49. JANSENIST TERGIVERSATION

Antoine Arnauld (1612-94) , speaker, polemicist, and organizer, was recognized as “The Great Arnauld” even by foes. He naturally inherited St.-Cyran’s leadership of the Jansenist movement and preserved it until his death, with the assistance of his disciple and secretary, Pierre Nicole (1625-95) . Arnauld accepted all of Jansen’s teachings and defended them in an Apology in 1644. But he is best known for his own treatise, De La Frequente Communion, published in 1643. This shifted much attention in the Jansenist controversy from speculative questions about ^{[p. 310]} grace, to practical problems of morality, especially concerning confession and Holy Communion.

La Frequente. The new issue had been occasioned by the conduct of the Marquise de Sablé. This social butterfly tried to combine piety with apparent worldliness: though at evidence at gala balls in the evening, she appeared in the morning at the communion rail. St.-Cyran had written a treatise for her admonition, and this was refuted by her Jesuit confessor, Father de Sesmaisons. When St.-Cyran died before he had opportunity to reply, Arnauld undertook his master’s defense with his own treatise on Communion. In this he continued St.-Cyran’s attacks on the Jesuits for their alleged laxity in regard to frequent confession and communion. Arnauld’s aim in his Frequente would almost seem to he a revival of the ancient penitential discipline of the exomologesis. He insisted upon perfect contrition and complete satisfaction as essential prerequisites for absolution and Communion. The Eucharist, indeed, was to be a sort of reward reserved for the most perfect. None should receive unless he had spent several months at least in atonement for sin. Should he commit several acts of impatience, if he experienced no sensible devotion, a penitent ought to abstain from Holy Communion; in fact, abstention from the Holy Eucharist to Arnauld was “the most important part of penance.” One might conclude from his theory that the longer one abstained from Holy Communion from a conviction of personal unworthiness, the more pleasing one was to God. Mère Angelique and her community vied with one another in abstention records: though the presumably holy abbess stayed away for only five months, some of her religious felt prompted to abstain for eighteen. Episcopal inquiries about the precept of Paschal Communion met with no obedience. Even papal rebukes encountered the rejoinder that Popes Liberius and Honorius had once fallen into heresy. Nor were these practices confined to Port Royal; presently they began to produce alarming results among the laity. Father Jacques Nouet, S.J., attacked Arnauld’s treatise, and in 1644 Petau issued a learned but drab refutation on historical grounds that Arnauld rebutted with the acclaim of many. Arnauld’s circle deplored much of the liturgy, veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and urged Bible reading as a sort of sacrament. Yet the Frequente had received the endorsement of fifteen French bishops, who were satisfied with Arnauld’s assertion of loyalty to the Roman Church. When Queen Anne ordered Arnauld to render an account of his teaching at Rome, the parlement pleaded the “liberties of the Gallican Church.”

(2) EXPLICIT CONDEMNATION OF JANSENISM

Censure of Frequente. Arnauld’s book was not only being read with delight by intellectuals, but fashionable people were entrusting their children to Port Royal. In 1644 Bishop Sanguin of Senlis had applied to Rome to halt the spread of Jansenism, but in 1645-46 pro-Jansenist bishops praised the Frequente in letters to Rome. Cardinal de Lugo warned Pope Innocent X against forcing these into open schism. Accordingly St. Vincent de Paul, since 1643 head of the queen’s “Council of Conscience,” resolved on an indirect attack. Realizing that the Holy See would act slowly in reaching a definitive decision on the complicated questions in dispute, he shrewdly seized on an incidental passage of the Frequente which termed St. Paul a “Roman cofounder,” along with St. Peter. When this was brought to the attention of the Holy See, Rome, ever jealous of Petrine primacy, acted quickly. With explicit papal approval, the Holy Office in January, 1647, declared certain of Arnauld’s statements heretical (Denzinger 1091) . The queen and Cardinal Mazarin sustained the papal decree over Jansenist protests.

Indictment of five propositions. Though a joint episcopal-royal directive of 1643 had imposed the condemnation of Jansen contained in In Eminenti, the Jansenists, stimulated by Arnauld’s Apologies, had refused to submit. In his “Observations on the bull, In Eminenti,” Arnauld questioned the identification of Jansenism with Baianism, though he professed to be willing to accept a definitive papal judgment. This was the next objective of St. Vincent who in 1648 had assembled the leading theologians at St. Lazare to concert measures against the chief Jansenist tenets. A Jansenist demand from the Sorbonne of censure of Père Veron’s attacks upon themselves gave the dean, Nicholas Cornet, a reason for an examination of Jansen’s works. Forty-two Parisian doctors examined Jansenist writings and commissioned Cornet to draw up a list of passages for condemnation. Though he selected seven, the following “five propositions” from the Augustinus were finally censured by the Sorbonne in 1649 as heretical: “1) Some of God’s commandments are impossible to just men who wish and strive to keep them, considering the powers they actually have; the grace by which these precepts may become possible is also wanting to them. 2) In the state of fallen nature no one ever resists interior grace. 3) In order to merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, we must be free from all external constraint, but not from interior necessity. 4) The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of internal prevenient grace for all acts, even for the beginning of faith, but fell into heresy in pretending that this grace is such that man may either follow or resist it. 5) It is Semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died or shed His Blood for all men.”

Papal condemnation of the five propositions was then sought by St. Vincent and his associates, while the Jansenists tried to avert this by delaying tactics of their Roman agent, Louis Gorin de St.-Amour. Though they forwarded eleven episcopal signatures on their behalf, the Jansenists ^{[p. 312]} were overpowered by the 88 episcopal endorsements of the Sorbonne’s censure obtained by 1651. In 1652 Dr. Hallier of the Sorbonne could assure Rome that but 20 of its 460 doctors were Jansenist. Innocent X in 1651 named a cardinalatial commission to study the propositions, and to avoid any charge of bias, included only one Jesuit, Pallavicinio, on the board. After an exhaustive inquiry, the pope on May 31, 1653, sanctioned the censure of heresy placed by the commission on the five propositions in the constitution, Cum Occasione (Denzinger 1092-96) .

(1) THE “QUESTION OF FACT”

“L’Affaire Arnauld.” One of the devotees of Port Royal, the duke of Liancourt, continued to confess at St. Sulpice, although Father Olier had definitely placed himself in opposition to the Jansenist ideas of penance in a sermon during 1649. During 1655 the duke learned that in the judgment of his Sulpician director, Father Picoté, reinforced by that of Father Olier, he would be denied Communion at St. Sulpice if he continued to frequent Port Royal. When this came to Arnauld’s notice, he edited several “Open Letters” in which, besides denouncing the Sulpician stand, he enunciated the distinction of right and fact, possibly at the suggestion of Pierre Nicole. Arnauld maintained that the five propositions may have been rightly condemned by the Holy See in the sense suggested to Rome by unscrupulous enemies, e.g., Jesuits and Vincentians; yet, as a matter of fact, neither Jansen nor his followers understood the propositions in the same sense. Hence, though Rome had rightly condemned certain hypothetical errors, she had not touched the Jansenists who did not understand the indicted propositions in the same way. Arnauld’s attack was censured at the Sorbonne, he was deprived of his doctorate, and denounced to Rome: December, 1655, to January, 1656.

