04027 - Papal Bulls Against The Jansenists

§27. The Papal Bulls against the Jansenists, 1653 and 1713.

Cornelius Jansenius (Episcopi Iprensis, 1585-1638): Augustinus, seu doctrina Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanitate, ægritudine, et medicina, adv. Pelagianos et Massilienses, Lovan. 1640, 3 vols.; Paris, 1641; Rouen, 1643 (with aSynopsis vitæ Jansenii). Prohibited, together with the Jesuit antitheses, by Pope Urban VIII., 1642.

St. Cyran (Du Vergier , d. 1643): Aurelius, 1633: again, Paris, 1646. A companion to Jansen’s ’Augustinus’, and called after the other name of the great Bishop of Hippo.

Anthony Arnauld (Doctor of the Sorbonne, d. at Brussels, 1694): Œuvres, Paris, 1775-81, 49 vols. in 44. Letters, sermons, ascetic treatises, controversial books against Jesuits (Maimbourg, Annat), Protestants (Jurieu, Aubertin), and philosophers (Descartes, Malebranche).

M. Leydecker (Ref. Prof. at Utrecht, d. 1721): Historia Jansenismi, Utr. 1695.

Gerberon : Histoire générale de Jansenisme, Amst. 1700.

Lucchesini : Hist. polem. Jansenismi, Rome, 1711, 3 vols.

Fontaine : Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire de Port-Royal (Utrecht), 1738, 2 vols.

Collectio nova actorum Constit.Unigenitus, ed. R. J. Dubois , Lugd. 1725.

Dom. de Colonia : Diction, des livres Jansenistes, Lyons, 1732, 4 vols.

H. Reuchlin : Geschichte von Port-Royal, Hamb. 1839-44, 2 vols. Comp. his monograph on Pascal, and his art. Jansen and Jansenismus in Herzog’s Encyklop. 2d ed. Vol. VI. pp. 481-493.

C. A. Sainte-Beuve : Port-Royal, Paris, 1840-42, 2 vols.

Abbé Guettée : Jansénisme et Jésuitisme, un examen des accusations de Jans., etc., Paris, 1857. Compare his Histoire de l’église de France, composé sur les documents originaux et authentiques, Paris, 1847-56, 12 vols. Placed on the index of prohibited books, 1852. The author has since passed from the Roman to the Greek Church.

W. Henley Jervis : The Gallican Church: A History of the Church of France from 1516 to the Revolution, Lond. 1872, 2 vols. On Jansenism, see Vol. 1. chaps. xi.-xiv., and Vol. II. chaps. v., vi., and viii.

Frances Martin : Anglique Arnauld, Abbess of Port-Royal, London, 1873.

(The controversial literature on Jansenism in the National Library at Paris amounts to more than three thousand volumes.) On the Jansenists, or Old Catholics, in Holland.

Dupac de Bellegarde : H. de l’église metropol. d’Utrecht, Utr. 1784, 3d ed. 1852.

Walch : Neueste Rel. Geschichte, Vol. VI. pp. 82 sqq.

Theol. Quartalschrift , Tüb. 1826.

Augusti : Das Erzbisthum Utrecht, Bonn, 1838.

S. P. Tregelles : The Jansenists: their Rise, Persecutions by the Jesuits, and existing Remnant, London, 1851 (with portraits of Jansenius, St. Cyran, and the Mère Angelique).

J. M. Neale : A History of the so-called Jansenist Church of Holland, etc., London, 1857. Neale visited the Old Catholics in Holland in 1851, and predicted for them happier days.

Fr. Nippold : ’Die altkatholische Kirche des Erzbisthums Utrecht.Geschichtl. Parallele zur altkathol. Gemeindebildung in Deutschland, Heidelberg, 1872. The remaining doctrinal decrees of the Roman Church relate to internal controversies among different schools of Roman Catholics.

Jansenism , so called after Cornelius Jansenius (or Jansen), Bishop of Ypres, and supported by the genius, learning, and devout piety of some of the noblest minds of France, as St. Cyran, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Tillemont, the Mother Angelique Arnauld, and other nuns of the once celebrated Cistercian convent Port-Royal des Champs (a few miles from Versailles), was an earnest attempt at a conservative doctrinal and disciplinary reformation in the Roman Church by reviving the Augustinian views of sin and grace, against the semi-Pelagian doctrines and practices of Jesuitism, and made a near approach to evangelical Protestantism, though remaining sincerely Roman Catholic in its churchly, sacerdotal, and sacramental spirit, and legalistic, ascetic piety. It was most violently opposed and almost totally suppressed by the combined power of Church and State in France, which in return reaped the Revolution. It called forth two Papal condemnations, with which we are here concerned.

