THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY
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THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY |
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THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY IN THE XIXth CENTURY I
JANSENISM AND
GALLICANISM
The nineteenth
century rose dark and threatening for the Roman Church. In February 1798, under
the protection of French arms, the inhabitants of Rome had proclaimed the
Republic, and when, in August 1799, Pius VI died at Valence, in French
captivity, eight months passed away before a successor was found, so that at
the change of century the Roman Church was without a head.
Nowhere was the
change of sentiment towards Rome more marked than in France; but in that
country many different circumstances had contributed to loosen the ancient bond
between the head of the Roman Church and the Church of France—the eldest
daughter of Rome.
Louis XIV had been
the defender and support of the Church. It is true that after Mazarin's death
he had not thought it necessary to choose a new Cardinal-Minister, but he had
himself continued the policy of the cardinals. Like another Constantine or
Theodosius, he sought to promote the cause of the Church, and he never renounced
his Jesuit education.
He compelled all
the members of his household to seek their confessors amongst the disciples of
Ignatius Loyola; and both politicians and courtiers found his favor more
easily, if they had entrusted the guidance of their consciences to Jesuits.
Until Madame de Maintenon gained power over him, and thereby acquired un unique influence upon ecclesiastical affairs, all French
sees were filled in his reign according to the suggestion of the Jesuit
confessors.
In all directions,
even in the furthest Missions, the members of the Society of Jesus could count
upon the help of France; and they showed their gratitude towards the great King
who was so favorable to them by spreading his praises and defending his policy;
so that at Rome complaints were made, that the genius of Jesuitism had become
enthusiastic for the destinies of France, but was ill disposed towards the
Pope, because he had condemned so many of the moral propositions of the
Jesuits. But in spite of the guidance of the Jesuit confessors, the new
Constantine betrayed many of the weaknesses which clung to the old; and
Saint-Simon was not the only one who complained that the Court of Louis XIV suait l’hypocrisie.
Fénelon in a courageous
letter told his King that his life had practically removed him “out of the way
of truth and righteousness, and in consequence out of the way of the Gospel”,
and Madame de Maintenon wrote later to the Archbishop of Paris: “Religion is
but little known at Court. People wish to shape it to suit themselves,
instead of directing themselves according to it. They only trouble themselves
about all its external observances, not about the spirit of it. The King will
never fail to keep a station or a fast, but he will not understand that one
ought to humble oneself and to be filled with a true spirit of penitence, and that we must clothe ourselves in sackcloth
and ashes to pray for peace”.
Careful observers
easily saw that the King's zeal for the good of the French Church was not so
much owing to a deeply-rooted conviction of the truth of the Roman Catholic
doctrine, as to the fact that this religion was the King's religion, so that to
diverge from it was to rebel against the King's absolute sovereignty. And even
if Louis XIV did not possess the same unbounded power in the ecclesiastical
realm as in that of the State, Fenelon was undoubtedly right when he asserted
that his King had more power over the Church than the Pope himself. The embassy
at Rome was in the eyes of Louis XIV the most important of all the French
embassies, and the representative of France at the papal Court could always
reckon upon the existence of a French party among the cardinals—les cardinaux de
la faction—who had so great an influence that no one was elected Pope who
would not be a persona grata at
Versailles. Every now and then there was variance between the successors of St
Peter and Louis XIV; but, in spite of all, that King to the last stood to the
whole Roman Catholic world as the shield and protector of the Roman Church; and
when he died Clement XI publicly gave him the testimony that he had been
possessed of all the Catholic virtues.
This favorable
judgment was particularly owing to Louis XIV's “ardent zeal for the faith”. He
had, as Clement XI said, in the course of a few months rid the whole of France
of the false Protestant faith, and had for many years with a strong hand
defended the papal ordinances against Jansenism, and given them effect. The
eventful revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which abolished Protestantism in
the native country of Calvin, was in the eyes of Clement XI a deed of faith
which might cover many sins; and by his combat against Jansenism Louis XIV had
done an equally great service to the Papacy and to Jesuitism.
CORNELIUS JANSEN
AND THE JESUITS
Cornelius Jansen,
a native of the Netherlands, for some time, Professor of Holy Scripture in the
University of Louvain, who died Bishop of Ypres in 1638, had with great
enthusiasm and intrepid perseverance advanced along the way which had been
trodden before him by Michael Bajus.
In opposition to
the Pelagianism—whole or half—of the dominant
theology, he maintained Augustine's doctrine with regard to sin and grace. Ten
times he had read through the many folio volumes which contained the writings
of the African bishop. The treatises against the Pelagians he had labored through as often as thirty times; and in the course of this
profound study of the Augustinian literature, that great Doctor of the Church
had come to be to him an authority incapable of being shaken, like an inspired
evangelist who had done the same for the right recognition of divine grace as
the Evangelist John had done for the recognition of the Divinity of the Word.