Blaise Pascal (1623-62), “converted” in 1654, proved Port Royal’s greatest recruit during these years. Pascal had been trained by Jansenists and never completely escaped their influence, though later acquaintance with the works of St. Thomas Aquinas somewhat modified his views. While he constantly denied any doctrinal affiliation with Jansenism, Pascal for a time played its game by seconding attacks upon the Jesuits. His friendship for Arnauld brought him to resent what he deemed the intrigues of petty casuists at the Sorbonne. In January, 1656, he wrote the first of his Lettres Provinciales which inflamed the controversy by focusing attention on personalities. Though grossly unfair to the Jesuits, these sallies constituted a masterpiece of satire which was relished by many persons otherwise unconnected with Jansenism. Molinism ^{[p. 313]} was termed Pelagianism, and Probabilism held to scorn as mere “Jesuitical casuistry.” At the same time (1656-57) Port Royal was claiming that miracles worked through the Holy Thorn—a fragment of the Crown of Thorns lent them—were confirming their teachings. After the Holy Office had placed the Lettres Provinciales on the Index, September 6, 1657, Pascal ceased to write them. But he failed to retract them and left a poison virulent for centuries. Several months before his death, however, Pascal disassociated himself from Port Royal and made entire submission to the Holy See.

Ad Sacram Beati Petri Sedem was the response of Alexander VII to the Jansenist question of fact on October 16, 1656. Therein he condemned the distinction between right and fact, and defined the dogmatic fact that the five propositions were actually found in the Augustinus, which Arnauld had denied, and that they had been condemned “in the sense intended by Jansen.” The crown overrode parlement’s objections to register this papal document in France, and urged the Assembly of the French Clergy to draw up a formula against Jansenism to be accepted by all candidates for benefices. During 1661 this was done with episcopal sanction, so that all clerics and theologians were henceforth required to accept the condemnation of the five propositions in the papal sense.

(2) “MENTAL RESERVATION”

“Mental reservation” was the Jansenists’ next expedient. Many of their party now consented to subscribe to the formulary imposed by the assembly of the clergy so far as externals went, but at the same time they assured their associates that they had done so only with mental restriction. In fact, several Jansenist-minded vicars-general in Paris issued directives explicitly permitting such an indulgent interpretation. With this proviso, even the nuns of Port Royal were willing to accept the formulary in 1661. But the Jansenists were themselves divided about subscribing with reservation or continuing to refuse adherence. Arnauld and Nicole now raised further quibbles on the ground that the Holy See had been deceived by Jesuit machinations. Utter confusion seemed once again to have clouded the issue, which was undoubtedly what the Jansenist leaders desired.

Episcopal dissenters. Even more serious was the determined resistance offered to the formulary by four French bishops: Henri Arnauld of Angers, De Buzenval of Beauvais, De Caulet of Pamiers, and Pavillon of Alet. This group, headed by the ascetic but quite unintelligent Nicolas Pavillon, “maintained that the Church had the power to condemn a doctrine, but not to declare that this doctrine was contained in the writings of such or such an author. In other words, that the infallible ^{[p. 314]} Church, infallible in matters of right, is not so in matters of fact.” ^r’ Following a request for greater vigor in enforcing the formulary, emanating from Pope Alexander VII, the king renewed his requirements in April, 1664. But the Jansenists protested that this formula had not been approved by the Holy See, and indeed it had originally been drawn up in 1655 by Archbishop DeMarca of Toulouse, a Gallican, though a firm opponent of Jansenism.

“Fernand Mourret, S.S., A History of the Catholic Church, trans. Newton Thompson (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1946), VI, 413.

Regiminis Apostolici, issued on February 15, 1665, was the pope’s response. The vicars-general were now obliged to rescind their indulgence, and a new iron-clad formula was to be imposed on all, to be received without any mental reservation whatsoever. The new archbishop of Paris, Hardouin de Beaumont, secured submission from a few nuns of Port Royal without reservations; the others were banished from Paris to Port Royal des Champs and deprived of the sacraments. Though the king had had the new papal formulary registered in 1666, the four bishops still held out in “respectful silence.” Apparently they judged that the Holy See had made a mistake, and that the decision was not to be deemed irrevocable. Until the end of the pontificate, Alexander VII hesitated about the action to be taken against these dissenters, and he rejected the royal proposal of a supreme tribunal of twelve French bishops. Nineteen other bishops had expressed sympathy with the stand of the accused, who themselves claimed that there was no such thing as a Jansenist heresy: this existed largely in Jesuit fancy. The Duchess de Longueville, head of the aristocratic protectors of Jansenism, also pleaded for the dissenters and much propaganda was spread on their behalf. The king began to weary of the Jansenist squabbles and the situation was growing critical.

(1) TEMPORARY RECONCILIATION (1669)

Pope Clement IX (1667-69) had obtained experience with the Jansen-ist case as nuncio at Madrid. When Bishop Vialart of Châlons came forward as mediator between the four episcopal dissenters and Rome, Clement IX promised that the dissenters would not be prosecuted if they subscribed to previous papal pronouncements on Jansenism “without clauses, simply, sincerely, and clearly.” Imposing on the ineptitude of the nuncio in France, Bargellini, Vialart sounded out the four prelates. They proved willing to sign a statement prepared by Antoine Arnauld professing devotion to the Holy See in phrases that could later be qualified in a Gallican sense. With some qualification, the bishops now had their clergy subscribe to the formula of Alexander VII. Even Antoine ^{[p. 315]} Arnauld signed and was admitted to interviews with the nuncio and the king, although the Sorbonne refused to reinstate him. After repeated efforts to check upon the good faith of the dissenters, the pope decided to accept their protestations. Against the advice of Cardinal Albizzi, Clement IX wrote on January 19, 1669, to the four bishops, accepting their statements of sincerity in upholding the papal condemnations of Jansenism. This reconciliation was hailed in France on all sides as a peace, although in retrospect it can now be seen to have been merely a truce.

(2) SEEDS OF FUTURE CONFLICT

Jansenist sincerity must be regarded as highly questionable. Undoubtedly some of those reconciled had been merely confused by the ramifications of the strife and were truly sincere. But Arnauld and other Jansenist theologians gave evidence of intellectual dishonesty, for in private conversations they continued to express their old views, and a clique still met at the Longueville salon. The “Peace” prevailed outwardly during the pontificates of Popes Clement IX and Clement X, though Jansenist works continued to circulate despite papal and episcopal censures. Innocent XI wrote conciliatory letters to Arnauld and Port Royal, but by a decree of February 12, 1679, commended the practice of frequent, and even daily Communion to all whom their pastors or confessors judged to have the proper dispositions. Nuns sincerely disposed were not to be prohibited from daily Communion, nor were the laity to be discouraged by reason of their state from frequent or even daily reception. The pope also accepted the support of the former episcopal dissenters, Pavillon and Caulet, during his contest with royal Gallicanism. But while these bishops co-operated with the Holy See, Arnauld, with Nicole and Quesnel, upheld the Four Gallican Articles. Once their protectress, the Duchess de Longueville, had died in 1679, Arnauld, Nicole and Quesnel deemed it prudent to retire to Brussels where they adhered tenaciously to the fundamental Jansenist ideas.

50. QUIETIST REACTION

    Miguel de Molinos (1627-96) was a native of Aragon who may have been influenced by the Alumbrados, condemned by the Inquisition as late as 1623. These sectaries discouraged prayer and meditation on the sacred humanity of Christ. Molinos was educated in Spanish universities and ordained to the priesthood in 1652. He was the spiritual director for a community of nuns when he went to Rome in 1663 as postulator for the beatification of the Venerable Simon. At Rome he was attached to ^{[p. 316]} the church of Spanish Discalced Augustinians and soon attained extraordinary fame as a spiritual director. He received the patronage of ex-Queen Christina of Sweden, the Oratorian leader Petrucci, later cardinal, and the papal secretaries, Favoriti and Casani; the latter seem to have diverted the attention of Innocent XI for a long time. Molinos’s chief disciples were the brothers, Simone and Antonio Leoni.