I. The bull ’Cum Occasione ’ of Innocent X. (who personally knew and cared nothing about theology), A.D. 1653. It is purely negative, and condemns the following five propositions from a posthumous work of Jansenius, entitled Augustinus . [SeeNote #199]

(1.) The fulfillment of some precepts of God is impossible even to just men according to their present ability (secundum præsentes quas habent vires ), and the grace is also wanting to them by which they could be observed (deest illis gratia, qua possibilia fiant ).

(2.) Interior grace is never resisted in the state of fallen nature.

(3.) For merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature man need not be exempt from all necessity, but only from coercion or constraint (Ad merendum et demerendum in statu naturæ lapsæ, non requiritur in homine libertas a necessitate, sed sufficit libertas a coactione -that is, from violence and natural necessity).

(4.) The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of prevenient interior grace for every action, even for the beginning of faith; but they were heretical (in eo erant hæretici ) in believing this grace to be such as could be resisted, or obeyed by the human will (eam gratiam talem esse, cui posset humana voluntas resistere, vel obtemperare ).

(5.) It is semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died and shed his blood wholly (altogether) for all men. [SeeNote #200] The Jansenists maintained that these propositions were not taught by Jansenius, at least not in the sense in which they were condemned; that this was a historical question of fact (question de fait ), not a dogmatic question of right (droit ); and, while conceding to the Pope the right to condemn heretical propositions, they denied his infallibility in deciding a question of fact, about which he might be misinformed, ignorant, prejudiced, or taken by surprise. But Pope Alexander VII., in a bull of 1665, commanded all the Jansenists to subscribe a formula of submission to the bull of Innocent X., with the declaration that the five propositions were taught in the book of Cornelius Jansen in the sense in which they were condemned by the previous Pope. [SeeNote #201] The Jansenists, including the nuns of Port-Royal, refused to submit. Many fled to the Netherlands. The Pope abolished their famous convent (1709), the building was destroyed by order of Louis XIV. (1710), even the corpses of the illustrious Tillemonts, Arnaulds, Nicoles, De Sacys, and others, were disinterred with gross brutality (1711), and the church itself was demolished (1713). No wonder that such barbarous tyranny and cruelty, perpetrated in the holy name of the Church of Christ, bred a generation of skeptics and infidels, who at last banished the Church and religion itself from the territory of France. Cardinal Noailles, who from weakness had lent his high authority to these outrages, made afterwards, in bitter repentance, a pilgrimage to the ruins of Port-Royal, and, looking over the desecrated burial-ground, he exclaimed: ’Oh! all these dismantled stones will rise up against me at the day of judgment! Oh! how shall I ever bear the vast, the heavy load!’ [SeeNote #202]

II. The more important bull ’Unigenitus (Dei Filius )’, issued by Pope Clement XI., Sept., 1713, condemns one hundred and one sentences of the Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel , (d. 1719), extracted from his moral reflections on the New Testament. [SeeNote #203] This bull is likewise negative, but commits the Church of Rome still more strongly than the former against evangelical doctrines. Several of the passages selected are found almost literally in Augustine and St. Paul; they assert the total depravity of human nature, the loss of liberty, the renewing power of the free grace of God in Christ, the right and duty of all Christians to read the Bible. The following are the most important of these propositions: [SeeNote #204]

(2.) Jesu Christi gratia, principium efficax boni cujuscunque generis, necessaria est ad omne opus bonum; absque illa non solum nihil fit, sed nec fieri potest.

(3.) In vanum, Domine, præcipis, si tu ipse non das, quod præcipis.(Compare the similar sentence of Augustine, which was so offensive to Pelagius:Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis.) (4.) Ita, Domine; omnia possibilia sunt ei, cui omnia possibilia facis, eadem operando in illo.

(10.) Gratia est operatio manus omnipotentis Dei, quam nihil impedire potest aut retardare.

(11.) Gratia non est aliud quam voluntas omnipotentis Dei jubentis et facientis, quod jubet.

(13.) Quando Deus vult animam salvam facere, et eam tangit interiori gratiæ suæ manu, nulla voluntas humana ei resistit.

(18.) Semen verbi, quod manus Dei irrigat, semper affert fructum suum.

(21.) Gratia Jesu Christi est gratia fortis, potens, suprema, invincibilis, utpote quæ est operatio voluntatis omnipotentis, sequela et imitatio operationis Dei incarnantis et resuscitantis Filium suum.

