44. The “Enlightenment”;   45. The Age of Louis XIV;   46. The Papacy and Gallicanism;   47. Gallican France;    48. Jansenist Origins;  49. Jansenist Tergiversation;   50. Quietist Reaction;  51. Jansenist Revival;   52. Catholic Moral Synthesis; 53. Sectarian Pietism

44. THE “ENLIGHTENMENT”

“Enlightenment” or “Aufklärung” was a term which became current for a new philosophy of life which gradually captivated European thought. Its ideal was Naturalism and its method was Rationalism, as opposed to the supernatural and Revelation. “The Enlightenment is the logical outcome of philosophical as well as Protestant religious individualism, and the absence of tradition. It has three roots:

(1) Protestantism, or more specifically the disruption caused by Protestantism;

(2) Humanism;

(3) the autonomous development of individualistic philosophy, built upon mathematic-scientific discoveries.” ¹

Indeed, “the roots of the new ‘Enlightenment’ lay in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but its greatest spread and most obvious fruitage were so characteristic of the eighteenth century that it is this century which is known as the age of the ‘Enlightenment: “ ² Here, however, the term is employed with less stress upon chronology in order to describe the transition, admittedly gradual, from the primarily theological preoccupations of the age of religious revolts and wars (1517-1648), to the philosophic and rationalist fixation of the following period to the French Revolution. Leaving the new political philosophies to a topic more proximate to ^{[p. 283]} that cataclysm, attention can be directed for the moment to the more remote, though fundamental, transformations in speculative philosophy.

¹Joseph Lortz, History of the Church, trans. Edwin G. Kaiser, C.PP.S. (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1935), p. 444.

²Carlton Hayes, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932-36), I, 511.

 René Descartes

RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650) became the first important rebel against scholastic philosophy and is the remote but genuine founder of “Modern” schools. The Protestant Revolt had not been primarily a philosophic upheaval, and Luther in particular had belittled reason. Descartes was himself a product of Scholasticism to the extent that he studied at the Jesuit College of La Flèche. But while he never withdrew from the Catholic Church, and professed to except theology from the application of his speculations, his principles served in effect to revive the apparent conflict between Faith and reason which had been reconciled by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Cartesian scepticism, hypothetical though it was, served as the first introduction of an agnosticism that undermined both Faith and reason by questioning their ability to afford any conclusions of universal and lasting validity. It became the remote ancestor of modern pseudo-tolerance in regard to the very foundations of Revelation and metaphysics. For by exalting intuition of the cognitive subject over abstraction from experience with external material reality, Descartes at once fathered an idealistic trend culminating in Immanuel Kant, and provoked an empiricist reaction pushed to extremes by David Hume. Though he did not deny the reality of external substance, Descartes did take a first step in that direction by relegating certain secondary qualities to mere modes of subjective consciousness. On the other hand, by assuming the validity of human cognition and then demonstrating this same validity from the nature of God arrived at by innate ideas, Descartes forced himself into an untenable subjectivist position which glorified the individual at the expense of the universe, almost asserting his independence from its order. Thus he became an ancestor of the mind of “modern man,” anthropocentric, lost in a world of doubt, confusion, and disunion. In aspiring to be an angel with infused ideas, Cartesian man had lost touch with external reality and became the victim of Rationalism. And “the essence of Rationalism consists in making human reason and its ideological content the measure of what is.” ³

Cartesian inspiration. “Descartes’ conception of man as an angel, or disembodied thinking substance, swept Europe, and was soon received as immediate evidence by the greatest thinkers of his time. Stripping ^{[p. 284]} themselves both of their bodies and of their souls, they became magnificent minds who, theoretically at least, did not feel indebted to their bodies for any one of their ideas. Leibniz in Germany, Malebranche in France, Spinoza in Holland were such minds, and all of them had nothing but innate ideas.” ⁴

3 Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), p. 85.

4 Etienne Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), p. 163.

Blaise Pascal (1623-62) adopted Cartesian scepticism to such extent as virtually to despair of reason, and fall back on faith alone, extending to reason perhaps no more than a “wager on God.” Through Pascal, Descartes had some indirect influence on Jansenism.

BARUCH SPINOZA

BARUCH SPINOZA (1632-77), proceeding from the Cartesian preoccupation with demonstrating God’s existence from one’s own intuition of Him, was led to consider the mode of the origin of that idea within himself. He concluded by practically identifying the idea of God with God in a pantheistic system which came to be called “metaphysical parallelism.”

Spinoza, Benedictus de (also Baruch) (1632–77), Dutch Jewish philosopher. He was born in Amsterdam of Portuguese parents. From an early age he was probably familiar with the works of G. Bruno, Maimonides, R. Descartes, T. Hobbes, and others who fostered in him religious unorthodoxy, and in 1656 he was expelled by the Synagogue and compelled to leave Amsterdam. He went to Rijnsburg and several other places, and last to The Hague (1670), earning his living by grinding lenses. During his lifetime only a treatise on Descartes (1663) and the Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1670) were published. His principal work, the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata, appeared posthumously (Amsterdam, 1677). It is in five parts: on ‘God’; ‘the nature and origin of the mind’; ‘the origin and nature of the emotions’; ‘human bondage, or the powers of the emotions’; and ‘the power of the intellect, or human freedom’. Spinoza also wrote a Tractatus Politicus and a Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (both first pub. with the Ethica, 1677). Several of his letters have also survived.

Spinoza is commonly described as a pantheist, since there is a sense in which he regards all things as part of God. The foundation of his system is his idea of God as a single all-embracing substance which is causa sui (contains within itself the reason for its existence) and which may be thought of either as creator (natura naturans) or as creation (nature naturata). This substance is infinite, with an infinite number of attributes of which, however, only two, thought (cogitatio) and extension (extensio), are known to man. All individual things are modes of these two attributes, being either bodies or ideas, between which there is a perfect parallelism. The human mind is part of the Divine impersonal intellect which works acc. to necessity. Thus Spinoza denies ‘absolute’ or contra-causal free will, the permanence of personality, and immortality. The highest human activity is the loving contemplation of God (amor Dei intellectualis) which becomes possible in so far as one can master the passions and live in accordance with reason. In his political writings, Spinoza champions tolerance, rationality, and a purely scientific or ‘naturalistic’ approach to political theory. His studies on the Bible, carried on from the same point of view, have made him one of the fathers of the modern historical criticism of the Bible. Spinoza’s influence on European philosophy was at its height in the 19th cent., esp. in Germany, where F. D. E. Schleiermacher, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, and others owed much to his teaching.

Modern edn. of his works by C. Gebhardt (4 vols., Heidelberg [1924–6]). The best Eng. tr. of his works is that of E. Curley (Princeton, NJ, 1985 ff.). Separate Eng. trs. of Ethics by S. Shirley (Indianapolis, 1982); of his Political Works (Tractatus Theologico-politicus in part and Tractatus Politicus in full) by A. G. Wernham (Oxford, 1958) and of Tractatus Politicus by S. Shirley (Indianapolis and Cambridge [2000]). Correspondence tr. by A. Wolf (London, 1928) and by S. Shirley (Indianapolis and Cambridge [1995]) Earliest Life, usually attributed to J. M. Lucas, and prob. written between 1677 and 1678 (orig. pr. at Amsterdam, 1719), ed., with Eng. tr, by A. Wolf (London, 1927). M. Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (1998); S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999). Studies of his thought by J. Caird (Edinburgh and London, 1888), L. Roth (London, 1929), H. A. Wolfson (2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1934), S. Hampshire (Pelican Books, 1951), and R. J. Delahunty (London, 1985). L. Brunschvicg, Spinoza (Paris, 1894; 4th edn., extended, with title Spinoza et ses contemporains, 1951). H. H. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (1901); id., Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione: A Commentary (1940; posthumous). H. F. Hallett, Aeternitas: A Spinozistic Study (1930); id., Benedict de Spinoza: The Elements of his Philosophy (1957); id., Creation, Emanation and Salvation: A Spinozistic Study (The Hague, 1962). L. Strauss, Die Relogionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischem Traktat (1930; rev. Eng. tr., New York [1965]). P. Siwek, SJ, Spinoza et le panthéisme religieux (1937; 2nd edn., 1950). G. H. R. Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford, 1954) E. M. Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Cambridge, Mass., 1969). N. Altwicker (ed.), Texte zur Geschichte des Spinozismus (1971), with bibl. S. P. Kashap (ed.), Studies in Spinoza (Berkeley, Calif., and London, 1972). J. [F.] Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge, 1984). Y. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics (2 vols., Princeton, NJ [1989]). E. Giancotti (ed.), Spinoza nel 350° Anniversario della Nascita: Atti del Congresso (Urbino 4–8 ottobre, 1982) (Saggi Bibliopolis, 19; Naples [1985]; E. Curley and P.-F. Moreau (eds.), Spinoza Issues and Directions: The Proceedings of the Chicago Spinoza Conference (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 14; Leiden, etc., 1990). W. I. Boucher, Spinoza in English: A Bibliography from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (ibid. 28; 1991). G. Rabeau in DTC 14 (pt. 2; 1941), cols. 2489–506, s.v., with extensive bibl. There is a ‘Societas Spinozana’ at The Hague which issues a Chronicon Spinozanum (The Hague,

Nicolas de Malebranche (1638-1715) also brought God into immediate and direct intellectual association with the thinking subject, although his Catholic faith prevented him from identifying God with man. Instead he suggested that matter, including man, afforded God occasions for giving man sensations and corresponding ideas: men became mere puppets in this “occasionalism.”