    The “Guida Spirituale,” published by Molinos in 1675, was to be a synthesis of his teaching. It probably received the complacent routine approbation of one of his ecclesiastical admirers, for it attained favorable and wide circulation in Italy and elsewhere. The basis of his system is, however, indicated in the first of its propositions subsequently selected for papal condemnation: “Man must annihilate his powers, and this is the interior life.” The treatise’s chief notions of spirituality were:

(1) Passivity: man must annihilate his natural powers to become entirely passive to supernatural inspiration. All intellectual and physical activity in spiritual matters must be excluded as displeasing to God, hostile to grace, and opposed to the soul’s return to its origin, God’s essence. Apropos of this are the words of Poulain: “There is a wide difference between the maxim: suppress all your acts; and this other which is orthodox: suppress all that is defective in your acts.” 1’

¹⁶ Augustine Poulain, Graces of Interior Prayer (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1950), p. 487.

(2) Contemplative indifference: prayer must be entirely contemplative, to the exclusion of all discursive reasoning and affections. One must neither think of nor excite affection for Christ nor His life, nor distract oneself by performing acts of virtue. Rather one ought to listen to God in silence, perhaps unable even to recite the Lord’s Prayer. This condition might last for years or for life; its prolongation ought not to be hindered by anxiety or effort about salvation. Hence, thoughts of heaven or hell, reward or punishment, should be excluded.

(3) Moral neutrality: “God for some unknown reason prevails upon the soul to fall into the very sins it most detests in order to induce a state of complete self-renunciation” (Miguel de Molinos) . For this reason, Molinos would advise that alien thoughts, even impure ones, may be accepted with calm resignation. These are in no sense sins but temptations and need not be confessed. Indeed, the inward way of Molinos supposedly transcended the sacrament of penance, for it was claimed that often souls became so perfect that they could no longer profit by penance.

Quietist popularity with the worldly set is not difficult to imagine. Molinos’s penitents were captivated by a system which required no ^{[p. 317]} effort, and according to a blunt but logical interpretation might permit the utmost license. For his devotees, Molinos’s prohibition to confess failings or temptations regarding purity might conceal from non-Quietist confessors the true state of the penitent’s soul, and might even create the impression that the system was inculcating an angelic degree of spirituality.

Criticism, nevertheless, was not slow in appearing. As early as 1678 the Jesuit, Father Belluomo, had hinted at danger in the current spiritual teachings, although without naming Molinos. The celebrated Jesuit preacher, Paolo Segneri (1624-94), denounced Quietism in writing about 1680. He was seconded by both Jesuit and Dominican theologians, but so great was the popularity and so incredible the charges against an apparently saintly priest, that their efforts merely gave rise to a controversy. Prelates intervened to block inquiry and delay detection, and Segneri’s book was itself placed on the Index. Pope Innocent seems to have been prejudiced in Molinos’s favor by the papal secretaries, for he is reported to have remarked later: “Truly we were deceived.” But Cardinal Junico Caracciolo, archbishop of Naples since 1667, presently adduced more concrete evidence. Several scandals, involving the corruption of the innocent, had taken place earlier in the seventeenth century to put the Neapolitan curia on its guard. Now in 1682 Cardinal Caracciolo reported to the Holy See that false mystics were appearing in his diocese who claimed “to omit exercises of piety prescribed or recommended by the Church; to regard vocal prayer and the sign of the cross as of no value; and to repel every idea or image which leads to meditation on the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, since such meditation separates one from God.”

Papal condemnation. On receiving this information, the Holy See opened an investigation into current spiritual teachings. There seems to have been at first some difficulty in tracing the errors to Molinos, for he was once acquitted by the Inquisition. But in July, 1685, he was summarily arrested a second time by the Holy Office. He admitted many of the charges and was found guilty, along with the Leoni brothers. On September 3, 1687, Molinos and Simone Leoni were required to make public recantation in the Piazza sopra Minerva. Molinos was degraded from the priesthood and sentenced to perpetual penance in a monastery. Antonio Leoni refused at first to retract, but eventually did so. Petrucci was obliged to resign his see in 1696, but remained in good standing. With the retractation of Giuseppe Beccarelli at Venice in 1710, Quietism strictly so called seems to have disappeared in Italy. Meanwhile Pope Innocent XI had on November 20, 1688, issued a condemnation of sixty-eight Quietist propositions extracted from the Guida Spirituale or the some twenty-five thousand letters of Molinos. Petrucci’s Contemplazione ^{[p. 318]} Mistica was also censured, though the author was probably guilty more of rash and incautious expressions borrowed from Molinos, than of any deliberate and fundamental error of his own.

Jeanne Bouvier de la Motte (1648-1717) was born at Montargis and educated in the convent. Though attracted to the religious life by reading St. Theresa’s works, she was given in marriage in 1664 to the rich bourgeois, Jacques de Guyon. When this match proved unhappy, she contrasted her state with the peace of the convent. Widowed in 1676, she sought a spiritual guide and professed to find one in François Lacombe (d. 1699) , Barnabite director of the Convent of Gex. This pathological case encouraged her to leave her three small children for the convent. Madame Guyon then became greatly attached to Lacombe, whom she evidently wished to play John of the Cross to her Theresa of Avila. When Bishop D’Aranton of Geneva questioned their spiritual maxims, the pair felt called on to set out on a protracted tour of France and Italy to convert the world to “pure love.” Among the many “converts” were Madame de Maintenon, the king’s wife, and Abbé Fénelon, the royal tutor.

“Guyonism” was a doctrine of spiritual self-abnegation on the strength of pretended revelations. The soul ought to love God with perfect love, untarnished by any desire for heaven or fear of hell. Madame de Guyon implied that the sacraments became useless for the perfect. The trend of her teaching is evident from some of the titles of the Guyon-Lacombe works: Spiritual Torrents, Explanation of the Apocalypse, etc. Though her teaching was less gross than that of Molinos, and her own morals said to have been beyond reproach, Bossuet thought that the language that she sometimes used regarding purity in her mistaken devotion bore some resemblance to that of a libertine.

Arrest of the pair occurred at Paris in 1687 when Archbishop Du Harlay of Paris warned the king of the similarity between Semiquietism and the teaching of Molinos, then under fire at Rome. Lacombe remained incarcerated in various royal prisons until he died insane at Charenton. Madame de Guyon was soon released through Madame de Maintenon’s influence, and assumed the office of spiritual guide at the fashionable girls’ academy of St. Cyr. By 1694 her indiscreet, if not immoral, conduct reawakened suspicion, and the king had her arrested once more. Her admirer, Abbé Fénelon, urged an examination of her writings and participated in the conference held at Issy (1695-96) along with Bishop Bossuet, Bishop De Noailles of Châlons, and Father Tronson, superior of St. Sulpice. Their verdict was a compromise: although thirty-four of Madame de Guyon’s propositions were branded worthy of censure, she was allowed to make a simple retraction of them. On August 23, 1696, she did so, promising to keep silence. She was released from the Bastille in 1703, retired to her son’s home at Blois, and took no further part in public affairs. Fénelon always remained convinced of her good faith, and this and his dubious attachment to the Issy condemnation prolonged the semiquietist controversies.

