1) Tensions within Gallicanism. Defence of the privileges of the Gallican Church had always been seen by the Parlements as fundamental to their Catholic standpoint: thus, for example, the Concordat of Bologna of 1516 (the agreement between Francis I and the Pope over the nature of French ecclesiastical appointments) had been opposed by the Parlement of Paris at first, on the grounds that it was an intrusion by the Pope into the internal affairs of the French Catholic Church. The victory of Henri IV over the Catholic League may be considered a victory of a Gallican coalition (certain bishops and nobles, the Parlements, and so on) against the Ultramontane Catholic League and its supporters. The term Gallicanism derives from the expression ‘liberties of the Gallican [i.e. French] Church’; Ultramontanism is the name given to that tendency in Roman Catholicism which favours the centralization of the authority and influence in the Papal Curia (the Papacy and the magisterium) as opposed to national or diocesan independence and is contrasted with Gallicanism. But within Gallicanism there were divisions. Pierre Pithou (1539-96), a Gallican theologian, published the leading principles in his treatise Les libertés de l’Église gallicane (1594), a justification for the coronation of Henri IV that year at Chartres before he had received Papal absolution ratifying his conversion to Catholicism. Édmond Richer (1559-1631), who was elected syndic of the Sorbonne in 1608 published his Treatise concerning ecclesiastical and political power in 1611. While emphasising that the only infallible authority in the Church was a council, Richer argued that what gave councils authority was election by the entire body of the priesthood. The basic function of the Church was the cure of souls (i.e. the responsiblities of baptisms, marriages and deaths and general welfare of parishoners), and the parish priests who fulfilled their responsibility, and exercised these extensive spiritual responsibilities should have the decisive voice in its affairs. They should meet regularly in synods and elect their bishops; the episcopate and even the Pope were mere executives were delegated power. These views were influential in the diocese of Paris during the Jansenist agitation following the arrest of Cardinal de Retz in 1652: Golden, The Godly Rebellion… (1981), pp. 73-5. These Richerist ideas were unacceptable to the episcopate, whose powers had been elevated by the decisions of the Council of Trent. Moreover, the government had no intention of accepting this view: Richer was deposed as syndic of the Sorbonne on government orders in 1612. Richer, however, remained influential there until his death in 1631 and blamed his deposition less on the resentment of the episcopate than on machinations of the Congregation of the Oratory which had been established by Pierre de Bérulle in 1611: the Oratorians, who lived in endowed communities without cure of souls and took no vows. Their commitment was to serve the laity through administering the sacraments, improving the training of priests in seminaries, and educating the young. The idea was to exercise an influence comparable to that of the Jesuits, but without vows, through the exercise of priestly powers alone and while acknowledging the full authority of the bishop (which the regular orders and Jesuits did not). By the time of Bérulle’s death in 1629, there were 73 Oratorian communities throughout France, 4 seminaries and 17 colleges. The Jesuits were alarmed at the educational success of the movement.

2. Gallicanism and royal authority. Pierre de Marca (1594-1662), archbishop of Toulouse from 1652 and Archbishop of Paris in 1662, a leading campaigner against the Jansenists, published a treatise in 1641 On the harmony of Priestly and Secular authority (De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii) which was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Papacy the following year. This treatise popularized a theory of Church government which minimized the authority claimed by the Papacy over national churches (‘royal Gallicanism’) and over the individual bishops (‘episcopal Gallicanism’). In 1663, the Sorbonne published a declaration, the substance of which was reaffirmed by the Assembly of the French Clergy in 1682 in the formula known as the Four Gallican Articles. This (1) denied that the Pope had dominion (puissance) over things temopral and affirmed that kings are not subject to the authority of the Church in temporal and civil matters or to deposition by the ecclesiastical power, and that their subjects could not be dispensed by the Pope from their allegiance [e.g. that the bull issued by Sixtus V excommunicating Henri of Navarre and debarring him from the succession in 1585 was ipso facto illegitimate, although it had been issued because at that moment he was a Protestant]. (2) The decrees of the Council of Constance (1414-18) were upheld, and thus the authority of the General Councils over the Pope. (3) The ancient liberties of the Gallican Church were inviolable. (4) Pending the consent of the Church (i.e. until a General Council of the Church was convened), the judgement of the Pope was not considered irreformable. These arguments had a long history and were implicit in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) which had been superseded by the Concordat of Bologna of 1516 in which the French king’s right of nomination to bishoprics and other high ecclesiastical offices was conceded. The exercise of these rights of nomination is the subject of Bergin’s magisterial study on the making of the French episcopate. But N.B.: although the bishops were appointed by the king, many proved to be Ultramontane in attitude. The Assembly of the Clergy in 1615 accepted the decrees of the Council of Trent en bloc, something to which the government was not prepared to agree. (Such total acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Trent had been a policy of the Catholic League.)