Gottfried von Leibniz (1646-1716) used Descartes’ idealistic claim for God’s existence in the direction of innate ideas, and shut the door far more firmly against external experience than Descartes had done. Far from being an irreligious man, however, Leibniz wrote in the interest of a synthesis of Catholicity and Protestantism. For Leibniz, God had from the beginning deftly arranged a “pre-established harmony” of monads or essences.

    Christian von Wolff (1679-1754), though he introduced some modifications into Leibniz’s system, chiefly toward widening the cleavage between religion and philosophy, need be noted here chiefly as the link between Leibniz and Kant.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) concluded the idealistic trend by completely reorientating philosophy on an idealistic, subjective basis and utterly breaking with scholastic realism. Kant’s views undermined the supernatural character of religion for many Protestants and eventually tempted some “Modernists” from the Catholic fold. Hitherto philosophers had been held somewhat in check by their personal religious beliefs; for Kant religion becomes morality, the final product was a non-dogmatic “Christianity” which undermined the surviving fundamentals ^{[p. 285]} of Protestantism. Kant will be treated again in connection with Liberalism.

Cartesian stimulus. Descartes’ antithesis between spirit and matter produced a reaction: while Idealists gave unreserved primacy to spirit and mind, Locke and the Empiricist School concentrated on matter. Thus arose a less noble, if often more common-sense, philosophic school, the forerunner of modern doctrinaire Materialism. Descartes, in departing from the scholastic realism had sired two warped versions of philosophic reality, engaged in continual academic conflict.

John Locke (1632-1704) repudiated Cartesian intuitionalism by a critique retaining much of Scholastic doctrine. Unfortunately, however, he retained the Cartesian dilemma, spirit or matter, and concluded for certainty as to the latter as the more obvious. “In other words, let us say we have no positive reasons to believe that matter is a thing that thinks, but when Descartes says that a thinking matter would be a contradiction, he goes far beyond the limits of what we know, and of what can be proved by the power of human understanding.”

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) by his brilliant scientific discoveries inaugurated the vogue of the physical sciences as intellectual mentors. Though not expressly a philosopher, he seemed to have vindicated a deistic naturalism with a brilliant but aloof Divine Mathematical Genius to initiate that perfect and exactly measureable machine that was the world. Newton’s success, and that of Halley, Herschel, Torricelli, Fahrenheit, Boyle, Hutton, Leeuwenhoek, and others, seemed to confirm the validity of the empiricist method. Though physical science had not yet entirely supplanted metaphysics as queen of the natural sciences, these scientific advances foreshadowed the great cult of science of the nineteenth century. While most physical scientists of the period were at least Deists, some were beginning to air superficial views on religion and philosophy with pontifical solemnity.

David Hume (1711-76) brought the empiricist school back to the point from which it had started: scepticism. But whereas Descartes had professed a merely hypothetical doubt, Hume reached a real and sweeping scepticism, described as “pan-phenomenalism.” Mind as well as matter was reduced to observable phenomena and the principle of causality undermined, if not repudiated. For many, Hume had given the final blow to metaphysics, and torn from its philosophic mooring, the intellectual world began to revolve in giddy circles. In particular, Hume roused Kant “from his dogmatic slumbers” to attempt a new philosophic ^{[p. 286]} synthesis which would prove to be a foundation as unstable as that of Descartes when he tried to evoke a new dogmatism without metaphysics.

Ibid., p. 169.

(1) DETERIORATION OF PROTESTANTISM

Sectarian divisions. Luther and Calvin, while revolting against the dogmas of the Catholic Church, were themselves the most dogmatic of men. Their dogmatism, however, lacked the sanction of a recognized authority, of an organized educational system, and of a disciplined clergy. One revolt always opened the door to others: if Luther and Calvin and Tudor had felt themselves justified in rebelling against the Catholic Church because they disagreed with her, then their disciples were more than justified in questioning the teaching of the new doctors. Zwingli had dared to reject Luther’s impanation; Arminius repudiated Calvin’s predestinarianism; Tudor’s son and daughter abandoned Henrician premises, while Puritans and Brownists challenged theirs. The ultimate result was a multitude of sects with conflicting beliefs and practices. The clash of this dissentient council of spiritual physicians was such that many pious folk deserted dogma for mere doing of good works: Pietism. Still others of the so-called intelligentsia abandoned faith for pure reason: Rationalism.

Rationalist innovations. Cocceius, who died in 1669, now constructed a “Biblical Theology” on a Cartesian basis. Presently disputes between Fundamentalists and Liberals broke out regarding the necessity of basic Lutheran tenets for living a good religious life. Christian Thomasius and Christian von Wolff openly attacked what the former had termed the “cramped beliefs of the (Augsburg) Confession,” and launched into a naturalized religion supposedly erected on the philosophical tenets of Leibniz. Cartesian devotees cultivated their master’s predilection for mathematics: mathematical certainty became the ideal of their faith, and finally in the eighteenth century Carpzov “demonstrated” the Trinity with mathematical finesse. The Bible was treated by others as a merely human literary classic, while the nature of its inspiration was mooted. The “Accommodation Theory” began to insinuate that Christ had adapted His teaching to Jewish mentality in such wise that it might be no longer satisfactory for “enlightened” moderns. Miracles were given natural explanations, the supernatural was carefully skirted, and the divinity of Christ questioned. Fedderson spoke of Christ as “that blessed, charitable, rightly-made, healthy man.” Rosenmüller suggested that the doctrine of the Trinity had been introduced by some ignorant bishops. Lessing compared Judaism and Islam favorably with Christian revelation. All such innovators and scoffers found encouragement and protection ^{[p. 287]} from various powerful patrons, such as Frederick the Great, the benevolent despot of Prussia.

(2) DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE

On the Continent, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) had left Germany ruined and the rest of Europe exhausted. That conflict, despite numerous political ramifications, had ostensibly been a war for religion. Yet in this respect it had decided nothing, for the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had substantially upheld the approximately equal division of Germany into Catholic and Protestant states established at Augsburg in 1555. It is not surprising, then, that many men reached the conclusion that religion was not worth fighting for. Spain, mortally wounded in her political primacy, began to doubt her self-appointed mission to bring Europe hack to the Church, for the only states to profit by the recent strife had been compromising France and England. When the very basis of the supernatural was being sapped by the “Enlightenment,” it seemed old-fashioned to insist on inquisitorial methods. Hence, though penal laws might remain on the statute books, they were less earnestly enforced, and the death penalty scarcely ever invoked.

In Great Britain, the Civil War and the monarchical restoration had had an effect similar to that of the Thirty Years’ War on the Continent, and toleration had become politically expedient for the many strong Protestant sects, if not yet for Catholics. As Pope’s Essay on Man would put it: “For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,/His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right./In faith and hope the world will disagree,/ But all mankind’s concern is charity.” But politics rather than charity dictated the Toleration Act of 1689—though this did not embrace Catholics, none of their number suffered death thereafter. There arose a new concept of a secular, civic unity transcending religious beliefs which reached its most liberal expression in the new American Republic born at the close of the eighteenth century. But while some form of tolerance had become practically necessary in a Christendom hopelessly divided on religion, the theoretical source of such altruism was too often indifference to truth or error in religion.