Clash of personalities. Jacques Bossuet (1627-1704) was the darling of the court. Possessed of a brilliant intellect, vigorous rhetorical powers, precise theological training, he was an imperious and inflexible champion of Catholic truth as he saw it—though he usually saw it more in accord with the Grand Monarch than with Christ’s Vicar. He had been resolute against Leibniz’s would-be syncretism and all Jansenist wiles, but had played a sorry role in the Gallican Crisis. As the dauphin’s tutor, he belonged to a different generation than Fénelon, tutor to the dauphin’s son. Bishop of Meaux since 1681, Bossuet was a trusted royal advisor on ecclesiastical affairs. Distrusting Fénelon’s adhesion to Issy, he submitted to him the manuscript of his forthcoming treatise, Instructions sur les Etats d’Oraison, which tore the new teachings to bits with cold theological logic.

François Fénelon (1651-1715) was rather a man of the heart than of logic. Pious, sensitive, even sentimental, his ardent temperament induced him to sympathize with the poor and oppressed. Now he felt that Madame de Guyon was being victimized. He not only failed to approve of Bossuet’s work, but beat him to the press with a book of his own: Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure. This professed to establish: (1) that all interior ways lead to pure love; (2) that the trials of this life are designed to purify this love; (3) that contemplation is the exercise of pure love; and (4) that the unitive and passive life is an habitual and pure state of love. While this presented a lofty ideal, it was misleading doctrine to preach to ordinary souls whom Fénelon had guided as archbishop of Cambrai since 1695. His book appeared in February, 1697, a month before Bossuet’s own work.

Royal prosecution. The duc de Beauvilliers in Cambrai sent copies of the Maxims to Bossuet and the king. Bossuet subsequently reduced Fénelon’s principles to the following consequences:

(1) The soul in the habitual state of pure love loses all desire for salvation;

(2) it becomes indifferent to perfection;

(3) it loses appreciation of Christ;

(4) it can sacrifice to God its eternal bliss.

Bossuet then denounced Fénelon ^{[p. 320]} to the king, and Louis XIV “exiled” Fénelon perpetually from Versailles —to residence in his own diocese. With royal backing, Bossuet also denounced Fénelon to the Holy See in July, 1697—though Fénelon to escape Bossuet’s ruthless pursuit had already submitted his own treatise to Rome. Pending Roman decision, the principals engaged in literary controversy reflecting their divergent personalities. When Innocent XII demurred at condemning the good bishop of Cambrai by name, Bossuet advised the king to send Rome the following ultimatum, delivered by the bishop’s nephew, Abbé Bossuet: “If His Holiness prolongs this affair by cautious delays, he [Louis advised by Bossuet] would know what to do”; and he hoped that His Holiness would not force him to such disagreeable extremities.

Papal condemnation. On March 12, 1699, in the brief, Cum Alias, Innocent XII condemned twenty-three propositions drawn from the Maximes of Fénelon. Following Poulain’s summary, we may say that Fénelon’s false principles are two: exaggerated awaiting of the divine action; and exaggerated ideas of “pure love,” disinterested even to the willing of salvation. Love should be exclusive rather than predominant.¹⁷

“ Poulain, op. cit., p. 498.

Humble submission. This condemnation was handed to Archbishop Fénelon as he entered the pulpit on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1699. After reading it, he announced its contents to his people, together with his profession of complete submission. He confirmed this oral recantation in a pastoral letter of April 9, in which he declared: “We adhere to this Brief, both in regard to the text of the book, and in regard to the twenty-three propositions, simply, absolutely, and without a shadow of restriction.” The Holy See, which had labored for years to induce the Jansenists to acknowledge as much, never required anything further of Fénelon.

Télémaque. In his banishment from Versailles, Archbishop Fénelon composed his Télémaque, a description of an Utopian state in which the Bourbon monarchy was satirized under the guise of fictitious characters, subtly but not legally identifiable with the king and his minions. It is not surprising that Fénelon was later hailed by the Philosophes and French Revolutionaries as one of themselves. Though he may have shared some of their political objections to absolute monarchy, Fénelon’s sincere Christianity is never in question. And the Grand Monarch and his successors would have done well to heed some of the archbishop’s recommendations on behalf of the downtrodden peasants.^{[p. 321]}

51. JANSENIST REVIVAL

Abel de Ste.-Marthe (1620-71), superior of the French Oratory, is a link between the Jansenism of Arnauld and that of Quesnel. An antiquarian, Ste.-Marthe had become an ardent advocate of Arnauld’s supposed revival of primitive discipline. Though exiled for his obstinacy by the archbishop of Paris, Ste.-Marthe left a pernicious influence upon some of his subjects.

Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719) was one of these. Joining the Oratory in 1657, he devoted himself from 1662 to commentaries on the Gospels. The first fruits of his labors appeared in 1671 in the Réflexions Morales sur le Nouveau Testament. This work was deemed inoffensive enough to receive the imprimatur of Bishop Vialart of Châlons-sur-Marne. Quesnel subsequently came under the sway of Ste.-Marthe and of Arnauld himself. In 1693 he published a revised edition of the Ré flexions which embodied Jansenist teachings. Though the work had been substantially altered, it continued to bear the usurped imprimatur of Bishop Vialart who had died in 1680. Through his writings Quesnel eventually came to be recognized as Arnauld’s successor in leadership of the Jansenists. When some question was raised at the Sorbonne, Quesnel in 1695 secured from Bishop Vialart’s successor, Louis de Noailles, a letter recommending the book to the laity. By this rash and perhaps routine approbation, de Noailles took the first step toward becoming the central figure of the new phase of Jansenism. As for Quesnel himself, he took care to reside at Brussels from 1685. Though Philip V of Spain had him imprisoned in 1703, Quesnel succeeded in escaping to Holland where he remained the Jansenist literary oracle until his death in December of 1719.

Quesnelism was not essentially different from either Baianism or Jansenism. This is evident from some of the propositions which were subsequently singled out for papal condemnation: “2) The grace of Jesus Christ, the efficacious principle of all good, is necessary for any good work whatsoever; without it not only is nothing done, but nothing can be done.... 10) Grace is the operation of the omnipotent hand of God, which nothing can hinder or retard. . . . 16) There is no attraction which does not yield to the attraction of grace, because nothing resists the Omnipotent. . . . 30) All those whom God wishes to save through Christ are infallibly saved. . . . 39) The will without prevenient grace has no light save to go wrong, no zeal but to hasten to destruction, no strength but to wound itself; it is capable of all evil, and incapable of any good” (Denzinger 1349 ff.). ^{[p. 322]}

Louis de Noailles (1651-1729), who became the focal point of the Quesnelist controversy, was a man of moral life and considerable administrative ability, but he was weak and hesitant, sensitive about his reputation and prerogative. Shortly after his approval of Quesnel’s Réflexions in 1695, he was named by the king to the archiepiscopal see of Paris. Jansenists now sought to secure the renewed approbation of the leading French prelate for a third edition of Quesnel’s work which was to appear in 1699. Somewhat warier, the archbishop consulted Bossuet. But the latter’s criticism of the Réflexions was so scathing that de Noailles considered it a pointed rebuke to his own previous approbation. He compromised by permitting the new edition to be published without his imprimatur. People now began to ask whether they ought to believe the bishop of Châlons or the archbishop of Paris in regard to the Réflexions. News of this theological wavering evidently did not reach Rome before 1700, when Innocent XII named de Noailles cardinal.

