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Bible Encyclopedias
Port-Royal, Recluses of
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or Occupy a most important position in the ecclesiastical and literary history of France, especially in the 17th century, and are largely identified with the Jansenistic controversy.
Port-Royal (Porrigium, Portus Regis, Porreal) lay in the vicinity of the hamlet of Chevreuse, three leagues from Versailles, and six from Paris. Here occurred a memorable reproduction of the austerities of the Thebaid and the ascetic labors of Lerins. The monastery of Port Royal des Champs, an abbey of the Order of Citeaux, was founded in 1204 by Matilda, wife of Matthew I of Montmorency-Marly, during her husband's absence in the fourth crusade. It lay on the left of the high-road from Rambouillet to Chartres, in a damp, low spot, which had once been called, from its natural features, Porrois (from Porra or Borra, dog-Latin for a woody valley with stagnant water: cavus dumetis plenus ubi stagnut xaqua). Abandoned for a long time to the fü r niente existence of ordinary convents, it fell at length, in the beginning of the 17th century (1608), under the direction of the family of Arnauld. Angelique Arnauld was, through family interest, appointed abbess when only seventeen and a half years old (some declared that she was only eleven, and that her relatives falsely stated her age). Touched by grace as she grew to womanhood, she undertook tile reform of the convent. Her mother, five of her sisters, and six nieces became her spiritual children. Mere Angelique's change to such pious devotion is said to have been occasioned by a sermon on the death of Christ which was preached" by a wandering Capuchin friar, father Basil, who had learned the truth of the Gospel of Christ, and had resolved formally to quit the communion of Rome, and, in passing the convent of Port-Royal while on his journey to the Protestant countries of the North, had secured permission to address the nuns. With love and kindness, but with unyielding firmness and great wisdom, the converted young woman restored the rule of the order in all its severity-as the strict observance of religious poverty, abstinence from meat, complete seclusion, and the most severe ascetic exercises. The abbey of Port-Royal des Champs had been erected for but a small number of nuns; in consequence, however, of the celebrity which it attained through the reforms and guidance of Mere Angelique, the number increased greatly, so that, instead of twelve, there were more than eighty; and thus the buildings of the abbey became overcrowded and unhealthy. In 1626 it was found necessary to make additional provisions. A house was purchased in Paris in the Faubourg St. Jacques (in great part at the expense of the Arnauld family), to which the nuns removed. This their next abode was called Port-Royal de Paris. In 1633 more spacious quarters were secured in the Rue de Boulai, near the Rue Coquilliere, where they also owned a church, which was dedicated with great solemnity by the archbishop of Paris.
In 1223 the pope had conferred on the convent the right of affording an asylum to such lay personages as, being disgusted with the world, and being their own masters, should wish to live in monastic seclusion without binding themselves by permanent monastic vows. Tills privilege had not availed the Port-Royalists much until now. But the gradual transformation of Mere Angelique, under the influence of St. Francis de Sales, with whom she had been brought in contact, and who led her to accept the doctrine of perfection in the form of the possibility of a complete transformation of the human heart even before death, had become so manifest in her influence over her nuns and the severity they reached, that, inspired by this example, a number of learned and pious men, desirous of living in religious retirement, sought in 1638 the privilege of occupying the deserted establishment of Port-Royal des Champs. The leader of this new movement was the inflexible St. Cyran, who had been first an examiner and later the spiritual director of the nuns of Port-Royal. (See DUVERGIER DE HAURANNE).
He was a Jansenist, and a most intimate friend of the founder of these doctrines, and as the head of this new lay community instituted the new opinions and made Port-Royal des Champs the home of Jansenism in France. A whole colony of illustrious penitents joined him: the three brothers of La Mere Alngelique; her nephew, the celebrated advocate La Maitre, and his brothers Sericourt and De Sacy; Pierre Nicole; Claude Lancelot, the grammarian; Tillemont, the historian; Pascal, the philosopher; Racine, the poet, and Antoine Arnauld (q.v.), the "great Arnauld," the youngest brother of the abbess, the learned and impetuous Doctor of the Sorbonne, whose condemnation by that body occasioned Pascal's Provenals.