(3) INFLUENCE OF THE “ENLIGHTENMENT” ON CATHOLICS

Infiltration. If the teaching Church remained firm against the new Rationalism, not a few Catholics were disturbed by the heady atmosphere which they breathed. In France an arid and rigid Jansenism influenced by reaction the lives of many Catholics; in Germany, Febronianism and Josephinism cramped the Catholic spirit; surprisingly large numbers of the faithful and even of the clergy believed that a naturalistic ^{[p. 288]} Freemasonry could be harmonized with Catholicity. Liturgical life reached its nadir, preaching on the eve of St. Vincent de Paul’s “Little Method” tended to be stilted, if not fantastic. Many educated, if worldly, Catholics frowned on all religious emotion or repelled enthusiasm as an unqualified evil.

Antidotes. It was providential, therefore, that Catholics were redirected to authentic divine charity in the midst of this ultraintellectualism. The Sacred Heart devotion in its modern form was first propagated by St. John Eudes, and especially by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90), Visitandine nun of Paray-le-Monial, who received three apparitions of Christ between 1673 and 1675. She received guidance from Blessed Claude La Colombière, S.J., and the devotion received final sanction from Pope Clement XIII in 1765. It is significant that the Sacred Heart devotion was one of those singled out for attack by the Rationalist-Jansenist Synod of Pistoia in 1786. It might not be idle to remark, moreover, that the pietist revivalism in Protestant ranks had its orthodox parallel in the impassioned missionary preaching of St. Leonard of Port Maurice, Paul of the Cross, and Alfonso de Liguori.

45. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

The Versailles model. In France, absolute “divine-right” monarchy had been established by the persistent efforts of those most secular of cardinals, Richelieu, prime minister from 1624 to 1642, and Mazarin, his successor until 1661. The beneficiary of these administrators was King Louis XIV, titular monarch from 1643, although he did not assume personal control until 1661. If he did not sum up his position with the famous “L’État, c’est moi,” at least Belestat in writing to the king assured him that in France: “il faut qu’il n’y ait qu’un roi, qu’une loi, qu’une foi.” [it is necessary that there be one king, one law, one faith.] With Louis XIV Absolutism was enshrined in the glittering court of Versailles where it remained a brilliant façade long after its real power and greatness had departed. For to Versailles, as moths to a flame, streamed not only the nobility and the savants, but many prelates as well. It became the mecca of European society, and exile from Versailles was deemed by fawning courtiers as consignment to the ends of the earth. Down to the French Revolution, Versailles, though in a condition of moral decadence, remained an irresistible magnet for the only persons who counted: the privileged estates. Not until the bourgeois Revolution did the center of French government and culture move to Paris, to be broadened and popularized.

European imitation. Despite the solitary exception of Great Britain, the general political trend of European government was toward absolutism ^{[p. 289]} on the Versailles pattern. The period from 1660 onward to the French Revolution became the age of the despot, benevolent or otherwise. Germany was no exception, for though it lacked real central government, local magnates were just as autocratic as the kings. Even the poles of German power, Vienna and Berlin, went to school to Versailles. Theocracy and empire were now things of the past, and Catholic sovereigns were as devoted to the principle of absolute rule in a “sovereign” state as were Protestants. Not content with their secular sphere, these “Most Catholic” rulers were continually invading ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The papacy, reduced from her commanding temporal position in the Middle Ages to the diplomatic necessity of treating with national monarchs as temporal equals, was now constrained to the condition of a suppliant, as when Alexander VII apologized to the “Grand Monarch,” Louis XIV, and Pius VI journeyed to Vienna to placate Emperor Joseph II. “The Counter-Reformation had lost its vitality and the egoism of the emerging monarchical states had become the axis of political and cultural life. This meant secularization; instead of glorifying God, art and architecture were now bent to the glory of princes. . . . Palaces rather than churches now captured the imagination, and particularly one great palace, Versailles, became the focus of interest . . . for the great palace exemplified the new culture that was emerging in Europe.” ⁶

6 John Wolf, Emergence of the Great Powers (New York: Harper and Bros., 1951), pp. 244-51.

 (2) NATIONALISTIC RIVALRIES

Nationalism had not substantially changed since the days of the Renaissance. It was still primarily dynastic nationalism, personified by the royal family, although intensified by further unification and centralization. This type ought to be carefully distinguished from that popular and democratic nationalism evoked by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. More than ever it was a narrow, selfish, patronizing nationalism, for the last real emperor, Charles V, had died in 1558, and the last pope to attempt to exercise theocratic powers, St. Pius V, had failed in 1570. Dynastic nationalism thought to invade the spiritual sphere with impunity, not merely to control discipline, but even to regulate doctrinal questions. Catholic monarchs flirted with the idea of national churches, and often their views, Gallican, Febronian, or Josephinist, were scarcely distinguishable from Anglicanism’s Act of Royal Supremacy. Everywhere they cramped ecclesiastical initiative—in Europe and on the missions—so that the French Revolution was for the Church no unmixed evil.

Imperialism, also for the most part of the dynastic variety, carried nationalistic rivalry to the New World and the Indies, hampering missionary ^{[p. 290]} efforts. Though the imperial title survived until 1806 as the exclusive prerogative of the “Holy Roman Empire,” by now Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, and even Holland had created vaster colonial “empires.” The seventeenth century would be the period of building the domains of France and Britain, while the succeeding century witnessed their duel to death for colonial supremacy. Britain won only to be rebuked and disillusioned—temporarily—in imperialism by the American Revolution. The Spanish and Portuguese dominions continued on a relatively stagnant course until, influenced by the North American example, Latin America repudiated European imperialism as well.

International law had to be developed on new foundations to fit these changed conditions. With neither the papacy nor the Holy Roman Empire any longer available as transcendent arbiters, a “law of nature” was proposed to regulate the relations of states theoretically “sovereign.” For Catholics, a sound extension of St. Thomas’s legal principles was made by the Scholastics, Vittoria and Suarez. Hugo Grotius (15831645), “father of international law,” was indebted to their Scholastic notions, but he tended to ground natural law on will more than on reason. In any event, he and his successors, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, Rousseau, would attempt to deduce a natural law for mankind, sometimes from an hypothetical “state of pure nature.” But “National Individualism,” not the “Christian Commonwealth,” was the international watchword.

(3) POLITICAL SURVEY (1660-1715)

“The Balance of Power” was the only substitute which these nationalistic absolute monarchs could offer for the international ideals of the Middle Ages. This product of dynastic envy and of mutual fear meant simply that the new “sovereign” Great Powers, would not tolerate one of their number in a dominant position. Accordingly they sought through various and ever shifting alliances to hold a sort of equilibrium among leading states or groups of states. This “system” was never acknowledged by those against whom it was invoked, and its enforcement necessitated repeated and more extensive wars. The Great Powers, moreover, remained a fluid group whose precise composition was in dispute. At the beginning of the period, France, Spain and Austria were clearly in, with Great Britain, Sweden, Prussia and Russia seeking admittance. Often only a protracted conflict revealed whether a Great Power was really such, or only a counterfeit.

Anti-Habsburg combinations (1515-1659) had heralded this procedure during the Renaissance. The term, “balance of power,” can be traced to the sixteenth-century writer Rucelai, who described the Italian ^{[p. 291]} politics of the Renaissance in that fashion. But this expression, which Machiavelli would have endorsed, may also be applied to Wolsey’s direction of English foreign policy during the same century. It preeminently fitted the French Valois combinations against the extraordinary dynastic power combination of Emperor Charles V. The emperor was checked in his ambition to restore reality to the Holy Roman Empire and to uphold the single faith of Christendom. But Charles V more than held his own during a lifetime duel with Kings Francis I and Henry II of France, from which contest Habsburg power emerged first if not dominant. Even though Charles V divided his dominions between his son, Philip II of Spain, and his brother, Ferdinand of Austria, the close family concert of these Habsburg rulers was the political provocation of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-59) whereby Richelieu and Mazarin were successful in transferring European primacy from Spain to the France of Louis XIV.