In a folio
published two years after his death under the title of Augustinus, he set forth his
views concerning a reformation to be accomplished by reviving the doctrine of
Augustine.
In spite of this
return to Augustine, and in spite of their criticism of the Jesuit theology and
ethics, Cornelius Jansen and St Cyran were anything
but protestant-minded. It was not the evangelical passages in Augustine which
made such an impression upon them. They shared in the fullest measure the
Jesuits’ hatred of Protestantism, and they used their brilliant pens to combat
its adherents. Jansen had even written a pamphlet sharply attacking Richelieu,
because France under his direction had allied itself with the Swedish and German Protestants, and he had a great
reputation in Spain, the mother country of the Counter Reformation. But his Augustinus undeniably contained expressions calculated to cause offence amongst those who
wished to defend the Pope's infallibility.
Cornelius Jansen
was confronted with this difficulty:—in the case of Michael Bajus and his Augustinianism, Rome, which appeared to set the African Doctor so high,
had condemned Augustinian propositions which, so far from being casual
utterances, might be said to form the basis of the whole system of Augustine.
Instead of submitting himself unconditionally to the papal decision on such
points, Jansen expressed the surmise that Rome’s condemnation only sprang from
a love of peace, or that the disapproval on Rome's part only meant that the
assertions of Augustine were inopportune, not that they were false or
heretical. And he himself on these points sided with Augustine against Rome. He
ended his book with a comparison between the semi-Pelagian divines of the old days and his contemporaries, Less, Molina, and Vasquez; and,
as if to protect himself against all contingencies, he finally insisted with
great force that the thoughts which he had worked out were not his own, but
were derived from Augustine.
The Jesuits had
read Cornelius Jansen's book before it appeared. By the help of a printer's man
they had obtained possession of the proof-sheets. As soon as they saw what it
contained, they turned to the papal nuncio and besought him to hinder the
spread of the Jansenist poison, and the book was accordingly at once prohibited
by a decree from the Inquisition. But the Council in Brabant would not submit
to this decree, and not even a papal Bull of 1642, which forbade the book and
referred to the earlier bulls against Michael Bajus,
could reduce the University of Louvain to obedience. Even after the papal Bull
had been acknowledged by King Philip IV in 1651, some of the bishops of the
Netherlands, with the Archbishop of Malines at their head, protested that a
condemnation of Cornelius Jansen's book would be a condemnation of Augustine.
Before the
prelates of the Netherlands were reduced to submit to the Bull of 1642,
accompanied as it was by the King's license, eighty-five French bishops had applied
to Rome to obtain a condemnation of certain specified passages in Jansen's
book. Innocent X, who was Pope at the time, was much more of a jurist than of a
theologian; but as St Peter's successor, he believed himself to be placed under
the direct influence of the Holy Ghost, and on the strength of this he
considered himself qualified to explain all the depths of Scripture and to
solve all scholastic problems. At the outset indeed he had had no particular
desire to meddle with this strife. He excused himself by saying that he was
old, and that he had never studied theology. But after repeated persuasions he
gave way, and in 1653 published a Bull which condemned five propositions in the Augustinus.
With this new
Bull, the battle over Cornelius Jansen’s book became a contest concerning the
limits of the papal infallibility. Jansen's adherents, with Antoine Arnauld at their head, would not deny that the five
condemned propositions were in themselves objectionable, but they affirmed that
the propositions were not found in Jansen in the form which the Pope condemned,
and with regard to this point of fact they would not submit to the papal
authority, but contented themselves with observing a respectful silence. As Arnauld would go no further in the way of submission, he
was ejected from the Sorbonne, and Pope Alexander VII published in 1656 a third
Bull which confirmed the decision of his predecessor. But this Bull made no
more impression upon the Jansenists than the earlier ones, and their views won
more and more adherents. After Arnauld’s ejection
from the Sorbonne, Pascal began the publication of his Provincial Letters, and beyond the borders of the Netherlands and
of France Jansenism made its appearance in Spain and Italy and Austria. Under
Innocent X a doctor from the Sorbonne even dared to defend the heretic of the
Netherlands in the church of St Louis at Rome, until his mouth was stopped by
the Jesuits.
In order to give
universal effect in France to the Bull of 1656 Alexander VII, with the approval
of Louis XIV, composed a formula to be subscribed by all French bishops,
priests, monks, and nuns. By assenting to it, the subscribers submitted to the
decisions of Rome with regard to the five condemned propositions. In order to
get all to subscribe, the Pope was obliged to see many do so with reservations.
But a disagreement between Louis XIV and the Papacy for a time withdrew
attention from Jansenism.