This religious movement of the 17th century in France is as remarkable as the philosophical for which that era is noted. Jansenists and Jesuits undertook the re-establishment of that spiritual power which had suffered from the attacks of philosophy; but between these two parties there was bitter strife. Port-Royal had now become the headquarters of Jansenism, which has been called "Calvinistic Catholicism." The attempt of the Port- Royalists at reconstruction embraced exactly those parts of medieval religion which the Jesuits had neglected. Wholly abandoning what the Jesuits had taken hold of-the social and political side of Catholicism-they clung to its personal, mystical, and ascetic side. They did not quarrel with the Church; they desired to remain Catholic in spite of the pope, believing in the priesthood and the sacraments. They arrived at a metaphysical and moral reform, and pointed to St. Paul and St. Augustine as their inspirers. The Jesuits adopted directly antagonistic views on grace and predestination, and proclaimed the opinions of the Spaniard Molina, who had undertaken, in his De Concordia Gratice et Liberi Arbitrii, to reconcile free-will and predestination. The solitaires of Port-Royal now became the Jansenists of France, insisted upon predestination, and taught that good works were without merit; that grace alone, arbitrarily given or refused, made saints-a Christianity as terrible as the Fate of the ancients. They pursued human nature, corrupted by the fall, with an implacable hatred, and the logical conclusion of such a doctrine was the salvation of the few— i.e. the Church of Jansenism became an aristocracy of grace. (See JANSENISM).
However much we may find in Jansenism to take exception to, the men who espoused its doctrines were actuated by the noblest of motives, and deserved success in their undertaking, which aimed principally at the freedom of France from the trammels of the papal devotees-the Jesuits-and the spread of practical piety among the French people.
The Jesuits, who were prominent at this time in the Church of France, and effectually controlled the court, obtained under the ministry of Richelieu, and especially of Mazarin, repeated condemnatory acts against the teachings of the Jansenists in general, and the Port-Royalists especially. Persecution, however, money stimulated the growth of the new opinions. Duvergier, a Port-Royalist, was thrown into prison. and kept there until the death of Richelieu, in 1642. But the very time of his liberation was marked by a most note worthy production. Antoine Arnauld better known as "Le grand Arnauld then wrote his Frequent Communion, the first work of that scientific school of religious philosophy of which Port-Royal was the focus and Pascal the principal exponent. Indeed, the best claim which the community of Port-Royal has upon our notice is this literary war which it waged against the scholastic theology, and against the Jesuits in particular. The Society of Jesus had, ever be it said to its credit, devoted itself to the education of youth; but whatever danger there was in their general teaching was thus intensified in the eves of those who distrusted them. Port-Royal determined to meet them on this ground, by establishing schools and by issuing text-books of their own. The grammar, logic, and rhetoric of Port- Royal-the first by Arnauld, the second by Nicole— were the fruits of this resolve. They set themselves also, and not unsuccessfully, to countermine the power of the Jesuits in the confessional; for the integrity and piety which characterized the Port-Royalists caused them to be much sought after as confessors. They discovered and maintained the famous distinction offitit and droit in respect to papal infallibility. As to doctrine, the pope could not err; as to facts he might. (See GALLICANISM); (See INFALLIBILITY).
When required, they were willing to condemn, as doctrines, the five propositions which were said to comprise the Jansenistic heresy; but they denied that these conclusions were to be found in or inferred from Jansen's Augustinus. No papal bulls or persecution could make them recede from this position. In their maintenance of Jansen's real doctrines, in their refusal to acknowledge papal infallibility as to facts, in their continual warfare against the Jesuits, they were exposed to constant persecution. For the Jesuits were not inert in the face of this opposition and defiance. They plotted incessantly at Rome, in order to bring the thunders of the Holy See to bear upon the over-bold Jansenists.
The persecution brought about a result the Jesuits hardly anticipated. Blaise Pascal was induced to step into the arena in defense of the Port- Royalists. One of the most independent minds of his age, Pascal had never yet up to this point submitted himself to the actual guidance of Jansen, any more than he had frankly accepted the logical consequences of the discoveries of Descartes. He had felt the force of both these powerful influences; but a third feeling had exerted authority over his unwilling mind: he had been swayed by the skeptical influence of Montaigne. As a sort of refuge from the yawning abyss which had thus threatened to drown him, this stanch and devotional spirit threw him, as b- a sudden and irresistible impulse, into the arms of the Jansenists, and he became a recluse at Port-Royal, and its champion against the world. (See PASCAL).