Anti-Bourbon combinations were then formed to offset the preponderance of the French ruler. Louis XIV was at first moderately successful in pursuing France’s imaginary “natural frontiers” against Spain, the empire and the Netherlands in the Wars of Devolution (1667-68; 167278) . But when he proposed to penetrate into the German Palatinate and interfere in the succession to the British throne, his ambition was checked by the League of Augsburg in the English Succession War (1688-97). Louis’s supreme effort to capture the entire Spanish inheritance of Charles II provoked the War of Spanish Succession (1701-13), which ended in territorial compromise and French exhaustion. Meanwhile Britain’s naval strength was raising her to the status of a great power, resting upon American and Indian outposts, and the European conflicts began to be reflected in colonial frontier clashes: King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War. Simultaneously the Russia of Peter the Great took a notable step forward toward power, but the meteoric career of Charles XII of Sweden permanently eliminated the latter country from the ranks of Great Powers.

(1) STATIC AGRARIANISM

Rural conditions. “Although the towns were growing rapidly, Europe remained through the seventeenth century overwhelmingly an agricultural economy. From eighty to ninety per cent of the population was rural and even that index is to be further weighted by the persistence to a degree now unfamiliar of agricultural activities in the towns, even in the great towns. The system of agriculture remained essentially that of the medieval communal operation, but manorial lordship had been  ^{[p. 292]} generally commuted to money-rents. In some very limited areas special crops such as wine and olives required more individualized operation, as did the truck gardening in the Netherlands. Capitalistic exploitation of the land in a very minor degree modified the open-field system in England. The drainage of the polders in the Netherlands and of the English fens involved large-scale financing and definitely capitalistic forms of ownership, control, and operation. These new forms, however, were marginal to the great body of European agriculture. Technique was correspondingly static.. . . English agriculture was on the whole more responsive to change than French agriculture, although the modernization of the whole system was to require a long-continued and energetic propaganda in the next century....” ⁷

Frederick Nussbaum, Triumph of Science and Reason (New York: Harper and Bros., 1953), p. 219.

 (2) COMMERCIAL DYNAMICS

Commercial rivalries. The whole period in its economic sense is predominantly one of commercial rivalry which prompted colonial annexation. The chief contenders were Spain, France, England, and Holland. Spanish colonies, though for the most part retained by the mother country, were in some instances reduced to dependence on British sea power. France’s ambitions in Canada and India were not pursued in preference to her European aims and consequently she lost out to Great Britain who made these areas a leading concern. Not until the nineteenth century did France attempt a new colonial domain in Africa and Asia. Holland proved too weak to sustain colonial competition over a protracted period, so that the victory went to Great Britain, “mistress of the seas.” During this period, New Netherland on the Hudson, which had already swallowed a New Sweden in Jersey, was itself absorbed by the English and transformed into New York. “There is a ‘law,’ wrote Professor Seeley, ‘which prevails throughout English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the law, namely, of the interdependence of trade and war.... Trade leads naturally to war, and war fosters trade.’ Obviously so simple an explanation for so complex a problem is incomplete, but it is undoubtedly true that the mercantilist regulations of trading nations, oriented as much toward the injury of competitors as toward the insurance of benefits for their own merchants, created tensions that led to conflict.” ⁸

Wolf, op. cit., p. 197.

Mercantilism. Colonies, however, were not in themselves an end so much as the means to the aggrandizement of the commercial prosperity of the mother country. “It is a law founded on the very nature of colonies that they ought to have no other culture or arts wherein to rival the arts and culture of the parent country.” ° Colonies were to be possessed, then, for the valuable raw materials which they could provide for the mother country, and for the exclusive market they could furnish for its manufactures. This system, known as mercantilism, was maintained by strict regulation of trade by the government in the interests of public economy.

In England, this economic regulation can be traced at least to the Statute of Apprentices (1563) and extended by the Statute of Monopolies (1624) . But in England, at least, the government pursued policies which would please the commercial oligarchy and allow them to make profits. In other words, the government aided and even forced merchants to become prosperous, for it was felt that a wealthy commerce made for national stability and public welfare. According to mercantilist notions, it was essential to maintain a “favorable balance of trade,” that is, exports should exceed imports. Hence, the mother country would first try to prevent her colonies from trading with anyone else, and then insist that all trade be on favorable terms to herself, whether beneficial to the colony or not. Second, she would try to augment her own markets and reduce her rivals’ by trade with their colonies. Spain resolutely closed Latin America to foreign trade, while the British strove to break down these barriers by force or diplomacy. Great Britain, on the other hand, strove to prevent her own New England colonists from smuggling products from the French West Indies. They ought to buy what they needed from Great Britain, even when it proved more expensive. Unfortunately for Britain and mercantilism, America declared and won her independence.

In France, Colbert (1619-83), Louis XIV’s minister of commerce, was an ardent believer in mercantilism, though he was more paternalistic in his efforts to stimulate and regulate industry and commerce. He tried to win foreign workmen, artificially encouraged industries, and rigorously excluded competition from abroad. But whatever gains France made by these means were in large part dissipated after Colbert’s death through the exigencies of war.

Cameralism, from the German kammer: “treasury,” was a type of mercantilist theory advocated by Van Osse, Seckendorf, Horing, Justi, and Sonnefels. This tended to be extremely bureaucratic in the service of a benevolent despot. Justi, for instance, declared that “all the duties of people and subjects may be reduced to the formula: to promote all the ways and means adopted by the ruler for their happiness, by their ^{[p. 294]} obedience, fidelity, and diligence.” ¹⁰ In Spain, the regalistas pursued somewhat similar objectives.

° Walter Dorn, Competition for Empire (New York: Harper and Bros., 1940), p. 264.

46. THE PAPACY AND GALLICANISM

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) did not directly affect Italy, which remained in Metternich’s phrase, “a mere geographical expression.” A number of petty states continued under the domination of the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty. To the south, the Spanish monarch himself was king of the Two Sicilies, while Sardinia was an outright Spanish dependency. In central Italy, the Papal States preserved their traditional frontiers unchanged save for the addition since 1631 of the small Duchy of Urbino. To the north lay a number of small states, practically autonomous, though nominally still part of the Holy Roman Empire’s Italian crown—a theory rather than a fact. Tuscany was still ruled by the Medici, Parma by the Farnese, Modena by the Este, and Mantua under the Gonzaga, who also possessed Montferrat. In the center of the Lombard plain lay the key duchy of the Milanese whose duke was the Spanish king. East of Milan, the Venetian Republic was declining with the shift of trade routes; west of Milan the rival Genoese Republic was intermittently under French domination. Finally the Savoyard dynasty destined to rule Italy in the nineteenth century was struggling to maintain freedom of action in Savoy-Piedmont, a buffer state between Spanish and French spheres of influence. Numerous as these petty states were, they yet represented a consolidation of still smaller medieval fiefs.

(2) AUSTRIAN PREDOMINANCE (1700-35)

The War of Spanish Succession (1701-13) considerably altered the Italian political picture. Though the Bourbon claimant, Philip of Anjou, was better situated to take immediate possession of Spain itself on the death of the last Spanish Habsburg (1700), his Austrian Habsburg rival, Archduke Charles, could strike at Italy directly. Austrian troops during the war marched through the peninsula, violating papal territory, and forced the papacy to accord at least de facto recognition to their claimant.

“Leo Gershoy, From Despotism to Revolution (New York: Harper and Bros., 1944), p. 53.

The Peace of Utrecht (1713) recognized Austrian conquests in Italy and thereby replaced Spanish with Austrian control. Naples and the Milanese passed to Charles, by now Emperor Charles VI (1711-40) . Savoy was rewarded for her support of Austria with Sicily, which, however, ^{[p. 295]} she exchanged in 1720 for Sardinia. After 1720, then, the duke of Savoy also bore the title of king of Sardinia, the only native kingship in Italy. In the north, Habsburg-Austrian influence was also paramount. Extinction of the Gonzaga family in 1708 enabled the Habsburgs to annex Mantua to their newly gained Milanese, Montferrat going to Savoy. Though Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Venice, and Genoa preserved their territories intact, Austrian proximity enabled its rulers to exert a more cogent influence than the more remote Spanish monarchs had done. Traditional Italian anti-German prejudice, therefore, concentrated upon Austria and for a century and a half patriots longed to emancipate their land from her rule.