3. ‘Cyranism’ or early French Jansenism to 1643. ‘Cyranism’ is a neologism termed after Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint-Cyran (the abbé de Saint-Cyran, 1581-1643), the French interpreter of the ideas of a fellow graduate at the University of Louvain, Cornelius Jansen(ius) (1585-1638), bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands aftert 1636: the two men had studied together in retreat on Saint-Cyran’s family estates in 1611-14. Jansenius was heavily influenced by the ideas of St Augustine, and from 1621 he intended to write a systematic treatise on him (this work, the Augustinius, was published posthumously in 1640). Jansenius distinguished himself at Louvain as an enemy of the Jesuits, and one who recognized that the Dutch Calvinists ‘follow almost entirely the doctrine of Catholics in the matter of predestination and reprobation’. Saint-Cyran became the spiritual director of the nuns at Port Royal, where Jacqueline Arnauld (better known by her monastic name of Mère Angélique, 1591-1661: she was the fourth child of Antoine Arnauld who had denounced the Jesuits on behalf of the Sorbonne in 1594, which had led to their temporary exclusion from the kingdom) had gained a considerable following because of her austerities: she excluded her family from the precincts on the journée du guichet, 25 September 1609. In Doyle’s expression, the nuns loved Saint-Cyran’s ‘austere and uncompromising spiritual direction, rooted in a sense of bottomless human depravity. Sins could only be forgiven, and grace obtained, if penitents’ love of God made them sincerely contrite. Attrition (penitence owing to mere fear of eternal punishment) was not enough.’ The debate between French Catholics who might be termed ‘laxist’ [ = attritionalist, i.e. who followed the Jesuit arguments] and those French Catholics we might term ‘rigorist’ [ = contritionalist, i.e. who followed the Jansenist argument], arises from basic Christian reflections on the nature of God’s love for mankind and scheme for salvation and the fall of man (cf. Calvin’s ‘double decree of predestination’, not necessarily a Protestant doctrine as Jansenius observed). The dispute between the Jansenist contritionalist viewpoint and the Jesuit attritionalist viewpoint [see appendix] was only ended in 1667 when Pope Alexander VII declared that either opinion could be held without heresy. Port Royal became not merely a place where exacting, all-absorbing spiritual efforts were required; it was also a place of retreat from the world. Antoine Le Maître (1608-58), gave up a promising career in royal service for a life of contemplative solitude at Port Royal in 1637. Even more spectacularly, Angélique’s brother, Robert Arnauld d’Andilly (1589–1674), lived the life of a solitary hermit at Port-Royal after 1645, passing his time in prayer, translation, the writing of Christian poetry and manual work — this after an active career in which he had served as intendant of the army of the Rhine in 1634–5. Cf. Richelieu’s theological position: he had written two treatises which suggest an attritionalist viewpoint (L’Instruction du chrétien and Traité de la perfection du chrétien). Saint-Cyran was arrested on Richelieu’s orders in 1638, the Cardinal and chief minister of the king of France commenting that ‘many misfortunes and disorders would have been remedied if Luther and Calvin had been arrested once they began their dogmatizing’. Apart from this religious motive, Saint-Cyran’s arrest had political overtones. His correspondence with Jansen had become a political liability after the outbreak of Franco-Spanish hostilities in 1635, for Jansen had written a Habsburg propaganda-piece called Mars Gallicus. St. Cyran was not released until 1643, the year of his death. Thereafter, the French government always suspected Jansenists of being potential rebels, and this view was only reinforced by the civil struggles after 1648. The government concluded (erroneously) that ‘the principal instigators of the rebellion in Paris were the persons attached to the view of this Flemish bishop (Jansen), sworn enemy of the (French) monarchy’.

4. Jansenism enlarges its support: Antoine Arnauld as publicist. In his role as confessor, Saint-Cyran had made it clear that the confession would forbid communion, the ultimate sacrament of the Church, until he was satisfied of unfeigned contrition. Angélique’s youngest brother, Antoine Arnauld (1612-94, the so-called ‘great Arnauld’), made his name by publishing a treatise defending Cyranist penitential doctrine: Concerning Frequent Communion (De la fréquente Communion, 1643: Saint-Cyran had checked the proofs of this work) argued that over-familiarity with the Eucharist debased its importance and allowed penitents no time to consider its true significance; he denounced the ‘that deplorable abuse of imperfect confessions, of overhasty absolutions, of vain satisfactions and sacriligous communions’. Arnauld also wrote an Apologia for Jansenius and an attack on Jesuit casuistry, the Moral Theology of the Jesuits. Although the term ‘Jansenist party’ was by this date in general use, Arnauld and his friends used the term ‘friends of the truth’. Moreover, in Doyle’s words ‘they were still more of a family than a party: without the Arnaulds and their extensive network of relatives and intimates, the early history of Jansenism is inconceivable’. Although the Jansenists were cautious during the Fronde not to offend the government (they were certainly not a rebel faction or religious link between the factions: the term ‘Godly Rebellion’ is seriously misleading for the period of the Fronde itself), it is clear that by the early 1650s Jansenism was spreading beyond the Port Royal circle.

