Jansenism

General Information

The theological position known as Jansenism was probably the single most divisive issue within the Roman Catholic church between the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. The doctrine took its name from the Flemish theologian and bishop of Ypres, Cornelius Jansen (1585 - 1638), who summarized his ideas on Grace and free will in his posthumously published treatise, the Augustinus (1640). Relying on the strictest possible interpretation of one aspect of Saint Augustine's philosophy, Jansen argued in favor of absolute Predestination, in which humans are perceived as incapable of doing good without God's unsolicited grace and only a chosen few are believed to receive Salvation. In this respect, the doctrine closely resembled Calvinism, although the Jansenists always vigorously proclaimed their attachment to Roman Catholicism.

As Jansenism was elaborated in France, especially by Jansen's friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, the abbot of Saint - Cyran, and by the latter's protege Antoine Arnauld, it also entailed an austere form of piety and a rigorously puritanical morality. From the 1640s, the spiritual center of Jansenism became the convent of Port - Royal - des - Champs (near Paris) where numerous nobles, parlementarians, and intellectuals favorable to the movement made religious retreats.

Almost from the beginning, the Jansenists aroused the hostility both of the Jesuits, who opposed the theology and moral teachings of the group, and of the French royal government, who associated the Jansenists with the opposition "Devout party" and with the rebellions of the Fronde (1648 - 53). As early as 1653, five propositions supposedly found in the Jansenist position were condemned by Pope Innocent X. In 1713, under intense pressure from King Louis XIV, Pope Clement XI issued the bull Unigenitus condemning 101 propositions in a treatise by another French Jansenist, Pasquier Quesnel (1634 - 1719). The French king closed Port - Royal - des - Champs in 1709 and had it razed to the ground in 1710.

During the 18th century, Jansenism acquired a much broader following among the lower French clergy and spread to other areas of Europe, notably Spain and Italy. The Jansenists increasingly allied themselves with the Gallicans in the French Parlements in an effort to force the calling of an ecclesiastical council to reconsider the pope's condemnation (Gallicanism). The greatest triumph of the Jansenists came in the 1760s when the parlements forced the suppression of the Jesuits in France. But thereafter the movement declined in importance. Only a small group of Jansenists survived into the 19th century.

T Tackett

Bibliography
N J Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism (1936); R Clark, Strangers and Sojourners at Port Royal (1972); A Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth - Century France (1977); D Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France (1975).

Cornelius Otto Jansen

(1585 - 1638). Flemish Catholic theologian. Jansen was born at Accoi, near Leerdam in southern Holland, and educated first at Louvain and then at Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1617. Shortly thereafter he was appointed director of the Saint Pulcherie Seminary in Louvain and professor of exegesis at the university. In 1630 he was named Regius Professor of Sacred Scripture, and in 1635 was University Rector. Next year he was consecrated Bishop of Ypres, where he died of the plague in 1638.

After Jansen's death some of the commentaries which he had written for his academic lectures on biblical books were published. More significant, however, was his major treatise on Augustine. Jansen had been interested in Augustine's religious thought since student days. In the early 1620s, coming to believe that Augustine's theology of efficacious predestinating grace was being threatened by the humanitarian tendencies of the Jesuit theologians of the Counter - Reformation, he embarked on an intensive study of Augustine's works, particularly his anti - Pelagian writings. The massive treatise which resulted from this work, entitled Augustinus, was published posthumously in 1640. Its three parts presented Augustine's theology of grace in a systematic and continuous synthesis. Part I described the Pelagian and semi - Pelagian heresies which Augustine sought to refute; Part II expounded Augustine's interpretation of man's original state of innocence and his subsequent fall; and Part III set forth his doctrine of salvation through God's redeeming grace in Jesus Christ.

The publication of this work touched off a heated controversy in Roman Catholic circles in European countries, particularly in France. Jansen's theology encountered strong opposition both from the ecclesiastical establishment and from the civil power. In 1635 five propositions, allegedly derived from Jansen, were condemned by Pope Innocent X in his bull Cum Occasione. These propositions, related to predestination, maintained that without God's enabling grace man cannot fulfill the divine commands and that the operation of God's grace, bestowed on his elect, is irresistible. Despite such official opposition, however, Jansenism, because it sought to defend traditional orthodoxy, to deepen personal piety, and to foster ascetic rigor in moral conduct, enlisted the support of certain notabilities. One of them was Blaise Pascal, whose Povincial Letters is one of the classic documents of this controversy. Other supporters included the theologian and philosopher Antoine Arnauld and his sister Jacqueline, abbess of the convent of Port Royal, which became an important center of Jansenist influence.

But in 1709 Port Royal was closed down and its occupants dispersed; and in 1713 Pope Clement XI, in his bull Unigenitus, officially condemned certain propositions attributed to Pasquier Quesnel, a leading Jansenist theologian. Though the movement in France was thus seriously damaged, in 1723 the Jansenists of the Netherlands nominated a schismatic archbishop of Utrecht as their ecclesiastical leader, and this group has maintained its existence down to the present day, becoming in the later nineteenth century part of the Old Catholic Church.

N V Hope

Bibliography
N Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism; R A Knox, Enthusiasm; E Romanes, The Story of Port Royal; A Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth Century France.