(1) ALEXANDER VII (1655-67)

Fabio Chigi (1599-1667), envoy of his predecessor Innocent X to the Westphalian peace conference, was elected to succeed him in the papacy after an eighty-day conclave, prolonged by the opposition of Cardinal Mazarin, with whose Francophile interests he had clashed during the peace negotiations. Cardinal Chigi’s exemplary moral life and his previous opposition to nepotism had commended him to the electors, but promotion to the papacy which changed most men for the better, seemed to have an opposite effect upon him. In 1656 he acquiesced in the prevailing custom at the request of foreign ambassadors and brought his relatives to Rome. He then resigned the conduct of much of the papal business to his nephew, Fabio Chigi, able but pleasure-loving. Excessive pomp and splendor was thought to mark the pope’s own public appearances. Alexander VII augmented the instruments of missionary endeavor: the jurisdiction of Propaganda was extended, the Parisian Mission Seminary founded, and vicars apostolic named for the Orient. Venice was at last persuaded to take back the Jesuits, who had been banished since the Sarpi Affair in 1607. The pope received ex-Queen Christina of Sweden into the Church in 1655, and gave her asylum in Rome where she died in 1689 after many good and meddlesome works. Ecclesiastical and secular buildings were repaired and beautified at considerable expense, and art and learning promoted.

Bourbon Gallicanism proved to be the greatest trial of the pontificate, although Jansenist intrigues—treated separately elsewhere—added to the pope’s difficulties. As long as Cardinal Mazarin remained in charge of the French government, no official recognition was extended to the pope and the unofficial cardinal observers were generally personae non gratae to the Roman Pontiff. Louis XIV began more respectfully, for in 1662 he named an ambassador, but this proved to be the obvious duke of Crequi, whose manifest insolence appeared in a protest against the ^{[p. 296]} French Jesuit Coret’s defense of papal infallibility (1661). The ambassador also abused diplomatic immunity to give refuge to papal foes. The Corsicans in the papal guard so resented his cavalier attitude toward the papal authority that they precipitated a clash with the ambassadorial retinue. Shots were fired while the duke’s carriage was entering the Farnese Palace, August 22, 1662. King and ambassador thereafter appeared resolved to turn this “Crequi Incident” into a humiliation for the pope. The brawl was termed by His Christian Majesty as “unprecedented even in the history of barbarians,” and His Holiness was held to personal responsibility. A royal ultimatum demanded full satisfaction and French troops occupied Avignon to coerce its acceptance. At length Alexander VII was constrained to sign the humiliating Accord of Pisa (1664) . Through his nephew, Cardinal Chigi, he presented his apologies to the Grand Monarch in France, and promised to eliminate all Corsicans perpetually from the papal service.

(2) CLEMENT IX (1667-69)

Giulio Rospigliosi (1600-69) was unanimously elected to succeed Alexander VII. He had assisted his predecessor as envoy and during the last two years of Alexander’s pontificate had been his secretary of state. He proved a happy contrast to his predecessor. He was deeply religious and affable to all. Every week he heard the confessions of the poor in St. Peter’s, and visited the hospitals. He gained universal good will in the Papal States by buying off a monopolist who had cornered the grain supply. He was a resolute foe of nepotism, and an economical financier who repaired the failing condition of the papal treasury, strained by Chigi extravagance. I-Ie tried in vain to organize a crusade against renewed Turkish offensives, and it was no fault of his that Crete fell to the Turks in 1669. He forbade missionaries to engage in commerce, a precept that Father La Valette would have done well to observe a century later. Clement IX beatified the first American, St. Rose of Lima, in April, 1668.

Peace-making was the characteristic of this short pontificate. Clement successfully mediated in the first War of Devolution to arrange the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668). In the same year, by recognizing Portuguese independence from Spain, he terminated a virtual schism existing since 1640. After prolonged inquiries into French theological attitudes, he brought the first phase of the Jansenist controversy to an end in 1669 by the so-called “Clementine Peace.”

(3) CLEMENT X (1670-76)

Emilio Altieri (1590-1676) was chosen as compromise candidate after five months of futile balloting under conflicting pressures of Bourbon ^{[p. 297]} and Habsburg spokesmen. The new pontiff, an octogenarian, and a cardinal nominated by Clement IX on his deathbed, was designed as a temporary locum tenens, but his sturdy constitution enabled him to survive for six years. He had been a modest and inoffensive ecclesiastic, and his pontificate did not belie this augury, for he proved a prudent and kindly ruler of no great distinction. His age forced him to delegate much business, and in so doing he resorted to moderate nepotism. Having no male relatives of his own, he adopted the Paoluzzi, one of whom had married the Altieri heiress. To Cardinal Paoluzzi-Altieri were entrusted diplomatic functions, though the pope was diligent about spiritual affairs: canonizations were numerous.

Abortive negotiations, however, seemed to indicate a lack of vitality in the pontificate. In France, the “Regale Affair” began in 1673, but no test case was referred to the Holy See, nor did Clement X intervene; thus the generally passive attitude of the last two pontificates toward Bourbon Gallicanism continued. Other negotiations were opened with Alexis of Russia in the interests of reunion, but these proved without tangible fruit. Some aid was procured for the Poles against Turkish aggression, but the Turkish menace along the Danube worsened.

(1) BLESSED INNOCENT XI (1676-89)

Benedetto Odescalchi (1611-89), whom many cardinals had wished to choose in 1670, was now unanimously selected despite a Bourbon veto. This modern Hildebrand proved to be the greatest pope of the century. His missionary zeal, charity for the poor, prudence and firmness in administration were recognized in his beatification by Pius XII. His pastoral vigilance was demonstrated in the decree on Frequent Communion (1679) , his condemnation of Laxism (1679) and of Quietism (1687), and in his reform measures. Nepotism and extravagance were severely checked.

The Gallican Crisis, provoked by the Regale Affair, found a pope who dared defy the Grand Monarch. Like Hildebrand, Innocent XI was not personally victorious, but his successors reaped the fruit of his intrepidity. The pope stubbornly resisted Louis’s claims to spiritual and temporal control of all French benefices; annulled the Four Gallican Articles impugning papal primacy; withheld canonical institution from insubordinate French bishops; and finally excommunicated the king and his minions. Louis XIV retaliated in 1687 by sending General Lavardin to take forceful possession of the French quarter at Rome, as well as of the papal domain at Avignon. Called upon to decide a contested election to the see of Cologne, the pope confirmed Joseph von Wittlesbach in preference to Louis’s tool, Cardinal Fuerstenberg. When the pope died, ^{[p. 298]} the king had expelled the papal nuncio and was appealing to a general council.

The last crusade against the Turks owed much of its success to the tireless efforts of Innocent XI. He encouraged King John Sobieski of Poland to submerge national antipathy in the common cause of Christendom, and prevailed on the Venetians to forego commercial advantages to continue their naval assistance. The result was the relief of Vienna (1683), the reconquest of Catholic I-lungary, and the reversal of the whole Turkish offensive by the Peace of Carlowitz (1699) .

(2) ALEXANDER VIII (1689-91)

    Pietro Ottoboni (1610-91) was another octogenarian selected as a compromise candidate after a protracted conclave subject to dynastic pressures. Personally worthy, he was feeble and indulgent to others, reverting to nepotism and filling of sinecure offices in which the misconduct of relatives created no small scandal.

Diplomatic impasse. Pope Alexander VIII temporized and made a few concessions in the Regale Affair, but in the main continued to uphold his predecessor’s position. Himself a Venetian, the pope had considerable success in encouraging Venetian support of the crusade.

(3) INNOCENT XII (1691-1700)

    Antonio Pignatelli (1615-1700) was chosen as compromise candidate in a stormy conclave which Louis XIV strove to control. The new pope published Decet Romanum Ponti fitem shortly after his election. This prohibited a pope from naming a cardinal of his own family and proved to be the definitive corrective to papal nepotism. With Innocent XII the modern tradition of morally blameless popes happily begins.

Successful diplomacy terminated the Regale Affair, with concessions to sweeten the king’s recognition of the basic principle of papal spiritual primacy. Count Martinitz, imperial ambassador, revived some of Crequi’s claims to diplomatic immunity. Though this dispute was less severe, it may have influenced the pope to regard Bourbon claims to the Spanish inheritance more favorably than those of the Habsburgs.

(4) CLEMENT XI (1700-21)

    Gian-Francesco Albani (1649-1721) was selected after Louis XIV had vetoed the candidature of Cardinal Mariscotti. The upright character and relative youth of the pope enabled him to endure a lengthy and trying pontificate, amid war and Jansenist quibbles.