GALLICANISM
Ever since the
days of Hugh Capet, the French bishops had complained of Rome’s encroachments,
and had made much of the comparative independence of the Gallican Church with regard to Rome, in which sentiment they had the sympathies of the
Crown. In the days of Henry IV (1594), when the reaction against the League had
again exalted the Crown, and when the thought of the power and significance of
the State had gained greater distinctness, Pithou had
collected the documents upon which were founded the so-called Gallican rights.
The programme of Gallicanism turned
upon these two chief propositions; that the Kings of France were in secular
matters independent of the Pope; and that the Pope's spiritual authority was
limited by the laws of the Church.
From the first
proposition they concluded that the King, as the born protector of the Church,
had the right of calling together national and provincial Councils in his
dominions, in order with their help to legislate for the Church, and that the
Pope's Bulls could not be published in France without the King's consent.
Gallicanism took a strong
hold, partly because the bishops were indisposed to submit to Rome, and partly
because the sense which the Parliaments entertained of their own independence
was steadily on the increase; and with the national movement in the beginning
of the 17th century the Gallican theory gained still
more adherents. The Gallicans were then called Les Français, Les Bons Français, and if men
were wanted to defend in the schools the ultramontane conception of the rights
of the Popes, they had to be fetched from the Netherlands or from Germany; for
most Frenchmen considered it to be crimen laesae patriae.
The Crown gained
much by the spread of Gallicanism. Gallicanism was to no small degree promoted by legists who
had studied the Roman law and who sought to introduce the conceptions of Roman
law into French territory. Without reserve it allowed to the King divine
authority and made him the equal of the Pope. The Holy Ghost, the Gallican said, chooses the Pope in the Conclave, but He
chooses the King also, and that from his mother's womb. On the strength of his
divine authority the King is lord over the property of the Church, and in this
way he acquires the means to satisfy the nobles, and to keep the third estate
in check. But power brings its duties.
Just as the Roman
Empire from the beginning was tinged with a spiritual character, so the Most
Christian King in France had, according to the theory of the Gallicans, ecclesiastical obligations. He was not only
bound to watch over Church and school, but also to extirpate all heresies.
Therefore the Gallican divines and lawyers found that
it was all as it should be, when Louis XIV got rid of Protestantism out of
France, and Richelieu's alliance with the foreign Protestants roused their
displeasure.
Gallicanism reached its
height under Louis XIV. The Gallican theory
concerning the origin and rights of the Crown gave the basis for his autocracy.
He believed fully in his ecclesiastical mission, but he also took a firm stand
upon the fundamental Gallican propositions. When
Ultramontanism began to raise its head, the Sorbonne fearlessly declared (in
1663) that it was not the doctrine of that renowned faculty that the Pope had
any authority whatever over the Most Christian King in secular concerns, or that
the Pope could take any measures which conflicted with the law of the French
Church. At the same time the Sorbonne repudiated the assertion that the Pope
was above a General Council, or could be infallible without the consent of the
Church. This declaration was confirmed by Louis XIV, and he forbade any other
teaching in his kingdom. Following upon this, the Sorbonne pronounced censure
upon several works of' an ultramontane tendency, and when Alexander VII in a
severe Bull disapproved of the censure, the Parliament of Paris, with the
King's consent, opposed the publication of the papal Bull.
This strife, which
died away in diplomatic negotiations, was only a prelude to a far more serious
conflict between Gallicanism and Ultramontanism.
Louis XIV had for a long time made the religious orders feel his power, without
paying any attention to the complaints of Rome, and he had, without scruple,
laid hands upon the possessions of the Church. The ancient droit de régale allowed the Crown to enjoy the
revenues of a vacant bishopric until the new bishop had registered his oath of
allegiance, and in the meantime to dispose of the livings dependent upon the
vacant see. This right Louis wished to extend to those French provinces where
it had never been recognized.
Innocent XI
endeavored time after time to induce him to refrain from such encroachments,
but in vain. At last he resorted to threats. In a brief of 27th December 1679,
he intimated that he would use all the means which God had placed in his hands.
But these words made no impression upon Louis XIV, who found defenders of Gallicanism even amongst the French Jesuits. His Jesuit
confessors, who had the nomination of the French bishops in their hands, saw in
the extension of the droit de régale an
extension of their own power and of that of their order, which had the special
advantage of putting them in position to prevent the hated Jansenists from
obtaining still more preferments, and accordingly
Jesuits like René Rapin and Louis Maimbourg defended the King's proceedings without scruple.
When the General
of the Jesuits, at the instigation of Innocent XI, summoned Maimbourg and Louis XIV’s confessor, La Chaise, to Rome, the two Jesuits, in spite of the
promise of their order, would not listen to the General's summons. Maimbourg continued to defend Louis XIV so zealously that
the Pope threatened the General of the Jesuits himself with deposition if he
did not expel the daring author from his order, and enjoin penance upon those
who had read his books upon the subject. When this intelligence reached
Versailles, Louis XIV was at first disposed to put difficulties in the way of Maimbourg’s expulsion from the Society of Jesus; but on
closer consideration he acquiesced in Maimbourg’s quitting the order of his own apparent free will, on promise of a pension from
the King.