A case of conscience, presented for academic solution to the Sorbonne in 1701, reopened the Jansenist disputes. It was asked whether a penitent might receive absolution if he maintained “respectful silence” regarding the papal condemnation of the Five Propositions of Jansen. In July, 1701, forty doctors of the Sorbonne recommended leniency, but were at once denounced on all sides. When the solution was brought to the attention of Pope Clement XI (1700-1721), he not only rejected the decision of the benevolent forty, but entirely repudiated the attitude of “respectful silence” in Vineam Domini, July 16, 1705. Quesnel’s work had been also under the scrutiny of the Roman curia for some time, and in 1708 the Pope also proscribed the Réflexions as “containing propositions already condemned and as manifestly savoring of the Jansenist heresy.” Cardinal de Noailles, still hesitant about reversing his ambiguous stand, found placards announcing the papal verdict on the doors of his residence. Fancying this to be the work of the seminarian nephews of his rivals, the bishops of Luçon and of LaRochelle, the cardinal expelled the nephews and denounced their uncles as themselves Jansenists. As for his own position, de Noailles pleaded that Quesnelism had not yet been explicitly condemned.

Unigenitus Dei Filius, issued by Clement XI on September 8, 1713, settled all reasonable doubts as to papal disapproval. Therein 101 Quesnelian propositions were pronounced: “false, captious, evil-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, pernicious, rash, injurious to the Church and her usages, extravagant for secular powers as well as for the Church, seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspect and redolent ^{[p. 323]} of heresy, favorable to heresy and to schism, erroneous, bordering on heresy and often condemned, heretical and reviving various heresies.” The Holy See, weary of interminable Jansenist quibbling, had indeed given its “last word” on the subject, sufficient for all men of good will.

The cardinal’s dilemma. De Noailles had received more than his answer, but still was unwilling to admit that he had made a mistake. But the king, freed from his preoccupation with the War of Spanish Succession, was again intent on suppressing Jansenism. He insisted upon formal acceptance of Unigenitus by the French hierarchy. The cardinal feared to lose royal favor if he refused, or to lose face if he recanted. He compromised once more by issuing a pastoral in September, 1713, in which, while condemning the Réflexions, he endeavored to justify his previous approbation. Yet when in January, 1714, the Assembly of the French Clergy agreed to enforce the Unigenitus, the cardinal pleaded the need of yet further elucidation and directed the Sorbonne to defer its approbation. Now the university followed the king, who, disgusted with De Noailles, banished him from Versailles.

The cardinal’s appeal. But the death of Louis XIV in 1715 brought the free-thinking duke of Orléans to the regency (1715-23) . De Noailles stood high in his favor, and the pliant Sorbonne recanted its approbation of the Unigenitus in January, 1716. Many French bishops thereupon withdrew their subjects from attendance, and the pope suspended its faculty from conferring theological degrees. But on March 5, 1717, the cardinal and four other bishops appealed from “the aforesaid constitution (Unigenitus) to a future general council.” Though these “Appellants” eventually included some twenty bishops and three thousand clerics, the majority of the hierarchy and the clergy, especially the religious, continued to sustain the papal condemnation. After exhausting other means Clement XI excommunicated the Appellants by Pastoralis Officii in 1718. During this schism the cardinal was lecturing the visiting Peter the Great of Russia on the malice of Greek Orthodox schism, and encouraging Dr. Petitpied’s liturgical aberrations which professed to revive the primitive practices.

The cardinal’s submission. But the regent was coming to rely for political advice on Abbé Guillaume Du Bois (1656-1723), who in 1720 became the third of the French cardinal-premiers. Politician and secularist, Du Bois was nonetheless an ardent anti-Jansenist. Under his pressure, the Appellants began to waver and send out feelers for an understanding. But the Holy See refused to accept anything short of full submission. Though the cardinal’s diary reveals that he gradually became convinced of the necessity for this, he delayed his journey to Canossa ^{[p. 324]} until a premonition of death suggested that the time for hesitation was nearing its end. On July 19, 1728, he wrote his submission to Pope Benedict XIII; on October 11, he publicly retracted his errors and accepted the Unigenitus; on May 3, 1729, he was dead. Only four of the episcopal Appellants survived him, and in the same year the Sorbonne expelled the Quesnelians and reaccepted the Unigenitus. Though a number of the Appellants lived on till death in sullen semi-retirement, for practical purposes Jansenism among the clergy neared its end, for religious and secular superiors now began to take rigorous measures to stamp it out in seminaries and communities.

St. Medard Cemetery became the scene of Jansenism’s last hysterical stand. Here had been interred in 1727 the Jansenist deacon, François de Paris, whose sanctity was vouched for by the fact that he had abstained from Communion for two years.

SOON afterwards Jansenists began to claim miracles at his tomb, and many devotees, especially women, went into ecstasies and violent convulsions during which they denounced the Holy See and all foes of Jansenism.

By 1731 the manifestations had become notorious. Archbishop de Ventimille of Paris (1729-46) examined several cases and pronounced them inauthentic; subsequently various individuals who had been involved admitted fraud, though some diabolical intervention need not be excluded. When the royal authorities closed the cemetery in 1732 to prevent indecent antics, parlement, partly from sheer antagonism to the crown, tried to take up a defense of the Jansenist cause. In the long run, the pseudo-miracles quite discredited the Jansenists with the laity.

(2) CONFESSIONAL CERTIFICATES

Enforcement of “Unigenitus” by the hierarchy led various bishops to withdraw the faculties from suspected clerics, and there were confessors who denied the sacraments to suspicious penitents. From 1731 parlement repeatedly accepted appeals from Jansenists against Catholic clerics accused of not rendering them their “legal” rights to ecclesiastical services. One of the most famous cases occurred when Archbishop de Beaumont of Paris (1746-81) denied absolution to all penitents who refused to accept the papal document, and decreed that they were not to be admitted to Viaticum unless they produced a “certificate of confession” from a priest in good standing. A test case came up in 1752 when the Oratorian Le Mère was reported to have been refused Viaticum by Père Bouettin. Upon appeal, the parlement of Paris ordered the archbishop to rescind his directive. When he refused to do so, parlement confiscated his property and even had him banished for a time from Paris until the “absolute monarch,” King Louis XV, finally was able to overrule parlement and restore the archbishop (1757) .

Papal decision had meanwhile been requested regarding lawfulness of the episcopal regulations of the treatment of penitents. In 1756 Pope Benedict XIV gave prudent instructions. While upholding the bishops’ denial of the sacraments to all public and notorious rebels against Unigenitus, he ordered that the “certificates of confession” be dispensed with as a means to this enforcement. After some further controversy, Louis XV forced parlement to register the papal document and thus in 1757 the Jansenist controversy ended in France. But Jansenism left these subterranean rumblings: laxity in the reception of the sacraments, hostility to the Jesuits, and lurking antagonism toward “throne and altar.”

c051_2c_schismatic_jansenism

(1) UTRECHT SCHISM

Jansenist refugees from royal prosecution in France had repeatedly received asylum in Protestant Holland. Here they were successful in attracting the indulgent sympathy of the Catholic vicars-apostolic, Neercassel (1663-86) and Peter Codde (1686-1702) . The latter was finally deposed by Clement XI in 1702, but continued to claim jurisdiction until his death in 1710 at Rome. This pretense was encouraged by his Jansenist vicars-general in the Netherlands, who refused to recognize Codde’s Catholic successors, and obtained ordination for their clergy from the French Appellants.

Formal schism began in 1723 when seven Jansenist clerics constituted themselves into the “Chapter of Utrecht” and elected their vicarcapitular, Cornelius Steenhoven, as “Archbishop of Utrecht.” They prevailed upon a suspended French bishop, Varlet, formerly of New Orleans and missioned to Persia, to consecrate Steenhoven. Both bishops were then excommunicated by Rome.