(27.) Fides est prima gratia et fons omnium aliarum. (2 Peter 1:3.) (28.) Prima gratia, quam Deus concedit peccatori, est peccatorum remissio.

(29.) Extra ecclesiam nulla conceditur gratia. [SeeNote #205] (30.) Omnes, quos Deus vult salvare per Christum, salvantur infallibiliter.

(38.) Peccator non est liber, nisi ad malum, sine gratia Liberatoris.

(39.) Voluntas, quam gratia non prævenit, nihil habet luminis, nisi ad aberrandum, ardoris, nisi ad se præcipitandum, virium nisi ad se vulnerandum; est capax omnis mali et incapax ad omne bonum.

(40.) Sine gratia nihil amare possumus, nisi ad nostram condemnationem.

(58.) Nec Deus est nec religio, ubi non est charitas. (1 John 4:8.) (59.) Oratio impiorum est novum peccatum; et quod Deus illis concedit, est novum in eos judicium.

(69.) Fides, usus, augmentum et præmium fidei, totum est donum puræ liberalitatis Dei.

(72.) Nota ecclesiæ Christianæ est, quod sit catholica, comprehendens et omnes angelos cœli, et omnes electos et justos terræ et omnium sæculorum.

(75.) Ecclesia est unus solus homo compositus ex pluribus membris, quorum Christus est caput, vita, subsistentia et persona; unus solus Christus compositus ex pluribus sanctis, quorum est Sanctificator.

(76.) Nihil spatiosius Ecclesia Dei; quia omnes electi et justi omnium seculorum illam componunt (Ephesians 2:22).

(77.) Qui non ducit vitam dignam filio Dei et membro Christi, cessat interius habere Deum pro Patre et Christum pro capite.

(79.) Utile et necessarum est omni tempore, omni loco, et omni personarum generi, studere el cognoscere spiritum, pietatem et mysteria sacræ Scripturæ.

(80.) Lectio sacræ Scripturæ est pro omnibus. (John 5:39; Acts 17:11.) (81.) Obscuritas sancti verbi Dei non est laicis ratio dispensandi se ipsos ab ejus lectione.

(82.) Dies Dominicus a Christianis debet sanctificari lectionibus pietatis et super omnia sanctarum Scripturarum. Damnosum est, velle Christianum ab hac lectione retrahere.

(84.) Abripere e Christianorum manibus novum Testamentum seu eis illud clausum tenere auferendo eis modum istud intelligendi, est illis Christi os obturare.

(85.) Interdicere Christianis lectionem sacræ Scripturæ, præsertim Evangelii, est interdicere usum luminis filiis lucis et facere, ut patiantur speciem quamdam excommunicationis.

(92.) Pati potius in pace excommunicationem et anathema injustum, quam prodere veritatem, est imitari sanctum Paulum; tantum abest, ut sit erigere se contra auctoritatem aut scindere unitatem.

(100.) Tempus deplorabile, quo creditur honorari Deus persequendo veritatem ejusque discipulos! . . .Frequenter credimus sacrificare Deo impium, et sacrificamus diabolo Dei servum.

These and similar propositions, some of them one-sided and exaggerated, many of them clearly patristic and biblical, are indiscriminately condemned by the bull Unigenitus, as ’false, captious, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, rash, injurious, seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspected of heresy and savoring of heresy itself, near akin to heresy, several times condemned, and manifestly renewing various heresies, particularly those which are contained in the infamous propositions of Jansenius!’ A large portion of the French clergy, headed by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Noailles, who repented of his part in the destruction of Port-Royal, protested against the bull, and appealed from the Pope to a future council. But ’when Rome has spoken, the cause is finished.’ The bull Unigenitus was repeatedly confirmed by the same Clement XI., A.D. 1718 (in the bull ’Pastoralis Officii ’), Innocent XIII., 1722, Benedict XIII. and a Roman Synod, 1725, Benedict XIV., 1756; it was accepted by the Gallican clergy 1730, and, as Denzinger says, by ’the whole Catholic world’ (’ab universo mundo catholico ’). Even the miracles on the grave of a Jansenist saint (Franois Paris, who died 1727, after the severest self-denial, with a protest against the bull Unigenitus in his hand), could not save Jansenism from destruction in France. [SeeNote #206] But a remnant fled to the more liberal soil of Protestant Holland, and was there preserved as a perpetual testimony against Jesuitism, and, as it now seems, for an important mission in connection with the Old Catholic protest against the decisions of the Vatican Council.