At that time the
French priesthood was assembled in synod at Paris (1681-1682). The Gallican spirit which prevailed amongst the prelates
present displayed itself forthwith, when the Archbishop of Paris, after the
opening service, said that the assembly had now fulfilled its duties towards
its first religion by celebrating a Mass of the Holy Ghost, but that it
remained to fulfill the duties of the second which consisted in waiting upon
the King.
The assembly
approved of Louis XIV’s extension of the droit de régale, and accepted the four Gallican propositions, which maintained that the secular
power was independent of the spiritual, that a General Council was above the
Pope, that the ancient rules of the Gallican Church
were not to be violated, and that it was a valid affirmation that the Pope's
decrees in matters of faith are only incapable of being reversed when they have
the Church's assent.
This famous Gallican declaration for a while obtained in France the
authority of a religious formula. Louis XIV made it the basis of religious
instruction in all French schools, and required that everyone who wished to
take a degree in divinity or law should take his oath to observe it. The Pope
felt his spiritual authority greatly outraged by the four Gallican propositions, and never since the days of Francis I had the relations between
the papal power and the French King been so strained.
When Louis XIV
went on to fill the French sees with prominent members of this Gallican-minded synod, the patience of Innocent XI gave
way, and he refused to permit the new bishops to receive the canonical
institution, without which they could not perform a bishop's duties. It was in
vain that Louis XIV sought to appease the angry Pope by crowning his
persecutions of the Protestants with the treacherous revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, the token of a complete break with Richelieu's policy, and forming a
challenge to all the Protestant powers of Europe.
Innocent XI told
him that Christ had used a different method of conversion, and that the moment
for such a "mission" seemed unfortunately chosen, when the King
himself was engaged in a violent strife with the Pope. As Louis XIV would not yield,
Innocent at last laid an interdict upon the church of St Louis at Rome, where
the French embassy used to hear Mass. By way of a rejoinder, Louis laid siege
to Avignon, and appealed to a General Council: indeed it was actually said that
he was minded to make the Archbishop of Paris, who was a Gallican,
Patriarch of France.
INNOCENT XI AND LOUIS XIV
The situation at
this time was so dangerous for Rome, that Innocent XI in spite of his dislike
of Protestantism found it expedient to promise great subsidies to the Prince of
Orange, in the hope that he might defend the interests of the Roman Church
against Louis XIV upon the Rhine. By this means the Papacy unwillingly came to
pave the Protestant prince's way to the English throne. On the other side, the
strife with the Pope was the real cause of Louis XIV's enigmatic attack upon
Germany. Perhaps he thought that the prospect of a great European war, the
issues of which were uncertain, would make Innocent XI more inclined to yield.
But the war in the Palatinate had not the desired effect, and the seriousness
of the circumstances soon compelled Louis XIV to show a conciliatory
disposition towards the Papacy. Already under Innocent XI's successor,
Alexander VIII, he restored Avignon and opened negotiations. But not until the
time of Innocent XII was peace with Rome concluded, upon the condition that the
French bishops, who had hitherto been unable to obtain the recognition of Rome,
should profess their “inexpressible grief” at the declaration of 1682, while
Louis XIV informed the Pope that he had given the necessary orders for
depriving the four Gallican propositions of their
rank as an authoritative formula in France.
Thus the Papacy
came victorious out of the conflict; but the strife over the Gallican rights was nevertheless in the highest degree
fraught with consequences for Rome. It could not easily be forgotten that the
French priesthood and the French King; had solemnly adopted Gallicanism,
and that for half a score of years it had been inculcated into the French
youth. The solemn proclamation of the propositions in 1682 was an event which
aroused universal attention; but the revocation of them in 1693 had nothing
striking about it. It took place without noise, as a statement on the part of
certain bishops, and in a private letter from the King to the Pope. And even as
early as 1697 Louis XIV caused Cardinal Janson, his
ambassador at the Court of Rome, to declare that he would not allow the papal
infallibility to be taught in France. In 1713 he went further, and stated that
he had in fact only promised Innocent XII that he would no longer enforce Gallicanism upon his subjects, but that he had never
intended to wage war upon the Gallican view of
questions which were, and, as he maintained, ought to be, open questions for
all Frenchmen.