(2) JANSENIST SURVIVAL

Though Steenhoven died in 1725 shortly after the formal rupture with the Holy See, the Utrecht schism continued under his successor, Barcham Vuytiers, with the protection of the Dutch government. In time two suffragan sees were erected by the Jansenists at Haarlem and Deventer. Their bishops continued to profess allegiance to the Holy See and notified Rome of their election—to be promptly excommunicated and suspended. After 1757, however, Jansenism declined in the Netherlands as well as in France, and by 1789 there were but thirty priests and ten thousand lay members of the Utrecht schism. The movement had never been strong outside these areas, though Jansenist errors played a part ^{[p. 326]} in the schismatic Synod of Pistoia in Tuscany (1786) under Grand Duke Leopold and Scipio Ricci. This, as will be noted later, proved a fiasco so far as the bulk of the clergy and people were concerned.

The Utrecht schism did receive a new lease on life after 1870 with the defection of Dr. Doellinger’s German “Old Catholics” from the decisions of the Vatican Council. The “Old Catholics” accepted orders from Utrecht and the combined movement reached a zenith of some one hundred thousand adherents during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Since that time, however, it has declined in comparative importance, although the Jansenist prelate of Utrecht is accorded a sort of honorary primacy since 1889 over the various autonomous “Old Catholic” bodies in different national jurisdictions.

St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval Scholastics had worked theology into a synthesis harmonizing faith and reason. This included both dogmatic and speculative moral theology so that until modern times what is now called moral theology was treated within this framework. But aside from its speculative aspect, pastoral and practical moral theology had as yet received no explicit formulation of principles, although both the Fathers and the Scholastics had discussed individual cases.

St. Alphonsus Liguori took the lead during the eighteenth century in this formulation, so that he has been accorded a primacy in moral theology analogous to that tendered St. Thomas in speculative theology. In some way this synthesis of Catholic Moral represented harmony between objective norms of law and subjective principles of conscience. For just as in the thirteenth century an erroneous philosophy threatened to undermine dogma, so during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Cartesian subjectivism menaced any moral theology founded on objective standards. Controversies arose between traditional theologians and others influenced more or less unconsciously by the “Enlightenment.”

(2) PRESENTATION OF PROBABILISM

Probabilism, though it had served as an implicit principle for the solution of moral cases by the Fathers and Scholastics, had not been explicitly formulated prior to the sixteenth century.

Bartolomé Medina (1527-81), Dominican professor at Salamanca, performed this service about 1572 in a commentary on St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica. He wrote: “It seems to me that if an opinion is ^{[p. 327]} probable, it may be followed, even though the opposite opinion is more probable” (I—II, xix, 6) . He then went on to define a probable opinion as one “which is held by wise men and is supported by first-class arguments.” Medina’s opinion provoked little opposition at the time, for it did not contradict Catholic practice.

Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), the great Molinist luminary, confirmed this position with his argument against the obligation of a doubtful law: “When there is a really probable argument against the existence of some obligation, the law which enjoins the said obligation is not sufficiently promulgated. Now it is a universally accepted principle that a law obliges only after it has been sufficiently promulgated.”

(1) LAXISM

Origin. The temptation existed for theologians to adopt Medina’s principle without the safeguard of his definition of a prudently probable opinion. The result was Laxism, which by its false claim to the name of Probabilism brought that system into disrepute for a time. Laxism, if carried to its final consequences, would have exchanged objective morality for sectarian and rationalist subjectivism. The true Laxists were Bresser, Tamburini, Amico, and Viva. Certain theologians have been called Laxists, but though they did occasionally defend rash and tenuously probable opinions which merited theological censure, they were not Laxists by principle. Such were Juan Sanchez, Leander, Bauny, Escobar, Moya, Diana, and Caramuel.

Condemnation. It was Moya’s fanatical defense of the Jesuits, censured by the Sorbonne in February, 1665, which may have provoked the condemnation of forty-five Laxist propositions by Pope Alexander VII in approving decrees of the Holy Office of September 24, 1665, and March 18, 1666. It is Viva who is chiefly meant in the rejection by Innocent XI of Laxism as a principle: “1) It is not illicit in conferring the sacraments to follow a probable opinion of the validity of the sacrament to the disregard of a safer one, unless law, custom, or the grave danger of inflicting injury forbids this. . . . 2) In general, we always act prudently when we do anything relying on intrinsic or extrinsic probability, no matter how light it may be, provided that it does not go beyond the limits of probability.” These were included with the sixty-five laxist propositions condemned on March 2, 1679. They were not true probabilist opinions, but laxist distortions.

(2) TUTIORISM

Origin. Meanwhile Jansenists were going to the opposite extreme. The Augustinus had declared that “probability is the fruit of a Pelagian ^{[p. 328]} philosophy, and can only undermine the foundations of Christian morality, just as the many subtleties of the Scholastics drove out the grace of Jesus Christ.” Jansenist self-questioning went on to demand absolute certainty for the performance of moral acts; a view in conformity with the Jansenist admission that God could lay impossible precepts upon an entirely vitiated human nature. Port Royal put such theories into practice, while one Sinnichius of Louvain (d. 1666) formulated them into the system of Absolute Tutiorism, with the assistance of Pierre Nicole.

Condemnation. This system also fell under papal censure, for in 1690 Alexander VIII in condemning thirty-one Jansenist propositions, also repudiated the basis of Absolute Tutiorism: “It is not licit to follow an opinion which is the most probable among probable opinions.” Tutiorists thereafter accepted a most probable opinion as the limit of their indulgence. This Mitigated Tutiorism, though not explicitly condemned, logically falls under the preceding censure. It continued to flourish at Louvain among the theologians, Van Opstraet, Daelman, Dens, and others to the end of the eighteenth century.

(1) VOGUE OF PROBABILIORISM

Origin. Though the extremes of moral systems had been rejected by papal authority, there remained ample ground for dispute. Must the opinion favoring liberty against law be more probable, equally probable, or simply probable? So bold had been some of the Laxists, and so wide the permeation of an unconscious Jansenist rigorism, that many theologians believed that it was necessary to put a halt to anything savoring of benevolence. Consequently Probabiliorism was born, or if one prefers, was revived from a possible basis in the works of Albertus Magnus. Its immediate origin may be traced to an instruction of Alexander VII in 1656 to the general chapter of the Dominicans, urging them to combat Laxism by some safe moral guide. The Dominicans went even beyond the papal suggestion. Almost to a man, they began to advocate Probabiliorism, despite a few defections to Probabilism.

Development. The Jesuits, on the other hand, had adopted in dogmatic theology the philosophical basis of simultaneous concurrence which gave more play to the human will. Their position had been formulated at the time of the Lutheran denial of free will and of Calvinist absolute predestination and reprobation, so that Molinism tended to lean over backwards in trying to attribute the maximum of activity to the human free will. As long as these two heresies remained threatening, and after the rise of Jansenist rigorism, the Jesuits’ Molinist system seemed better adapted to apologetical purposes than Dominican Thomist ^{[p. 329]} premotion. But in remaining strongly attached to Probabilism, the Jesuits seemed to verge on that Laxism rampant amid the breakdown of morality following the sectarian revolts and the demoralizing Religious Wars. Jansenists, as has been seen, were not slow to bring the charge of Laxism against their Jesuit opponents. Thus the Probabilists found themselves in a position for the time being unpopular, while the Probabiliorists were generally regarded as affording more assurance of security. But it must be repeated that these are but generalizations, for members of each Order were found in both systems. Indeed, toward the end of the seventeenth century the Jesuit general, Father Gonzalez, strove to introduce Probabiliorism among his subjects, and repeatedly besought several popes to issue an explicit condemnation of Probabilism. The Roman Pontiffs, however, maintained the same calm neutrality between the two moral systems and their sponsors as they had already shown during the heated Thomist-Molinist controversy about the dogma of grace. The Holy See was content to permit liberty of discussion within limits which did not contradict the deposit of faith.