The War of Spanish Succession and its aftermath overshadowed the pontificate. If Albani had previously been friendly to the Bourbons, as pope he strove for strict neutrality. Both Bourbons and Habsburgs ^{[p. 299]} nevertheless accused him of partiality toward the other—probably a good testimony to his fairness. Austrian invasion of the Papal States in 1709 wrung from him recognition of Archduke Charles; whereupon Philip of Anjou broke off diplomatic relations. After the Peace of Utrecht, Clement came into conflict with the Austrian New Order in Italy; indeed, union of north and south under a single power was contrary to immemorial papal policy. Clement’s chief difficulty was with Victor Amadeus of Savoy in Sicily from 1713 to 1720. This king pretended to revive the medieval “Monarchia Sicula,” a claim to legatine jurisdiction. Papal interdict was met by the exile of three thousand clerics. Victor’s transfer to Sardinia adjourned the conflict, but the papacy would yet endure much from the Savoyard dynasty.

47. GALLICAN FRANCE

Legacy of Anagni. Ever since Philip the Fair’s attack upon Pope Boniface VIII at Anagni, the French monarchy had displayed but scant respect for the Holy See. The Avignon captivity, the Great Western Schism, and the conciliar movement at Pisa, Constance, and Basle included manifestations of an inchoate Gallicanism. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) had been renounced only to obtain through the Concordat of Bologna (1516) wide powers of royal nomination to French benefices, subjecting these in large measure to the court. Throughout the period of the Protestant Revolt the French monarchy had pursued a selfish policy to the disregard of the interests of Christendom, and Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin had scarcely altered this.

    Clerical Ultramontanism seemed to have triumphed with the participation of the French hierarchy in the Council of Trent during its last period, and Charles of Lorraine, cardinal of Rheims, had co-operated with reform efforts. But the Tridentine decrees had not been promulgated in France until 1615 when some French prelates were emboldened to do so on their own initiative during the feeble regency of Marie de’ Medici.

Pierre Pithou, however, had published a treatise in 1594 entitled, Des Libertés de l’Église Gallicane. Without any speculative defense of the conciliar theory, he had nonetheless set forth a list of supposed legal precedents for royal supremacy over the French Church. He contended that custom gave the king the right to convoke plenary councils, that his permission was required for papal legates to enter France, that the monarch and his officials were exempt from papal excommunication and ^{[p. 300]} deposition, and that in emergencies they might appeal to a general council “as from an abuse.”

Edmond Richer (1559-1631), syndic of the University of Paris and editor of Gerson’s works, went even farther in the direction of Gallicanism. After publicly teaching conciliarism at the University, he published De Ecclesiastica et Politica Potestate (1611), a work defending democratic views regarding the constitution of both Church and state. For Richer, the Church was a limited monarchy in which the legislative power was supreme, whether vested in ecumenical councils or local synods. The former was the “final and infallible court invested with the plenitude of power.” He called Christ the “essential head of the Church”; the pope was merely the “ministerial head,” subject to the dogmatic and disciplinary decrees of the general councils. The state, moreover, was the natural protector of the Church against abuses, although Richer claimed that supreme civil power lay with the legislature rather than the king.

Queen Marie de’ Medici, as regent for her son, Louis XIII, from 1610 to 1624, displayed little of the firmness of her royal predecessors. Cardinal Du Perron, archbishop of Sens, had the papal condemnation of Richer’s work seconded at the Synod of Sens (1612), and similar action was taken by Bishop Henri de Gondi of Paris at the Synod of Aix. Richer, in conformity with his own teaching, appealed from these synodal condemnations to the parlement of Paris, which sustained him. Though the queen forced Richer’s resignation from the faculty, he continued his public espousal of Gallicanism. In England, the apostate archbishop of Spalato, De Dominis, published in 1617 his De Republica Ecclesiastica with the approval of James I. In this treatise he defended the episcopalian theory of ecclesiastical government, although he later recanted this after leaving England.

Cardinal Richelieu, once in power after 1624, objected to Richer’s theories more on account of their hint of political democracy than for any schismatic tendencies. Apparently the former was “rank heresy,” while the latter only a freely debatable opinion. After the capture of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle, the cardinal brought pressure to bear on Richer, and in 1629 Richelieu’s deputy, Père Joseph, secured from Richer a complete signed recantation. The latter died in 1631.

Pierre Dupuy, however, met with Richelieu’s approval when he published in 1638 his Preuves des Libertés de L’Église Gallicane. This defended royal supremacy over the French Church to the practical exclusion of papal jurisdiction. The work, however, was censured by many of the French bishops. ^{[p. 301]}

Pierre Marca was commissioned by Richelieu to interpret the cardinal-premier’s views on papal-royal relations. Accordingly in 1641 Marca published De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii, in which papal jurisdiction was minimized and royal power exalted, even to intervention in abuses. Papal infallibility was conceded only “cum aliquo con-sensu Ecclesiae.”

Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu’s successor from 1642 to 1661, was so menaced by domestic uprisings and preoccupied by foreign wars that he could not play his mentor’s role in ecclesiastical affairs. Unlike his predecessor, moreover, he was not even in major orders. Thus, it became possible for the French hierarchy to condemn Gallican writings and have them proscribed by the Council of Conscience, where St. Vincent de Paul, with Queen Anne’s backing, was sometimes able to restrain, if he could not entirely reverse, Mazarin’s lax ecclesiastical policies.

The Mémoires of Louis XIV reveal his ecclesiastical policy. All of the faithful, “whether lay or tonsured,” are the king’s subjects, and the monarch enjoys eminent domain over ecclesiastical as well as secular property. The clergy are therefore subject to taxation, though the crown indulgently permits them to call it a “free donation.” Indeed, “popes who have wished to contest that right of royalty have made it clearer and more incontestable by the distinct withdrawal of their ambitious pre-tentions, which they have been obliged to make.”

The Regale Affair began in 1673. “The Regale was the assumed right of the crown to receive the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys: regale temporale; and to nominate the candidates to all benefices, the collation of which belonged to the bishop: regale spirituale.” ¹¹ Although the Regale had been introduced against the canons into some French provinces during the Dark Ages, the general council of Lyons in 1274 had explicitly forbade its extension. Yet in 1673 and 1675 the king summarily proclaimed this obsolete abuse for his entire kingdom. Although most of the French bishops acquiesced, two prelates of Jansenist sympathies, Pavillon of Alet and Caulet of Pamiers, resisted. Pope Innocent XI sustained them when the king tried to deprive them of their sees. Though both dissenters died soon afterwards, the issue was kept alive by the appeal of the Cistercian nuns of Charonne to Rome against royal appointment of an abbess of another order. When the pope annulled the royal nomination, the parlement of Paris in turn declared the papal decision legally null. ^{[p. 302]}

11 Charles Poulet and Sidney Raemers, Church History (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1935), II, 206.

The Gallican Articles (1682) represent an attempt to intimidate the pope. Innocent XI in 1679 had hinted that “we shall have recourse to remedies placed in our hands by God’s power.” The French hierarchy waxed indignant at even a threat to the Grand Monarch, and assured him that it was “bound to his cause by ties that nothing could sever.” The king was emboldened to assemble thirty-four bishops and thirty-seven priests at Paris (1681-82). These ecclesiastics drew up the “Liberties of the Gallican Church,” which endorsed the regale temporale, and the spirituale as well, subject to papal canonical institution. In July, 1682, Bishop Bossuet took the lead in formulating the “Four Gallican Articles”:

1) The pope enjoyed no temporal authority over princes.

2) Papal power, according to the decrees of Constance, was limited by ecumenical councils.

3) Exercise of papal jurisdiction was also restricted by local conciliar decrees and the customs of the Gallican Church.

4) Papal definitions become infallible only after the universal Church has consented to accept them.

Louis XIV endorsed these Gallican Articles, and ordered their acceptance by all candidates for theological degrees. Even though but 162 of some seven hundred doctors of the Sorbonne ratified these Articles, the king declared the minority view official. Bishops and theologians outside France, however, uttered their emphatic disapproval.