After the
conclusion of peace with Rome the battle against Jansenism came once more into
prominence. The Jansenists who were mystically disposed, had shown no
particular interest in the King’s Gallican Church
policy, and in the dispute over the régale they had been on the Pope's side. The convent of Port
Royal, a convent of Cistercian nuns in the valley of Yvette between Versailles
and Chevreuse, which since the days of St Cyran had been “a nest of Jansenist error”, had for this
reason been made especially to feel the King's dislike. When the Countess of Grammont in 1699 had made her retreat among the nuns of
Port Royal, she did not receive the usual invitation to Court. “People cannot come to Marly if they go to Port Royal”, said Louis. The Jesuits hated and feared the circle
of brilliant writers who had attached themselves to Port Royal, and they egged
the King on against this abode of Jansenism, which had gradually become the
cradle of that literature which was shedding glory over his reign. Even
Fenelon, who was usually gentleness itself, recommended the utmost severity
towards the dangerous sect, which had spread far wider than most people
imagined. At last Louis XIV saw no other way than to beg Pope Clement XI for a
new Bull which should crush Jansenism altogether; and in 1705 Clement composed
the Bull Vineam Domini Sabaoth.
Before he solemnly
published it, he dispatched it into France, that the
King might make corrections in it, and the royal Placet was thus assured beforehand. So good had the relations between Rome and
Versailles become, and such confidence was shown by the infallible Pope to the
fallible King who had been the protector and defender of the Gallican heresy.
Clement XI’s Bull
contained an absolute condemnation of Jansenism; and because the nuns of Port
Royal would only subscribe it with a reservation, their convent was doomed to
destruction. Louis XIV could not bear to have people near him who dared to
withstand his royal will, and he begged the Pope for a new Bull giving
permission for the dissolution of Port Royal. As soon as this Bull was
published in 1709, he sent out the lieutenant of police from Paris, with a
considerable force of men, against the two and twenty defenseless women at Port
Royal, of whom the youngest was fifty years old, the
eldest over eighty. Only the Prioress and one of the sisters steadily refused
to subscribe; the others agreed to do so. Nevertheless, they were all removed
from the convent, and the year after it was leveled with the ground. Not even
the dead were permitted to rest in their graves in peace; many corpses were
disinterred and treated with barbarous savagery.
The epic story of
Jansenism was not ended, however, with the destruction of Port Royal, and the
Jansenist question long continued to keep France in a disturbed state. Fenelon,
who followed the propaganda of the Jansenists with so much attention, wrote in 1705,
in a private memoir intended for the Pope: “In our Belgium there is scarcely a
theologian of repute to be found who is not devoted to Jansenism; in Brussels,
Douai, Liège, and Amsterdam, their worst books are printed with impunity.
Almost all the booksellers sympathize with that party”. Five years later, in
making an application to the Jesuit Le Tellier, who
after the death of La Chaise became confessor to Louis XIV, he drew a similar
picture of the progress of Jansenism. All those who had studied at the
Sorbonne, with the sole exception of the members of the seminary of St Sulpice, many of the Benedictines, Oratorians,
Augustinians, Carmelites, a good number of Capucins and Franciscans, many courtiers, and the majority of pious women, might, he
said, be reckoned as belonging to the party of Cornelius Jansen.
The Jesuits were
not at all contented. Already, before the suppression of Port Royal, Clement XI
had published a prohibition of the translation of the New Testament,
accompanied by edifying remarks, which was the work of Paschasius Quesnel,
the Oratorian, in whose Congregation Jansenism had
for a long time made great inroads. Le Tellier, who
had in vain sought to blacken the Fathers of the Oratory at Court, now
attempted to smite them and the cause of Jansenism by procuring a new papal
condemnation of Quesnel’s book. The reply of Rome was
the famous Bull Unigenitus which condemned
one hundred and one propositions of Quesnel’s New
Testament (1713).
It was amidst
opposition from the circle nearest to the Pope that this Bull was composed,
and, as informants at Rome expressed it, it was “not published without terrible resistance”.
Clement XI is said to have used the disputed book for his own edification. He
was now obliged to consent to its condemnation pour faire plaisir au Roi,
as the Jesuit Daubenton wrote to Fenelon. At an episcopal synod which the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Noailles, held in January 1714, out of forty-nine bishops
assembled there were no fewer than nine, among them Cardinal de Noailles himself, who desired an explanation from the Pope,
before submitting to the Bull. But Louis XIV: would not allow this minority to
apply to Rome. Cardinal de Noailles was banished from
the Court, and the other opponents were ‘exiled’ to their sees. Thereupon the
Bull was registered by the Parliament of Paris, with the usual
reservation—provided that it did not conflict with the rights of the Crown and
the liberties of the Gallican Church.
THE UNIGENITUS
CONTROVERSY
So far had Jesuitism
succeeded in the battle with Gallicanism and
Jansenism when Louis XIV died. The opposition which
the Bull Unigenitus aroused all over
France had made a strong impression upon the aged King. The Duchess of Orleans comes
very near to saying that the commotion caused by “that accursed Constitution”,
which would not allow Louis XIV to have any rest night or day, had shortened
his life.