(2) PROBABILIST REVIVAL

St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) . It seems providential, then, that the greatest of moral theologians came from neither of the contending religious orders. The founder of the Redemptorists had wide experience of life. He had been trained in civil law, had been a missionary preacher, and had founded a religious congregation. From 1762 to 1775 he was bishop of St. Agatha in Italy. He had been victimized by political intrigues and tried by physical ailments and cruel calumnies. But he had displayed throughout a life of ninety years an heroic virtue vindicated by his canonization within fifty years of his death.

Moral principles. Despite his numerous apostolic duties, the saint’s vow never to waste time prompted him to find opportunity for study and writing. He had been educated in the prevailing probabiliorist principles, but his pastoral experience had revealed to him many difficulties in their application. When he was past fifty years of age, he set out to discover a more workable principle. From 1748 to 1779 he published eight editions of his now classic Theologia Moralis. These represent his conscientious endeavor to attain accuracy, and manifest many shades of his altering opinions. Hence, Probabiliorists, Probabilists, and Aequi-Probabilists can all claim him for their own at various stages of his works. But it is fairly well agreed that during his prime he was definitely a Probabilist. For with his defense of “lex dubia non obligat,” he definitely left the probabiliorist camp. In 1749 he declared that: “Even in the presence of a more probable opinion, it is permissible to follow a probable opinion, if this rests on a serious reason or authority.” But ^{[p. 330]} with St. Alphonsus the idea that law remained in possession until dethroned came to have great weight. Thus, in 1755 he added a qualification to his foregoing principle, “provided that the difference of probability is not enormous between the two opinions.” There is here a tendency toward a balance or compensation between law and liberty which became accentuated in 1767 when he allowed dissent from the law only when the conflicting opinions were “almost equally probable.” This was virtually the basis of the Aequi-Probabilism to which he adhered in later life. But even his view, “when a less sage opinion is equally or almost equally probable, one may licitly follow it,” was sufficient to tip the scales against Probabiliorism. Finally, in his practical solutions of cases, the practical differences between Probabilism and Aequi-Probabilism became less rigid. Whether St. Alphonsus was a Probabilist or an Aequi-Probabilist, he certainly deserted Probabiliorism.

(3) VICTORY OF BENIGN PRINCIPLES

Reversal of trend. The response of the Sacred Penitentiary (1831) commending St. Alphonsus’s principles as generically safe, and his proclamation as doctor of the Church (1871) gave his moral theology pre-eminent place. Hence, the popularity of Probabiliorism began to wane, though this legitimate opinion has never lacked defenders. It is not too much to suppose, moreover, that the Latitudinarianism introduced by the philosophers and the French Revolution made anything savoring of Rigorism apologetically inexpedient, while Probabilism or AequiProbabilism commended themselves as affording the utmost in legitimate concession to the spirit of “Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité.” As Christian moralists united against materialism and atheism, rigid partisanship broke down and basic agreement was reached, spiced by a healthy difference of view on minor points.

53. SECTARIAN PIETISM

Legacy of revolution. By 1700 the several Protestant sects had found their “better informed popes”: some in the will of the absolute monarchs as in Continental Erastianism; some in the majority vote of an aristocratic-bourgeois oligarchy, as in British Nonconformity. Originally both the oracles of “divine right” and vox populi were supposedly from God. Then came authority unashamedly of man, when the eighteenth century proclaimed the new autonomy of subjective reason whose natural powers might question supernatural revelation. Fundamental attachment to the letter of the Bible only provoked latitudinarian attempts at compromise and gave rise to endless and hopeless doctrinal ^{[p. 331]} differences. Against these disputes and against the cold intellectualism of speculative reason, arose the pietist movement within Protestantism. In desperate reaction against a truncated or distorted dogma, Pietists asserted the warm promptings of the heart, and the religious guidance, if such it might be called, of fervent emotion. Unlike contemporary Catholic revivalists, Sts. Paul of the Cross and Leonard of Port Maurice, Protestant enthusiasts found little intellectual restraint. Some struck the. chilling doctrine of predestinarianism and evaporated; others came into contact with faith without works and withered away. Some, like Boehme and Law, took refuge in an uncensored Quietism. But the good sense of Wesley blended some of the sounder elements of Fundamentalism and Pietism into an evangelical “Methodism” which achieved considerable success in Anglo-Saxon lands.

Search for unity. In this chaotic condition, it is not surprising that some of the Protestant rebels against a rebellion should attempt to promote reunion with the Catholic Church. One congenial base of operations was Brunswick-Hanover, which had kept up a tradition of free religious discussion. Here Jesuits effected many individual conversions, including Duke John Frederick of the ruling dynasty. Gerard van der Meulen, Protestant abbot of Lockum, opened discussions with the Catholic Bishop Cristoforo di Spinola. Later the scope of the inquiry was broadened by the appearance of Leibniz on the Protestant side, and of Bossuet on the Catholic. But a series of polemical letters failed to reach a satisfactory common ground. A decisive obstacle, however, may have been political. Duke Ernest August and his heirs aspired to ascend the British throne, which parliament had denied to any Catholic claimant. As this glittering prospect came nearer, the Hanoverian court and its theologians seemed to lose interest in reunion with the Catholic Church.

(2) LUTHERAN DIVISIONS

Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) even during Luther’s lifetime had perceived the fatal consequences of Luther’s teaching of faith alone without good works. Melanchthon became head of a faction which after Luther’s death boldly affirmed the Catholic teaching on good works. Nikolaus Amsdorf (1483-1565) upheld the original Lutheran view and a bitter controversy ensued concerning the part played by the human will in the work of salvation. Melanchthon, moreover, had from the first been dubious about Luther’s impanation, and gradually adopted Calvin’s sacramental symbolism, thus forming a Crypto-Calvinist faction within the Lutheran ranks. Andreas Osiander also attacked Luther’s theory of imputed justice and strove to supplant it with an intrinsic and effective justice. ^{[p. 332]}

Breakdown of accord. In 1577 Melanchthon’s disciples were persuaded to sign a Lutheran “Formula of Concord.” It took them several years to discover that this cautiously worded document virtually rejected their position; whereupon dissension broke out anew. When the majority of Lutheran princes adopted the Formula, the dissenters were reduced to Saxony. Here, too, the Fundamentalists tried to introduce rigid Lutheranism in 1591. Despite a temporary external triumph, Fundamentalists saw Georg Calixt (d. 1656) revive Melanchthon’s ideas during the seventeenth century, and all attempts to preserve rigid doctrinal unity broke down.

