Jansenists
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a party in the Roman Catholic Church, which arose about the middle of the 17th century and was attacked by the Jesuits as heretics. The Jansenist propositions were condemned by Pope Innocent X. as heretical; but dispute, for this by no means ended the d the Jansenists contended that they were condemned in a sense different from that which they were intended to bear by the author. An appeal was again made to the Pope, and in 1656 a new bull was issued by Alexander VII., declaring that Jansenius meant the propositions in the sense condemned by the previous bull. A formulary was now drawn up, conformable to the new bull, and all ecclesiastical persons were required to sign it, on pain of being suspended from their offices. Most of them ret refused, and a schism was thus occasioned in the French Church, which lasted for some time. The Port Royalists, Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Persault, were conspicuous for their defense of Jansenism, and carried the war into the enemy's country, attacking the Jesuits notably in the "Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Clement IX. attempted to compromise matters by asking merely a rejection of the five propothe sitions, without ascribing them to Jan- Innocent them to senius. The liberal policy of XI. tended still more to restore peace. restore In 1698, however, the smoldering fire moldering was again stirred up into a fierce flame fierce by the appearance of Father Quesnel's ther Que "Moral Observations on the New Testament." Quesnel was banished from the country; and in 1709 Louis XIV. suppressed and destroyed the monastery of the Port Royal. In 1713 Clement XI. issued his famous bull "Unigenitus," condemning 101 propositions of Quesnel's work. The strife continued for some time after this, and many of the Jansenists emigrated to Holland. A number of
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The history Collier's set out in 1921 still stands: the five propositions, the bull Unigenitus of 1713, the razing of Port-Royal, the flight to Holland. What Collier's leaves hanging "a number of..." is that the Dutch refuge became the Church of Utrecht, which survives today as the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, in communion with other Old Catholics since the Union of Utrecht of 1889 and now numbering only a few thousand members. The old quarrel has cooled to the point that a Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected pope as Francis in 2013, while Pascal's "Provincial Letters" are read as French prose classics rather than as ammunition. Modern historians also treat Jansenism less as a purely doctrinal squabble than as a political and social movement bound up with French parlements and resistance to royal absolutism.
Written for this edition, 2026.