The new government
adopted a new ecclesiastical policy. Philip, Duke of Orleans, who assumed the
Regency, immediately gave the imprisoned Jansenists their liberty, and Cardinal
de Noailles was taken again into favor. Le Tellier, on the other hand, was obliged to forsake the
country. There was even for an instant some talk of suppressing the Jesuits and
calling the Protestants back; but the Duke was satisfied with banishing the
disciples of Loyola from the confessional and the pulpit, and with modifying
the severity of the laws against the Protestants. These measures aroused the
greatest alarm in the camp of the Jesuits, and bright hopes among the
Jansenists.
The church
question, which even under Louis XIV had been discussed with lively interest in
lay circles, now divided all Frenchmen into two groups, which in some places
even adopted an external badge to distinguish themselves from each other. Those
who sympathized with the Jansenists wore a red, white, and yellow ribbon, while
the Unigenitus party wore red and
black. Four of the French bishops went so far as to appeal to an Universal Council, and a daring Frenchman posted up their
appeal upon the wall of St Peter's under the very eyes of the Pope. All France
came gradually to be divided into two parties, the Acceptants,
and the Recusants or Appellants. To the first, according to the saying of Voltaire, belonged a hundred bishops, the
Jesuits, and the Capucins; to the second, fifteen
bishops and—the whole nation. In this division the original question, whether
the hundred and one propositions were or were not heretical, fell into the
background behind the question whether a papal Bull on matters of dogma was
infallible.
In order to still
the tumultuous waves, the Duke-Regent turned to Rome; and he forbade the
publication of books or pamphlets on the burning question so long as his
negotiations with the Pope were on foot. This order only awoke indignation on
both sides, and Philip of Orleans in his perplexity determined to talk to the
Duke of Saint-Simon on the subject. The conversation, which took place in the
Regent’s box at the Opera lasted during the whole performance; and it opened
views which the unprincipled Duke-Regent had not before suspected. Saint-Simon made him understand the
significance of the contest by setting it clearly before him that the most
virtuous and learned prelates, and all the educated part of the nation, stood
on the side of the Appellants, and that the victory of the Unigenitus party would in fact mean that Rome had gained the same
power over France as it had already gained over Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
Accordingly the all-important thing to do, Saint-Simon said, was to intimidate
the papal nuncio in Paris, to show a firm front to the Pope, and “to teach the
Jesuits in Paris and Rome to talk French”.
But the
Duke-Regent did not follow Saint-Simon’s able advice. Probably he had been
frightened by Dubois, who was already striving to gain the cardinal's purple,
for which purpose it was above all things necessary to preserve good relations
between Rome and Versailles. To impress the weak Regent more thoroughly,
Clement XI published a violent Pastoral, which under threat of excommunication
demanded complete and instantaneous obedience to the Unigenitus. Against this
demand all the French Parliaments protested, pointing out that the Pope’s
Pastoral presupposed the doctrine of infallibility, which France had for
centuries withstood. Now also the Sorbonne and the University of Paris, which
had hitherto in a dignified manner held back, ranged themselves on the side of
the Parliaments, and Cardinal de Noailles caused his
appeal to be posted up on all the church doors in the capital.
The discovery of a
plot whose aim was to transfer the Regency to the King of Spain, in which it
was supposed that the hand of the Jesuits could be traced, had the effect of
making Philip of Orleans think it wisest to fall in as far as possible with the
Society of Jesus and with Rome; and various papers and pastorals, which were
condemned by the Parliament of Paris to the fire, showed that the Unigenitus party had by no means given
up the hope of victory. In one pamphlet, the opinion that Councils are superior
to the Pope was represented as a new dogma, contrary to tradition; in another,
it was said that to deny the Pope’s infallibility was as heretical as to deny
the Divinity of Christ. The Archbishop of Reims, in a letter to the Acceptants, accused the opponents of the Bull—the
Appellants—of going astray in the paths of Luther, Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches; and he counseled his party to refuse the Regent
any subsidies from the Church, if he did not wholly 'and entirely adopt the Unigenitus. On the other side, in a
Jansenist pamphlet, an Universal Council was compared
with the Estates of the Realm, which “enjoy all the rights of sovereignty when
they are assembled”. Although this writing also was condemned by the Parliament
as an attack upon the royal authority, it revealed what political ideas were
growing up under cover of Gallicanism and Jansenism,
just as the advice of the Archbishop of Reims to the Acceptants showed that there was a section of the higher clergy who were not disinclined
to place regard for the Church above regard for the country.
It was at this
time that the financial projects of John Law began to arrest the attention of all
Frenchmen, and Jansenism now retired for a while into the shade, in favor of
the discussion about the gold from the Mississippi, as at one time it had been
driven into the background by the strife over the régale and Gallicanism.