(3) CALVINIST DIVISION

Jacob Härmensen (1560-1609), a Dutch Calvinist of Leyden, usually known by his Latinized name of Arminius, attacked the basic Calvinist tenet, absolute predestinarianism. Hitherto the rigid Calvinist clerical discipline had saved the sect from the dissensions disrupting the Lutherans, while the need of Dutch Protestant unity against Spain during the wars for independence had thrust theological disputes into the background. But early in the seventeenth century in the course of a dispute with Gomar, Arminius asserted that the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination was incompatible with divine justice and wisdom, and proposed to substitute a sort of Molinistic prevision of man’s merits. After the truce of 1609 with Spain, strife between the Arminians and Rigid Calvinists became intense. Stadholder Maurice of Orange sided with the Gomarists and took violent measures against the Arminians, and the Ecumenical Calvinist Synod of Dordrectht in 1619 anathematized them. Large numbers of the dissidents went to England where the religious climate was more congenial. Those who remained in Holland secured greater toleration after Maurice’s death in 1625. Though Calvinists on the Continent generally sustained the synodal ban, the influence of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Arminian-Humanist authority on international law; revealed widespread dissent within Calvinist ranks.

(1) PRIMITIVE PIETISM

Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), a zealous Alsatian, became im-hued with the mysticism of Johann Arndt (1555-1621), whose work Wahren Christenthum, became a Protestant Imitation of Christ, from which with other Catholic sources it was largely drawn. Reverencing Luther as a “Father of the Church,” but refraining from violent anti-Catholic polemics, Arndt had stressed prayer, practical love of the neighbor, and external worship. Spener, as chief Lutheran minister Frankfort-am-Main, carried out Arndt’s ideas. When these were reprobated ^{[p. 333]} by the Fundamentalists, he fled to Dresden where his denunciation of the vices of Elector John George III of Saxony led to his dismissal. Later as provost of Berlin, Spener became disgusted with the sterility and dreariness of Lutheranism, and discouraged at the ineffectiveness of his preaching in effecting moral reform. After renewed study of the medieval mystic, Johann Tauler, he reached the conclusion that “religion is wholly an affair of the heart, and that the preacher, in order to exercise his ministry properly, must bring home to the minds and hearts of his hearers the convictions and feelings with which he himself is carried away.”

Pietist organization. Personal experience of religion was, then, Spener’s cure, and in pursuance of this idea he began from 1675 to organize “collegia pietatis” to strengthen faith by means of homilies on the Scriptures. These “pietist” gatherings soon began to evince an ostentatious and singular piety which gained them their name. Despite noteworthy extravagances, they often manifested a better moral character than the Fundamentalists. Among them was displayed the phenomena of modern evangelical revivals, complete, it is true, with predictions of the end of the world. Pietists were soon excluded from Wittenberg and other Protestant universities. Thereafter their ministers were drawn from and catered to the lower classes and tended to a more informal organization. But the original Pietists after Spener’s death separated into three schools: Collenbrusch subordinated dogma to piety; Kohlbrügge stifled piety with Lutheran dogma; and Eller turned visionary.

(2) COMMUNAL PIETISM

Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf (1700-60) became convinced that the pietist movement could not flourish in the face of governmental opposition. He resolved to settle a model community on his own estates at Hutberg, renamed Herrnhut: “Watch Hill of the Lord.” His disciples, officially the “United Brethren,” were popularly known as “Herrnhuters.” Their piety concentrated on the “bloody death of Christ on the Cross”; the topic of sermons, prayers, and hymns was expressed in emotional, fanciful, and often extravagant language. They were ruled by the usual Protestant overseers, elders, and deacons, and were disciplined or even expelled if incorrigible. Their primitive spirit was later weakened by economic enterprise, though they were more successful than most “model communities.”

(3) THE QUAKERS

George Fox (1624-91) initiated a pietist camp of the more radical type. This Leicestershire cobbler professed to believe that religious consciousness was something so forceful that it would make one physically ^{[p. 334]} tremble or “quake.” Any man seized with a fit of “quaking” at a religious meeting was therefore presumed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Quakers neglected baptism for their “inner light,” and regarded ecclesiastical discipline and even Scripture as of no account in comparison with this spontaneous outpouring of the heart. Their consciences were very tender: taking of oaths, payment of taxes, games of chance, music, theater-going, novels, dancing, titles of honor, and law suits were all sinful. The Quakers were at first exhibitionists: once Fox was moved to walk barefoot through town shouting: “Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield.” Regarding the Commonwealth of the 1650’s as Utopia, some Quakers brought the sect into ridicule.

Conservatism tended to gain possession of the movement after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Pacifism and an eccentric but relatively inoffensive piety, survived. Emigration to Pennsylvania secured a new Utopia for many. In England Quakers were long looked upon with almost the same abhorrence as “papists,” with whom, as companions in distress, they were usually friendly. Eventually, “what survived . . . was a religious coterie rather than a sect; a band of well-to-do reformers, distinguished by their wide influence and active benevolence, but numbering only a handful of adherents among the multitudes.” H One of their greatest successes was their leadership of the anti-slave trade agitation throughout the British dominions.

¹e Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 168.

 (4) SWEDENBORGIANS

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) professed to have revelations about a “New Jerusalem” to be inaugurated in 1770. He rejected original sin, angels, devils, and considered satisfaction through Christ useless. For a time deluded dilettantes in Scandinavia and elsewhere accepted his apocalyptic visions, but it can be doubted whether his type of Pietism had any good effects. Though he practically supplanted Christianity by a new religion, Swedenborg was not formally condemned by the established Swedish Lutheranism. The Swedenborgian “New Church” was akin to a gnostic inner circle within Protestantism. Branches of the sect spread to England and the United States.

(5) THE METHODISTS

John Wesley (1703-91), aided by his brother Charles (1707-88), founded the most enduring and influential of the pietist sects. He was the son of pious and moderately well-to-do Anglican parents who provided him with a good education at Oxford. Here remnants of Scholastic philosophy enabled him to steer clear of many of the vagaries of other Pietists. He also employed the Catholic practices of examination of ^{[p. 335]} conscience, spiritual reading, and mortification. In 1728 he received Anglican orders and devoted himself especially to relieving the needs of the neglected poorer classes. This quest for a time took him to the debtor colonists of Georgia and to Zinzendorf’s Herrnhuters. Besides accepting some pietists ideas, he adopted the Philippist and Arminian teachings on good works and grace, which were more in accord with Catholic than with Protestant fundamentalist tenets.

Evangelization in England became Wesley’s chief enterprise. He resolved to preach his personal doctrinal synthesis in sermons which would methodically combine sound logic and enthusiasm: “Methodism.” He concentrated upon the poor in the fields, villages, and rising mining communities. In his effort to reach them, he adopted open air “hedge” preaching, and is reported to have delivered 40,000 sermons during his 225,000 miles of journeying throughout the British Isles. While the Methodists had no wish to separate from the Anglican Establishment, their practices had excited the disapproval of some of the Anglican prelates. Wesley took what proved a decisive step in 1784 when he assumed to himself episcopal functions to “ordain” his disciples. Though he claimed to have lived until death in the Anglican Church, his Methodists had already become a group apart, and a formal separation came in 1795. The Anglican hierarchy remained divided, some prelates accepting him, others repudiating him. Methodists continued to increase in numbers, both in Great Britain and the United States, and came to exercise a strong and widespread influence on Anglo-Saxon religious and cultural life. In time, Methodism produced a profound self-questioning within the Anglican Establishment, and this contributed to the rise of the Oxford Movement which led many to Rome.

44. The “Enlightenment”

45. The Age of Louis XIV (1660-1715)

46. The Papacy and Gallicanism (1655-1721)

47. Gallican France (1615-1715)

48. Jansenist Origins (1638-43)

49. Jansenist Tergiversation (1643-69)

50. Quietist Reaction (1675-99)

51. Jansenist Revival (1695-1729)

52. Catholic Moral Synthesis

53. Sectarian Pietism

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