5. Papal condemnations and formularies of faith: juristic Gallicanism as a bastion of the Jansenist position. The attitude of the Papacy towards the Jansenist view of grace was consistently hostile. The bull In Eminenti (1643) renewed earlier prohibitions on discussing anything to do with grace. In July 1649, the syndic of the Sorbonne, Nicolas Cornet laid before the Faculty of Theology a series of propositions which, if condemned, would entail a condemnation of Arnauld and his circle (the so-called ‘7 propositions’). The Regent urged the Papacy to condemn these propositions: in 1653 Innocent X did so for five of them in the Bull Cum Occasione. The French bishops asked for a clarification from Rome (were the propositions actually Jansen’s?); the Pope declared in the affirmative and that those who defended Jansenius’s memory risked heresy. In 1655, a group of bishops convened by Mazarin declared that all members of the clergy, both secular and regular, should subscribe to a declaration of faith (or ‘formulary’), abhorring the five propositions, recognizing that they came from Augustinius (1640), and that they represented an incorrect understanding of St Augustine’s thinking. In February 1656, the government obtained a decision from the Sorbonne expelling Arnauld and those who had voted in his favour. But new allies had been found: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote the first of eighteen anonymous Provincial Letters three weeks before the Sorbonne had taken its decision (and in March 1656 his niece was cured of severe eye infection by a touch of Port Royal’s most prized relic, a thorn allegedly from Christ’s crown: the first Jansenist miracle). The Provincial Letters both condemned and ridiculed Jesuit lax moral theology and enjoyed print-runs of more than 6,000. Much of Pascal’s information came from Pierre Nicole (1625-95); he and Arnauld distinguished between what they called the ‘question of law’ (droit), by which they meant whether or not a doctrine was heretical in the view of the church, and the ‘question of fact’ (fait), whether or not the heretical opinion attributed to a certain author was actually expressed in the given book (in this case, in Jansen’s Augustinius). Arnauld and Nicole maintained that the church was infallible in matters of doctrine, but not in matters of fact, where there was liability to human error. This distinction was condemned by Pope Alexander VII in the Bull Ad Sacram, issued in 1656 and which was grudgingly registered by the Parlement of Paris the following year. The short pontificate of Clement IX (1667–9) marked a pause in the Jansenist controversy. A letter of retraction for the Jansenists was written by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole and signed on 10 September 1668. This document maintained that a ‘respectful silence’ was a sufficient response to the formulary. Clement IX accepted the submission of four French bishops accused of Jansenism (28 Sept. 1688): this ushered in the so-called Peace of the Church (1668-79), in reality a pause rather than a settlement of the controversy. Practical difficulties in enforcing conformity: (1) overt opposition. The most important point about Port-Royal des Champs was that it refused collective to subscribe to the formulary in 1664. The hardline archbishop of Paris at the time, Hardouin de Péréfixe then exiled 12 of the nuns, while those who remained at des Champs underwent house arrest and deprivation of the sacraments for four years until February 1669. The repression only ceased when the monastery subscribed to the formulary resulting from the Peace of the Church.; (2) evasion: the distinction between droit et fait was stopped by second formulary; (3) apparent compliance, but in a meaningless form (e.g. compliance to the fourth formulary of 1668).

Attrition The sorrow for sin which proceeds from fear of punishment or a sense of the ugliness of sin. It is contrasted with contrition, which is held to proceed from the love of God. Its value was denied by Martin Luther and upheld by the Council of Trent. According to St Thomas Aquinas and most medieval scholastics and moral theologians, attrition is a sufficient disposition for forgiveness within the sacrament of penance. Some theologians, such as Peter Lombard, however, insisted on the need for perfect contrition. In 1667 Pope Alexander VII terminated this dispute by declaring that either opinion could be held without heresy.

contrition (Latin contritio, ‘a wearing away of something hard’).

Contrition is a form of interior repentance, defined by the Council of Trent as 'sorrow of heart and detestation of sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning in future' (sess. 14, cap. 4). Moral theologians commonly hold that to be real it must have its grounds in the love of God, and hence distinguish it from attrition, an imperfect form of sorrow for sin, inspired by such lower motives as the fear of punishment. The classic utterance of the contrite heart in the OT is the Miserere (Psalm 51). In the Gospels the need for contrition is taught esp. in the Parables of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15: 11-32) and of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk. 18: 9-14).

The first was required in 1654, after the Papal bull Cum occasione of 31 May 1653, which was specifically mentioned. The second was the revised formulary, prepared by Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse before his death in 1662: this made specific mention of both the Papal bull Cum occasione and the bull of Alexander VII of 16 October 1656 (Ad Sacram). The third formulary was that drawn up by Alexander VII to reinforce his bull Regiminis apostolici (15 February 1665). The fourth formulary, that of 1668, which registered the Clementine peace, was signed without difficulty by Choart de Buzenval and the other Jansenist bishops.