In the meantime the number of nuns and novices of Port-Royal de Paris having greatly increased, the abbess Angelique Arnauld determined in 1648 to transfer part of them to Port-Royal des Champs. The school of Port- Royal was therefore removed from the latter place to Paris, Rue St. Dominique, Faubourg St. Jacques, but after three years the teachers were restored to Port-Royal des Champs, where they no longer occupied the monastic building, but a farm-house, called Les Granges, on the neighboring hill. In 1653, pope Innocent I having condemned five propositions in the book of Jansenius, Arnauld wrote to prove that these propositions did not exist in the book of Jansenius, at least not in the sense attributed to them. Upon this Arnauld was accused of Jansenism. The nuns of Port-Royal, with their abbess Angelique, having refused to sign the formulary acknowledging that the five alleged heretical propositions were contained in the work of Jansenius, preparations were begun by the Jesuits for scattering the community of Port-Royal, and placing them in close captivity, so as to bring them to submission. It seemed a strange spectacle that a body of women, and a few others who agreed with them in sentiment, should withstand the power of the decrees of Rome and all the pertinacity of the Jesuits in carrying out those decrees. On March 30, 1656, two months after the condemnation of Dr. Arnauld, the civil authorities proceeded to carry out an order in council that every scholar, postulant, and novice should be removed from Port-Royal. But, for some unknown reasons, the execution was suddenly interrupted and delayed several years. It is said that Mazarin's unpleasant relations with the papacy were the principal cause of this sudden suspense of procedure against the recluses. In 1660 the king himself ordered the school to be broken up. The nuns still continuing refractory, Perefixe, archbishop of Paris, sent a party of police officers in 1664, who arrested the abbess, her niece Angelique Arnauld the Younger, or Angelique de St. Jean, the mistress of the novices, and other nuns, and distributed them among several monasteries, where they were kept in a state of confinement. (See ARNAULD, ANGELIQUE).
Previously some of the nuns who had remained at Port-Royal de Paris intrigued with the government in order to become independent of Port- Royal des Champs, and Louis XIV appointed a separate abbess to Port- Royal de Paris. In 1669 a compromise was made between the pope and the defenders of Jansenius, which was called "the Peace of Clement IX." The nuns of Port-Royal des Champs with their own abbess were then restored to their convent, but Port-Royal de Paris was not restored to them: a division of property was effected between the two communities, by order of the king, which was confirmed by a bull of Clement X dated 1671. Each convent retained its own abbess. Several disputes took place between the two communities, in which the archbishop of Paris and the Jesuits took an active part. At last, in March, 1708, a bull of pope Clement XI suppressed the convent of Port-Royal des Champs, and gave the property to Port- Royal de Paris. In 1709 Le Tellier had obtained from king Louis XIV a decree for the execution of the papal bull, and D'Argenson, the lieutenant of police of Paris, was sent with a body of men to Port-Royal des Champs, and he removed from thence the nuns, who were distributed among several convents. The convent and church of Port-Royal des Champs were stripped of all their valuables, which were transferred to Port-Royal de Paris, and the former building was leveled with the ground, by order of Louis XIV, as a nest of Jansenists and heretics. The sacred relics of the Church were borne from the altar, the bodies disinterred from the, cemetery, and every trace of the establishment destroyed, the very soil being abandoned to the plough.
Literature. — Besoigne, Racine (1767, 2 vols.), Clé mencet, Du Fosse, Fontaine (Col. 1738, 2 vols.), and others have written of Port-Royal. Dr. Reuchlin has published one of the most elaborate treatises, entitled Geschichte von Port-Royal (Hamb. 1839-44, 2 vols.); and other and more recent works to be consulted are, Saint-Betuve, Hist. de Port-Royal (Paris, 1840-58, 4 vols.); Beard, Port-Royal (Lond. 1860, 2 vols.); Schimmelpenninck, Memoirs of Port-Royal (ibid. 1855). On Reuchlin's work, see Sir James Stephen, Essays, vol. 1; Wilkens, Port-Royal, oder der Jansenismus in Frankreich, in the Zeitschrift fiur wissenschaftliche Theologie. 1859; Meth. Quarterly, 1855. See also Jervis, Hist. Ch. of entrance (Lond. 1872), vol. 1 and 2, and his History of France (Student's Edition), p. 469-472; Ranke, Hist. of the Peptacy, 2, 251, 259; Tregelles, Hist. of the Jansenists, p. 11 sq. et al.; Martin, Hist. of France (age of Louis XIV); Bridges, France under Richelieu and Colbert, lect. 4; Villemain, Discours et Melanges Litteraires; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV, ch. 36; Bridge, Hist. of French Literature, p. 172 sq.; Van Laun, Hist. of French Literature (see Index); Lond. Quar. Rev. Oct. 1871, p. 173; Brit. Quar. Rev. April, 1873, p. 284; Edinb. Rev. April, 1841; Amer. Theol. Rev. April, 1860, p. 162, 356.
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Port-Royal, Recluses of'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/p/port-royal-recluses-of.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
