Jansenism was a revamped version of Augustine's theology of
Grace. Grace was discovered by Augustine in his readings of Paul, especially in
Romans. To Augustine all men have sinned against God and no matter what they do
on their own there is no salvation, just perdition. It is only through the gift
of Grace by God that you are saved. To carry it a bit further, you never even
knew whether you had gotten that gift. Calvin and Luther took this as the basis
of their theology, and Calvin to the extreme.
In contrast the Jesuits were to be the "army" of
the Pope, and in turn they also became the defenders of the monarchies. Through
their schools they educated the future kings, princes, bishops and cardinals.
Ant added to that they became the confessors to kings. Nice job if you can get
it, and get it the Jesuits did.
Needless to say the Jesuits never really warmed to Augustine
and this grace thing. They were in many way neo-Pelagians, namely that one's
good works would count and further that Christ came to save all mankind, not
just those unknown few. That made kings, and shall we say queens, quite happy.
Now needless to say this was to be a battle to the death.
The Jansenists inspired in the people a dislike of the monarchy and one could
argue that they were one of the multiplicity of causes of the French Revolution.
Such a battle did not ensue in the United States because we eschewed any
religious preference, a good idea.
In the classic work of Doyle, Jansenism ( St Martin's Press,
2000) he notes:
Hitherto, most of Jansenism’s history had been a
catalogue of heroic failure or persistence against the odds; but this was a
clear and total victory over the arch-enemy. Its cultural and educational
consequences were enormous: 113 colleges were closed and those that reopened
under new management were free to set their own syllabuses. The anti-clerical
philosophes of the Enlightenment hailed the event as a great step forward for
the emancipation of the human mind.
Indeed, in 1765 d’Alembert claimed philosophic credit for
their overthrow in his pamphlet "On the Destruction of the Jesuits in
France", by a disinterested author. Jansenists were outraged at this
blatant attempt to attribute what they saw as the achievement of religious
Truth to the influence of irreligion. In their eyes, there was little to choose
between the laxities of Molinism and the free thought of Enlightenment. ‘What
is a true Jesuit’, wrote Le Paige, ‘if not a disguised philosophe, and what is
a philosophe if not a disguised Jesuit?’.
But d’Alembert knew what he was doing.
To allow the Jansenists the glory, he wrote to Voltaire,
would be to boost the forces of intolerance. "The Jesuits, amenable people
so long as you do not declare yourself their enemy, are quite willing to let
you think what you will; the Jansenists, as rude as they are ignorant, want you
to think as they do; if they were the masters, they would exercise the most
violent inquisition over writing, thinking, words and deeds."
But the Jansenists were not the masters, and never would
be. They were able to engineer the expulsion only because a dedicated handful
of them were entrenched in the parlement and knew how to exploit its procedures
and prejudices. Nor did Jansenists have much to do with the rest of the process
that culminated in the final dissolution of the Society of Jesus by Pope
Clement XIV in 1773. Once France had followed the Portuguese example, it became
contagious.
Yes, the Jansenists were defeated and the Jesuits returned
in all their glory. We have one as a Pope right now. But that is not the moral
of the tale. What this tells us is d'Alembert's comment to Voltaire:
"The Jesuits, amenable people so long as you do not
declare yourself their enemy, are quite willing to let you think what you will;
the Jansenists, as rude as they are ignorant, want you to think as they do; if
they were the masters, they would exercise the most violent inquisition over
writing, thinking, words and deeds."
In today's political environment unfortunately we have a
similar battle. One should beware however that soon after the Jansenists
defeated the Jesuits, the Bastille fell, as did the head of Louis, and then we
had Robespierre. Revolutions have a way of turning upon those for whom self-proclaimed
righteousness tends to backfire.
History repeats itself. In such times one should always
reflect back on what can happen to the overly righteous person.
Just a thought for today.
Posts