But the Duke-Regent, who was surrounded by Jesuits, did not lose sight of the
recognition of the Unigenitus; and
when the peace between France and Spain was sealed by a proposal for a double
marriage between the princely houses, it was taken for granted that the Regent
would protect the Jesuits, and would give effect to the disputed Bull in that
country where the Spanish Infanta was to be educated
in view of becoming one day Queen. In reward for his activity on this occasion,
the Jesuit Daubenton gained in addition two favorable
concessions for his order: a Jesuit was nominated as confessor to the French
King, and the Chancellor d’Aguesseau, a bitter enemy
of the Society of Jesus, was dismissed. But the resistance of the Appellants to
the Unigenitus was not broken, and it
became clear that Saint-Simon had spoken the truth in his description of the
two parties. The cause of Jansenism was followed with sympathy by the largest
and the best part of the nation, and many Jansenists showed in the hour of
danger a courage which took men's thoughts back to the intrepidity of the first
Christians under the persecutions of the Roman Empire.
The Duke-Regent,
however, cast in his lot more and more distinctly with the Jesuits. High offices of State were given to their friends, and after the
death of Claude Fleury, the Gallican church historian, a Jesuit, as had been agreed at the time of the peace with
Spain, was assigned to Louis XV for his confessor. This confessor
painted the Jansenists in such black colors, that the young King came to consider
a Jansenist as a worse being than an atheist. The ancient rights of the
Parliaments were recklessly trodden under foot, and their complaints were not
listened to. A chambre du Pape was
erected in Paris, to which was given the duty of prosecuting all writings
directed against the papal see and the Bull Unigenitus.
The harsh ancient laws of censorship were collected, and if they had been
enforced, the liberty of the Press would have been completely annihilated in
France. Thus the Regency which began with being so liberal minded, ended with
adopting the ways of Louis XIV. Mathieu Marais might with good reason write in
his memoirs (1723), “Rome rules over us more than ever it did; our liberties
disappear, and we are falling into infallibility”. The desire for the cardinal’s
hat, as the Duchess of Orleans says, had “made most of the bishops mad”. All
France was scandalized when Dubois, an openly immoral and irreligious man, who
had long before obtained Fenelon’s see of Cambrai,
received as a reward for his activity on behalf of the Unigenitus the cardinal's purple. But when the unprincipled prelate
in 1722 had been chosen First Minister by the Regent, the French bishops forgot
the scandal to such an extent that in 1723 they unanimously chose him President
of their quinquennial assembly. Shortly after,
however, both the old clerical libertine, and the Duke Regent, died.
Cardinal Dubois’
successor, no less unworthy, and in ecclesiastical questions no less ignorant
than he, the Duke of Condé-Bourbon, gave himself also over to the guidance of
the Jesuits. The Infanta of Spain, indeed, was sent
home without the accomplishment of the marriage between her and Louis XV, which
had been agreed upon at the conclusion of the peace with Spain; but Maria Leczinska, who became Queen of France, was quite as much in
the Jesuits’ leading strings. The people of Paris called her Unigenita, and
sang a ballad which ended thus:
“Et ton régne s'affermira,
Cher Unigenitus,
par Unigenita”.
Under the new
government, in spite of the protest of Sweden and Holland, the ancient laws
against the Protestants were again put in full force. All other divine service,
except that of the Roman Church, was forbidden; all Protestant ministers were
to be punished with death; all Protestant laymen with lifelong imprisonment and
loss of their property. And the doctrine of the Pope’s infallibility, which
hitherto had only ventured shyly and timidly forth, was now expanded and
exhibited at full length in a book printed in Holland, the work of a Benedictine
author, as an expression of the doctrine of all countries and of every age. It
was of little use that the Parliament of Paris suppressed the book; the
doctrine of infallibility was now supported in every way by the supreme
authority.
The Bishop of Fréjus, Cardinal Andre Fleury,
who in 1726 at the age of seventy years succeeded the Duke of Bourbon as First
Minister, had already for some while taken the lead in church matters, and had
shown himself a determined opponent of the Jansenists. Once upon a time he had
himself been a thorough-going Jansenist, but in the course of time he had
become more ultramontane than the Pope, and accordingly under his government
Jesuitism gained one victory after another. The aged Cardinal de Noailles, who for so
long a time had boldly refused to subscribe the Unigenitus without reservation, was now obliged to make known his
acceptance of the Bull, and his successor in the archiepiscopal see of Paris
persecuted with great zeal all those priests in his diocese who were tainted
with Jansenism. In 1730 Fleury even succeeded in
getting the hated Constitution registered in the Sorbonne, but only after
depriving forty-eight of the doctors of the Sorbonne of their right to vote. In
the same year the Cardinal caused Louis XV, by means of a lit de justice, to compel the Parliament also to register an order
that the clergy of the whole kingdom should submit to the Unigenitus without any manner of reservation, and thereupon the
University finally gave up its opposition. In this case also obedience was only
extorted by an act of violence. No fewer than eighty-two members protested when
the University determined to strike the appeal against the Unigenitus off its register; but these protesting doctors were
punished by the loss of their degrees, so that the renowned University on this
occasion lost many powerful teachers.
