit, sincero animo rejicio ac damno, et ita juro. Sic me Deus adjuvet, et hæc sancta Dei evangelia.'

The Jansenists, including the nuns of Port-Royal, refused to submit. Many fled to the Netherlands. The Pope abolished their famous convent (1709), the building was destroyed by order of Louis XIV. (1710), even the corpses of the illustrious Tillemonts, Arnaulds, Nicoles, De Sacys, and others, were disinterred with gross brutality (1711), and the church itself was demolished (1713). No wonder that such barbarous 105tyranny and cruelty, perpetrated in the holy name of the Church of Christ, bred a generation of skeptics and infidels, who at last banished the Church and religion itself from the territory of France. Cardinal Noailles, who from weakness had lent his high authority to these outrages, made afterwards, in bitter repentance, a pilgrimage to the ruins of Port-Royal, and, looking over the desecrated burial-ground, he exclaimed: 'Oh! all these dismantled stones will rise up against me at the day of judgment! Oh! how shall I ever bear the vast, the heavy load!'²⁰²²⁰²   Gregoire: Les ruines de Port-Royal, Par. 1709. Mémoires sur la déstruction de P. R. des Champs, 1711. Jervis, l.c. Vol. II. pp.191 sqq. Tregelles says, l.c. p. 47: 'The united acts of Louis XIV. and the Jesuits, in crushing alike Protestants, Quietists, and Jansenists, drove religion well-nigh out of France. What a spectacle! The same monarch, under the influence of the same evil-minded and pharisaical woman (Madame de Maintenon), persecuting not only Protestants, but also such men as Fénelon, among the brightest and holiest of those who owned the authority of Rome. Thus was the train laid which led to the fearful explosion in which altar and throne alike fell, and atheism was nationally embraced. How the mind of Voltaire was affected by the abominable deeds of men who professed the name of Christ, is shown by his juvenile verses, in which he speaks so indignantly of the destruction of Port-Royal that he was sent for a year to the Bastile.'

II. The more important bull 'Unigenitus (Dei Filius)', issued by Pope Clement XI., Sept., 1713, condemns one hundred and one sentences of the Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel, (d. 1719), extracted from his moral reflections on the New Testament.²⁰³²⁰³   Pasquier or Paschasius Quesnel was born at Paris, 1634, studied at the Sorbonne, joined the Congregation of the Oratory, and was appointed director of the institution belonging to this order at Paris. He was a profound and devout student of the Scriptures and the Fathers, edited the works of Leo I. (1675, with dissertations) in defense of the Gallican Church against the Ultramontane Papacy (hence the edition was condemned by the Congregation of the Index), was exiled from France 1684, joined Arnauld at Brussels, and died at Amsterdam 1719. After the death of Arnauld he was considered the head of the Jansenists. His commentary is one of the most spiritual and reverent. It is entitled 'Le Nouv. Testament en françois avec des réflexions morales sur chaque vers, et pour en rendre la lecture plus utile, et la méditation plus aisée,' Paris, 1687, 2 vols.; 1694; Amsterd. 1736, 8 vols.; also in Latin and other languages; Engl. ed. London, 1819–25, 4 vols. The Gospels were repeatedly published, with an introductory essay by Bishop Daniel Wilson, London and New York. Comp. Causa Quesnelliana, Brussels, 1704.

This bull is likewise negative, but commits the Church of Rome still more strongly than the former against evangelical doctrines. Several of the passages selected are found almost literally in Augustine and St. Paul; they assert the total depravity of human nature, the loss of liberty, the renewing power of the free grace of God in Christ, the right and duty of all Christians to read the Bible.

106The following are the most important of these propositions:²⁰⁴²⁰⁴   Denzinger's Enchir., pp. 351–361.

These and similar propositions, some of them one-sided and exaggerated, many of them clearly patristic and biblical, are indiscriminately 107condemned by the bull Unigenitus, as 'false, captious, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, rash, injurious, seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspected of heresy and savoring of heresy itself, near akin to heresy, several times condemned, and manifestly renewing various heresies, particularly those which are contained in the infamous propositions of Jansenius!'

A large portion of the French clergy, headed by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Noailles, who repented of his part in the destruction of Port-Royal, protested against the bull, and appealed from the Pope to a future council. But 'when Rome has spoken, the cause is finished.' The bull Unigenitus was repeatedly confirmed by the same Clement XI., A.D. 1718 (in the bull 'Pastoralis Officii'), Innocent XIII., 1722, Benedict XIII. and a Roman Synod, 1725, Benedict XIV., 1756; it was accepted by the Gallican clergy 1730, and, as Denzinger says, by 'the whole Catholic world' ('ab universo mundo catholico'). Even the miracles on the grave of a Jansenist saint (Franois Paris, who died 1727, after the severest self-denial, with a protest against the bull Unigenitus in his hand), could not save Jansenism from destruction in France.²⁰⁶²⁰⁶   The Jesuits, of course, ascribed the Jansenist miracles, visions, and ecstatic convulsions to the devil.

But a remnant fled to the more liberal soil of Protestant Holland, and was there preserved as a perpetual testimony against Jesuitism, and, as it now seems, for an important mission in connection with the Old Catholic protest against the decisions of the Vatican Council.