Innocent XI drew up a decree nullifying the Gallican Articles, but this was not promulgated until 1690, and by his successor, Pope Alexander VIII. Pope Innocent, however, denied his canonical confirmation to any royal nominee for an episcopal see who refused to repudiate the Gallican Articles. Since the king would not allow such repudiation and naturally nominated Gallicans, the number of canonically vacant sees multiplied: there were thirty-five such by 1688. The only recourse left Louis XIV was to begin a schism. This he hesitated to do against the advice of his wife, Madame de Maintenon. Schism, moreover, would awake the prelates to the real issue of papal primacy, and even Bossuet had asserted that “Peter remains in his successors the foundation stone of all the faithful.” The king therefore tried to frighten the pope by seizing papal property at Avignon and Rome, by mustering an army against the Papal State, and by appealing to a general council. When the pope excommunicated General Lavardin and his accomplices, the parlement of Paris pronounced this censure of Louis’s conduct “abominable.” Innocent XI, however, remained unmoved.

Alexander VIII secured a partial understanding. Lavardin was recalled, the right of diplomatic immunity renounced by the French quarter in Rome, and Avignon was evacuated. After receiving the  ^{[p. 303]} requisite pledges, the pope confirmed a few episcopal appointments. But when he published his predecessor’s nullification of the Four Gallican Articles in 1690, the king delayed full reconciliation.

Innocent XII was able to see the end of the affair begun under Innocent XI. Preoccupied by the War of English Succession, disturbed by the condemnation of the Catholic world, and the tacit hostility of the lesser French clergy and people, the king in 1693 relented. He assured the pope that in his future religious policy he would disregard the Gallican Articles. Papal confirmation was then extended to royal episcopal nominees willing to apologize for their part in the Gallican Assembly, and to endorse the papal decree of nullity pronounced on the Gallican Articles. The Holy See had defended its inalienable rights as a matter of principle to supreme spiritual jurisdiction, although the crown continued in virtual control of the temporalities of the French Church. Down to the French Revolution, king and parlement occasionally meddled in spiritual affairs, and Gallican doctrines did not die out. Jean De Launoy (1603-78) had upheld them, and as late as 1768, Jamin won popularity with his Pensées Theologiques in Gallican tenor. The French clergy remained more or less influenced by Gallican notions until the French Revolution, and vestiges survived right down to the Vatican Council of 1869.

The Edict of Nantes had been Henry IV’s indulgent grant (1598) of civil and religious liberties to the French Huguenots. Cardinal Richelieu had taken away the civil-military privileges of walled towns in 1629, but had not disturbed religious freedom. But on October 18, 1685, Louis XIV issued a sweeping edict that ordered demolition of Huguenot churches, closing of schools and exile of ministers. Henceforth, children were to be educated in Catholic schools alone. The measure was designed to complete the unification of the kingdom, and probably also to impress the Holy See at the height of the Gallican crisis, of the king’s devotion to Catholic interests. Innocent XI, in an allocution during 1686, did commend the king’s motives, but also backed up the French prelates who had protested against the cruel treatment of Protestants.

Results were not according to ‘royal expectations. Some fifty thousand Huguenots fled the kingdom to influence foreign opinion against France. Yet Protestantism was not extinguished. Those who could not escape were presumed to have been converted, and were obliged to contract marriage before a priest under penalty of civil invalidity. Recusants were condemned to the galleys and soldiers quartered on suspected families. These harsh measures provoked the revolt of “Camisards,” Huguenots of Cévennes, who took violent reprisals: during 1704 some ^{[p. 304]} eighty priests and four thousand laymen were slain. The revolt was not entirely suppressed until 1710, and left an embittered Huguenot populace. The king who would be pope had blundered badly: he had converted some eight hundred thousand subjects, not to the Church, but against the monarchy. Legal toleration was not granted until November, 1787, and came too late to prevent some Huguenot acts of revenge “against throne and altar” during the French Revolution.

48. JANSENIST ORIGINS

Louvain environment. Michel De Bay (1513-89), a professor of Louvain University, has already been noted as the remote founder of Jansenism by his confusion of sin and concupiscence, and of the natural and the supernatural. De Bay, however, had died in the Catholic Church after a stormy career. Yet his habits of criticism survived at Louvain. Intellectual links between him and Jansen were the former’s nephew, Jacob De Bay, and Jacob Jenson, both disciples of Michel De Bay, both professors of Louvain, and in due time teachers of Jansen and St.-Cyran. Thus Baianism, though condemned by the Holy Office in 1567, reappeared in Jansenism.

Cornelis Jansen (1585-1638) was born at Accoi, near Leerdam, Holland. In 1602 he entered Louvain University and pursued his theological studies under Jacob Jenson. Though he sought admission into the Jesuits, he was refused. This seems to have turned his attraction for the Society into aversion, for he participated in maneuvers which expelled the Jesuits from Louvain. Jansen, a diligent but not particularly intelligent student, spent the years from 1611 to 1616 on the estate of his friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (1581-1643) , later designated from his Abbey of St.-Cyran. The associates studied the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, to whose works Jansen believed that he had discovered a clue unknown to the Scholastics. Jansen returned to Louvain where he received his doctorate in theology in 1619. He remained as tutor and professor, corresponding in code with St.-Cyran after the latter took up residence in Paris after 1621. Meanwhile Jansen was engaged in writing his masterpiece, the Augustinus, which he never got around to publishing during his lifetime. Jansen’s pamphlet, Mars Gallieus, directed against Richelieu, may have contributed to winning him the favor of the Spanish government. He was named to the see of Ypres in 1636, and once consecrated, devoted himself zealously to his pastoral office. His solicitude exposed him to a plague at Ypres, where he died on May 6, 1638. He died protesting his allegiance to the Catholic Church, though he committed the manuscript of his Augustinus to his ^{[p. 305]} executors, Canon Hendrik van Caelen and Dr. Libertus Froidmont. With the undiscriminating approval of Jacob Boonen, the incompetent archbishop of Malines, the executors discharged their commission in 1640. The edition bore Jansen’s assertion: “If, however, the Holy See wishes any change, I am an obedient son, and I submit to that Church in which I have lived to my dying hour. This is my last wish.” The founder of Jansenism, therefore, was not himself a Jansenist—in the sense of being a formal heretic.

Jansenism ought to be distinguished into an heretical, theological system on grace and predestination, and a moral attitude or party remaining within the Church. While it is with the former sense that the following topics will be chiefly concerned, the influence of the latter was perhaps more widespread and lasting, as it was more earnest and well-meaning. It proposed to turn the clock back in the discipline of the sacraments: by severity in regard to the imposition of penances and imparting of absolution; and by the exceptional dispositions required for comparatively rare reception of Holy Communion.’’

The Augustinus, published in 1640, was divided into three parts. The first was an historical exposition which endeavored to identify Molinism with Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, as part of Jansen’s vendetta with the Jesuits. In this Jansen was in error, for though primitive Molinism had unwittingly relied on some Semi-Pelagian documents, it had been purged of any errors in faith.

Human nature was the subject of the second part. Here Jansen’s basic error lay in virtual identification of the natural with the supernatural order. He regarded man in his original state as possessing the supernatural and preternatural gifts as of strict right, and consequently ordinated him to the beatific vision as to an essential exigency of human nature. Adam’s fall, therefore, in Jansen’s view, resulted in the loss of something due human nature, so that afterwards it remained entirely vitiated and corrupt. In this fallen state it found itself powerless to resist concupiscence which Jansen, like Luther and De Bay before him, practically identified with original sin. Human volition accordingly was at the mercy of a “delectatio victrix,” an overpowering attraction, whether from heaven or fallen nature. Though supposedly constrained interiorly by either grace or concupiscence, the human will was said to remain free to will good or evil insofar as it suffered no external constraint.

A. d’Ales, director, Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1925), II, 1154.

Supernatural aid was expounded by Jansen in the third part of his ^{[p. 306]} Augustinus. Here his fundamental mistake lay in identifying sufficient and efficacious grace in his concept of “victorious delectation.” Jansen believed that St. Augustine’s “adjutorium sine quo non” granted to Adam before the fall was a “purely sufficient grace” which Adam could use or not; whereas the Augustinian category, “adjutorium quo,” given to Adam’s progeny was an irresistible divine force overpowering concupiscence by substituting a contrary delectation. As a matter of fact, for St. Augustine, the “adjutorium sine quo non” also offered Adam and the angels efficacious power to persevere, while the “adjutorium quo” was efficacious with the free consent of man. “The delectation of grace is a deliberate pleasure which the bishop of Hippo explicitly opposes to necessity (voluptas, non necessitas) ; but what we will and embrace with consenting pleasure, we cannot at the same time not will, and in this sense we will it necessarily. . . . This delight is called victorious, not because it fatally subjugates the will, but because it triumphs over concupiscence, fortifying free will to the point of rendering it invincible to natural desire.” ^is

“ J. Forget, “Jansenius,” Catholic Encyclopedia, VIII, 287.

