SAINT-CYRAN, Abbé de (1581–1643), Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, one of the authors of Jansenism. A protégé of Justus Lipsius at the Jesuit College at Louvain, and then a fellow-student at Paris (1604–10) and Bayonne (1611–17) with C. Jansen, with whom he made a close friendship, he was attracted to St Augustine’s writings, the theology of which he preferred to the prevailing scholasticism. In 1617 he settled for a time at Poitiers, where he was secretary to the Bishop, de la Rocheposay. In 1620 he was created commendatory Abbot of Saint-Cyran and thenceforward lived mainly in Paris, seeking out all the chief personalities of the time (Vincent de Paul, J.-J. Olier, G. Tarisse, P. de Bérulle).

     He made it his object to reform Catholicism on Augustinian lines, largely in the hope of defeating Protestantism with its own weapons. From 1623 he became closely associated with the influential Arnauld family and with Port-Royal, and from 1633 as spiritual counsellor of the convent exercised an immense religious influence. Between 1617 and 1635 he was the recipient of a long series of letters from Jansen (pub. Louvain, 1654). His power led Richelieu to consider him a dangerous character, and from 1638 until 1643 after Richelieu’s death he was incarcerated in the fortress of Vincennes, where he wrote his Lettres chrétiennes et spirituelles (pub. 1645). He was held in great veneration by later Jansenists, who looked up to him as a martyr. His writings include Somme des fautes … du P. Garasse (1626), an attack on the Jesuits; Petrus Aurelius de Hierarchia Ecclesiastica (1631), a plea for the rights of the episcopate against the Papacy, partly based on M. Antonio de Dominis’s De Republica Christiana; and Théologie familière (1642).

C. Lancelot, Mémoires touchant la vie de M. de S. Cyran (2 vols., Cologne, 1738). J. Lafferière, Étude sur Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran (Louvain, 1912). J. Orcibal, Les Origines du jansénisme (Bibliothèque de la RHE, 16), 2 and 3, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 4, Lettres inédites de Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran, ed. A. Barnes, and 5, La Spiritualité de Saint-Cyran avec ses écrits de piété inédits (1947–62). J. Orcibal in DHGE 14 (1960), cols. 1216–41, s.v. ‘Duvergier de Hauranne (Jean-Ambroise)’; B. Chédozeau in Dict. Sp. 14 (1990), cols. 140–50, s.v. See also bibl. to jansenism and port-royal.

While it was torn by the religious wars, France paid scant attention to the controversy concerning divine grace. With peace restored, the univer­sities, above all the Sorbonne, regained their former luster; the most famous professors lectured with great clarity concerning grace, openly adhered to Thomism and revered Augustine as their teacher; Molinism was either completely or almost unknown to them. From the beginning of his career, Bérulle appeared dominated by Augustinianism, but not exclusively because in 1612 he accepted Guillaume Gibieuf into the Oratory, who at that time was a confirmed Molinist and only under Bérulle’s influence turned to Augustinianism. Duvergier de Hauranne, formerly aJesuit pupil, too, did not at first oppose the new ideas. During the busy years he spent with Jansen at his estate Camp-de-Prats near Bayonne (1611-16) he did not seem to have been occupied with the issue of grace in any intensive way. But just about the time when Jansen in Louvain discovered Augustinianism, a similar range of perception opened up to the future abbot of Saint-Cyran under the influence of Bérulle. Yet the strictly intellectual mode of Augustinianism, which Jansson had disclosed to his pupil Jansen, was not identical to the Au­gustinianism provided to Saint-Cyran by Bérulle. The latter was not very much interested in abstracting a coherent theory of grace and pre­destination from the works of the bishop of Hippo. Involved in the practice of Christian spirituality, he sought to derive from Augustine a method that would make the souls realize their total dependence on God and their personal wretchedness. Saint-Cyran moved along the same lines. Yet, disregarding the difference in their individual outlook, Jansen and Saint-Cyran united in a common defense of Augustinianism. In the autumn of 1621 Saint-Cyran spent some time with Jansen in Louvain. At this meeting they decided to enlist political support in order to effect a breakthrough of Augustinianism against the Jesuits. After their meeting they started cultivating the proper connections. With this in mind, Jansen helped introduce Bérulle’s Oratory into Flanders during the following years. But these political initiatives were unsuccesful: given Richelieu’s attitude, the two friends realized that they could not hope for anything from him. On 10 May 1623, they met again in Péronne and decided upon a “change of plans,” namely to start waging the battle in the universities and on the intellectual level. After 1621 they had made use of a secret code, a common practice at a time when the postal service was still very uncertain. This enabled them to carry on a regular and sufficiently secure correspondence until 1635, when it was interrupted by the war. Until this time, Saint-Cyran was thus in a position to follow the progress of this great treatise, to give data and advice to his friend and even to send him a first draft of the “Liber proemialis.” Unfortunately he was unable to lend him his support in editing the third volume, the most important of all, whose content he did not learn until after it was published. Only Jansen’s letters were preserved, but they show clearly that he and Saint-Cyran developed in two different intellectual worlds and that Augus­tinianism never meant the same to the two of them.