ADVANCE OF
JESUITISM
After the
subjection of Cardinal de Noailles, the Sorbonne, and
the University, Jesuitism had to all appearance completely won the victory in
France. But many of those who submitted to the Unigenitus, out of a sense of duty to the Pope, still differed in
other respects from the Society of Jesus. Massillon, who died Bishop of
Clermont, upbraided the Jansenists, it is true, with
having led women and simple lay folk to express opinions on the deepest
mysteries, and with having made those mysteries the subjects of dispute. “This”,
he said, “has spread irreligion because for lay people the distance is not
great between disputation and doubt, and between doubt
and unbelief”. But all the same Massillon would not make common cause with the
order of Loyola in everything. “The Jesuits”, he writes to another French
bishop, “have their opinions, which the Church tolerates; but do you really believe that the majority of the bishops think
and teach as they do? I can assure you that the opposite is the case”.
Massillon was
certainly right. Cornelius Jansen, Arnauld, and
Pascal had not lived in vain; and in the crowd of prelates who mustered round
the banner of the Unigenitus there
were many who only followed the standard with divided hearts, and with much
reservation. But new demands were constantly being made from Rome which
confirmed the Jesuits in their assurance of victory.
Benedict XIII, who
had been Pope since 1724, in 1726 canonized the Jesuit Aloysius of Gonzaga, and
in him the order of Loyola found its favorite saint. Little by little, the
legend of St Aloysius was embellished with accounts of the strangest apocryphal
miracles, and already under the following Pope six Aloysius-Sundays, as they
were called, had a plenary indulgence accorded to them. Benedict XIII was eager
also to make the day of Gregory VII (25th May) a festival for the whole Roman
Church, and he wished to introduce everywhere into the breviaries a lesson
praising the great Pope for having excommunicated Henry IV, taken his kingdom
from him, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance. The Parliament of
Paris, however, opposed the introduction of this addition, and there were other
places also where the same was prohibited.
As Ultramontanism
and Jesuitism became more daring, Gallicanism and
Jansenism proceeded to greater extremes. In Gallican circles people began seriously to discuss the separation of Church and State;
and on the same day that the Parliament of Paris refused the above-named
addition to the Breviary, it found it necessary at the same time to express
condemnation of a Jansenist work, the author of which had affirmed in the name
of the faithful laity that there were cases in which the shepherd ought to obey
the sheep, and that the people should be judges when the bishops fell into
error. The Jansenist-minded Bishop of Montpellier, about the same date, spoke
in a pastoral letter of an approaching revolution, which, in his opinion, would
cause the formation of a new Church, to take the place of the existing Church,
which had been so misled and degraded. And amidst the strong provocation of the
moment expressions were used which showed that many of the thoughts of the
Revolution were sprouting up under the shelter of Gallicanism and Jansenism. “The people”, it was said, “is above the King, as the Universal
Church is above the Pope”, and words of the kind were echoed far and wide. In
this way the Bishop of Montauban, a partisan of the
Jesuits, in 1753 dared in his pastoral letter to hint that the Parliament of
Paris might perhaps be in a position to emulate the English Parliament, and to
bring the King of France to the scaffold.
By degrees
Jansenism had abandoned the quiet obedience which distinguished it in the days
of Louis XIV, and had now developed into a strong domestic opposition, which
was an increasingly political force. At the outset, the Jansenists had set their
hopes upon the young King; but when it became apparent that in all church
questions he was dependent upon the Jesuits, and in moral respects was no
better than the Regency men, they turned with
repugnance from the Court. And at Court they began to be differently regarded.
Up till now the disciples of Cornelius Jansen had been considered une secte fastueuse; after 1750 they were esteemed at Court to be
republicans.
And however great
may be the sympathy entertained for Jansenism, promoted as it had been by many
luminous intelligences and noble hearts, it ought not to be forgotten that the
Jansenist controversy, so bitterly carried on, had momentous consequences for
the French Church. In a high degree it weakened the power of resistance to the
anti-ecclesiastical and antichristian spirit, which
in the course of the eighteenth century worked its way more and more into
prominence, and the eager battle against the Bull Unigenitus drove many hesitating Gallican prelates over into the arms of Rome. From defending a papal Bull, not a few
passed on to defending the Pope's infallibility, which was the pith and marrow
of the whole contention.
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