Publication of the Augustinus opened the Jansenist controversy. While the work was still in manuscript, the Jesuits had denounced the design to the papal nuncio Stravius, who in turn reported the matter to the Holy See. Rome requested postponement of publication, but the message arrived too late, and Stravius sent a copy of the first edition to the Holy See for examination. The Jesuits meanwhile had begun to issue refutations. But their criticism was vulnerable to censure since by reason of the acrimony of the Thomist-Molinist debates, further writings on grace had been prohibited without authorization from the Holy Office. Likewise it could be alleged that the Jesuits were now actuated by revenge in posthumously indicting the works of a man who had helped procure their banishment from Louvain. At the same time Jansen’s many friends rallied to his defense.

Roman censure followed. In August, 1641, the Holy Office vented its indignation on Jesuits and Jansenists alike by forbidding their unauthorized treatises on grace to be read. Louvain University was quibbling and evasive in accepting this censure. Pope Urban VIII now gave the matter his personal attention, and finally issued the bull, In Eminenti, dated March 6, 1642, but not appearing until June 19, 1643. This document renewed the ban on unauthorized publications on the subject of grace, and rejected Jansenist teaching as containing errors of Baianism, already condemned.

Jansenist evasion of even papal pronouncements, which was to be the recurring theme of the movement, now appeared at the very outset. Louvain University demurred, professing doubts as to the bull’s authenticity because of the discrepancy in date, and on October 24, 1643, the pope felt it necessary to make an explicit confirmation of its authenticity. But neither this nor subsequent statements by the Holy Office removed Jansenist qualms. Unfortunately, the previous condemnation of Baianism (Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus, October 1, 1567) had censured many propositions in globo, and a slight ambiguity in punctuation was seized upon to deflect the full force of condemnation (cf. Denzinger 1080) . Though the bull, In Eminenti, was promulgated by the archbishop of Paris, the Sorbonne, and the French crown, it was ill received in the Jansenist place of origin, Flanders. Papal decrees were evaded by Archbishop Boonen of Malines, an elderly prelate controlled by his vicars, Caelen and Froidmont, who were none other than the executors of the Augustinus. Pressure from Rome was required to induce Louvain to accept the condemnation of Jansenism, May 5, 1645, but even then no practical measures were taken to enforce it. Not until 1651 did Archbishop Boonen publish the papal bull, and then with such derogatory remarks that he was cited to Rome. He excused himself on one ground or another until his death in 1655. He had given the Jansenist party time to grow. The most influential members of the faction, however, appeared in France.

Jean Duvergier, Abbé of St.-Cyran from 1620, had become the active protagonist of Jansen’s teaching in France. He had joined the Academy of Cardinal de Berulle and was regarded as one of the advocates of clerical reform. In this environment he met St. Vincent de Paul, with whom he associated intimately prior to 1625 when the latter founded his Congregation of the Mission. About the same time St.-Cyran became affiliated with the famous convent of Port Royal, presently to be described. St.-Cyran apparently began to manifest marked Jansenist tendencies to St. Vincent about 1634-35, when they became estranged, though not hostile—St. Vincent attended St.-Cyran’s funeral.

Jansenist Gnosticism is manifest in St.-Cyran’s views as reported by St. Vincent when summoned in 1638 to give testimony before the ecclesiastical authorities. St. Vincent reported St.-Cyran as saying: “Calvin was right about that; . . . he defended his position badly, that’s all: bene sensit, male locutus est. . . . God has revealed to me that the Church no longer exists; . . . that there has been no Church for more than five hundred or six hundred years. Before that, the Church was like a great river whose waters were clear, but now what seems ^{[p. 308]} the Church to us is nothing but mud. . . . True, Jesus Christ built His Church on a rock, but there is a time of building up and a time of casting down. She was once His spouse, but now is an adulteress and a prostitute. Hence He has rejected her and it is His will to place another in her place who will be faithful. . . . Don’t speak to me about the Council [of Trent]; it was the council of pope and Scholastics, and nothing but intrigues and cabals. . . . The holy Scriptures are more clear in my mind than they are in themselves.” ¹⁴ Gnostic “inside theological information” had returned with a vengeance.

¹¹ Coste, Pierre, Life and Labours of St. Vincent de Paul (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1935), III, 117.

Prosecution. St.-Cyran and Richelieu had once been friendly, but the former’s refusal to accept domination seems to have alienated the cardinal. In 1630 Queen Marie nominated St.-Cyran bishop of Bayonne, but Richelieu had this canceled two days later. In 1632 under the name of Peter Aureolus, St.-Cyran opposed a Jesuit tract. The unknown author was for a time popular with a portion of the French hierarchy, but not with Bishop Zamet of Langres, whom St.-Cyran had replaced as director of Port Royal. The bishop denounced St.-Cyran to Richelieu, who arrested the Abbé in May, 1638, on an unavowed suspicion of heresy. Though the cardinal took considerable testimony from St. Vincent, Condren, Zamet and others, he seems to have been content to keep St.Cyran in easy captivity at Vincennes. There he remained, surrounded as usual with stacks of preparatory notes that he never edited, until the cardinal’s death in December, 1642. The king then liberated St.-Cyran and he returned home to be hailed by his disciples as a martyr for the Jansenist cause. He died, however, less than a year after his release, October 11, 1643. Jansenism, far from expiring with him, proved to be merely at the beginning of its tortuous course.

The Arnauld Clan. Jansenism had won the adherence of a celebrated bourgeois family. Antoine Arnauld (1612-94), ordained to the priesthood in 1641 on St.-Cyran’s advice, became the sect’s acknowledged leader after St.-Cyran’s death. He was supported by two brothers, the influential lay courtier, Robert Arnauld D’Andilly (1589-1674), eldest of the family and father of Pomponne, a secretary of state; and Henri Arnauld (1597-1692) , successively bishop of Toul and Angers. These brothers retained their influential posts until death, although Antoine deemed it prudent to retire to Holland in 1679 where he continued his literary activity until his death. Finally, six of their sisters entered the Port Royal convents. Of these, the most famous were Mère Angelique, née Jacqueline Arnauld (1591-1661), abbess of Port Royale, and Mère ^{[p. 309]} Agnes, author of the Rosary/ of the Blessed Sacrament, which she termed pious “elevations” concerning sixteen divine attributes revealed in as many centuries of Christian history.

Port Royal, a Benedictine convent founded near Paris in 1204, had grown lax in discipline by 1602 when Jacqueline Arnauld was made abbess at the age of eleven. Under the influence of St. Francis de Sales, she began a reform of the convent in 1607. She extended her reform to Maubuisson in 1619, and founded a daughter house, Port Royal de Paris, in 1626. Unfortunately in 1622 she passed from St. Francis’s guidance to that of Bishop Zamet, a zealous but eccentric man, and later under that of Abbé St.-Cyran, whom she had met as early as 1621. The latter organized a number of male hermits who took up abode at Port Royal des Champs. The exact nature of St.-Cyran’s direction is unknown, but in his time and that of his disciple, Antoine Singlin, there was as yet no general abstention from Communion by the nuns. But they were to prove obstinate devotees of Jansenism, eliciting from Archbishop Pere-fixe of Paris the remark: “These sisters are as pure as angels, but as proud as devils.” Throughout the controversy, Port Royal remained the stronghold of Jansenist learning and piety, resisting full submission despite episcopal censures. Pope Clement XI declared the convent suppressed in 1704, and during 1709 King Louis XIV expelled the surviving nuns, and the next year had the edifice destroyed and the cemetery violated.

The Port Royal circle, however, extended into aristocratic lay society. “Jansenism was above all the heresy of the salon and the study; the mass of the people was only the hapless victim of its exaggerations” (Ludwig von Pastor). Until 1679 the convent enjoyed the powerful protection of the duchess of Longueville, and for a time it had at its service the brilliant pen of Blaise Pascal. Jansenist influence was spread by books and pamphlets, and members of the aristocracy visited Port Royal to receive lectures on asceticism from the nuns.

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