As mentioned already, Jansen’s pamphlet against Richelieu, Mars Gallicus, was a sore point with the cardinal, yet Richelieu did not draw upon this pamphlet for his main argument against Saint-Cyran, who was at the pinnacle of his fame by 1634. Generally considered the indisputa­ble head of the parti dévot, he maintained excellent connections through his friendship with the elite of French Catholicism. But by then another event involving him was unsettling his life. Since 1620 he had been a close friend of Robert Arnauld d’Andilly, a diplomat, active at the court. The eldest child of a family whose nobility derived from being in the King’s service, he was a brother of the famous Mother Angélique, abbess and reformer of the Cistercian abbey of Port-Royal, which had formerly been located in the Chevreuse Valley and in 1625 transferred to Paris. Saint-Cyran had only had occasional slight connections with Mother Angélique and her sister Mother Agnès. Meanwhile Mother Angélique had left Port-Royal for a few years. Together with the bishop of Langres, Sébastien Zamet, she had founded a new order, the Institut du Saint-Sacrement. [See L. Prunel, S. Zamet, sa vie et ses oeuvres, les origines du jansénisme (Paris 1912). 8 See L. Cognet, “Le Chapelet secret du Saint Sacrement,” Chroniques de Port Royal (1951), 3-14.] But Zamet, a strange and uneven personality, soon incurred the enmity especially of the archbishop of Sens, Octave de Bellegarde. The latter, intending to damage the Institut, provided him­self with a devotional text by Mother Agnès entitled Chapelet secret du Saint-Sacrement. s He represented it as the spiritual charter of the new foundation and managed to have it critically examined by eight profes­sors of the Sorbonne on 18 June 1633. Upon Zamet’s request, Saint-Cyran agreed to defend the text, in which he recognized Bérulle’s influence. He won out totally and incurred Mother Angélique’s deep gratitude. This established a closer relationship between them in the course of which Mother Angélique came to admire Saint-Cyran not only as a pure intellectual, but also as a great spiritual leader.

Yet in this area Saint-Cyran had some very personal convictions in­spired in part by Francis de Sales and Bérulle. He rejected the idea that Christian life could alternate constantly between a state of grace and a state of sin. So he endeavored to lead his charges to a truly new life by a method designed to trigger a psychological shock. [p. 29] It consisted of going through the intermediate stage of penitence, yet during this period the penitent would deny himself Communion and delay receiving absolution. Only after this delay, generally lasting a few weeks, did he receive absolution and Communion. Following this he had to live in as much seclusion as possible in order to preserve the grace he had received. This method had been worked out prior to 1627, but until that time Saint-Cyran had had little opportunity to apply it. But he made the mistake of telling the nuns of Port-Royal and Saint-Sacrement about it. They were filled with enthusiasm for it, indeed all of them wanted to set out on this journey to self-renewal. But they also talked about it outside their monastic environs without considering that they were exposing Saint-Cyran to accusations of indulging in dangerous innovations and were providing Richelieu with weapons against him. Plagued by severe scruples, Mother Angélique remained without Holy Communion from Easter to Ascension Day 1635. That she did so in spite of reprimands by Saint-Cyran did not lessen his responsibility for it in the eyes of the public. But soon this affair concerning the recluses of Port-Royal took on a completely different significance. Mother Angélique had a nephew, Antoine Lemaistre, a brilliant young lawyer in whom high hopes were placed for a future in the Paris court of law. In 1634, following a sentimental disappointment, he wanted to commit suicide, but was stopped by Saint-Cyran. The sudden death of one of his aunts on 24 August 1637 brought about an enthusiastic wish for conversion. After a long probationary period, Saint-Cyran, on about 15 December 1637, permitted him to write an open letter to Chancellor Séguier in which he announced his decision henceforth to live in seclusion and penitence, but without wanting to become a priest or joining an order. It was common knowledge that Saint-Cyran was his spiritual guide and so he was accused of wanting to establish a new order, especially since other pupils of his began to join Lemaistre in his seclusion. Richelieu took this to be a budding resistance and decided to intervene severely. But be­fore he did, he tried once again—and failed—to buy the benevolence of his erstwhile friend by offering him a bishopric in February 1637. In March 1638 Claude Séguenot, a member of the Oratory, published a translation of Saint Augustine’s De Sancta Virginitate together with a commentary in which he violently attacked the religious orders and espoused a rigid uncompromising Augustinianism. Journalists in the pay of Richelieu designated Saint-Cyran as the actual author of the book, since his connection with the Oratory was well known. The arrest of Séguenot on 7 May was followed on 14 May by the incarceration of Saint-Cyran at the palace of Vincennes.

Public opinion initially considered Saint-Cyran guilty of aggravated heresy and Richelieu intended to compromise him by putting him on trial. [p. 30] But when his papers were scrutinized and his friends and pupils interrogated, the accused turned out to be completely innocent. For a while, Richelieu hoped to use the issue of attritionism against him since Saint-Cyran had always defended the need in the Sacrament of Penance for a contritio based on the love of God. Richelieu held this concept to be in contradiction to the decisions of the Council of Trent. But on 14 May 1640 Saint-Cyran, for whom this problem was actually of little practical importance, announced that he was prepared to draft a letter relatively favorable to attritionism. By doing so, he deprived Richelieu of his main charge. Nevertheless Saint-Cyran remained in custody without a trial. His only hope was that the unhealthy conditions of his jail at Vincennes would soon destroy his fragile health. By now the Catholic circles among the public knew what was going on and public opinion turned against the cardinal. Saint-Cyran, on the other hand, having acquired an aura of martyrdom was able to initiate from his jail a voluminous correspondence which influenced an ever more significant group of pupils. Seriously ill and threatened by blindness he was re­peatedly near death. Yet he was destined to outlive Richelieu, who passed away on 4 November 1642. Saint-Cyran was able to leave his jail on 6 February 1643. But he remained in ill health and died of apoplexy on 11 October, without having resumed his activities. Yet he left a number of pupils who continued his work.

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