JANSENIUS
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JANSENIUS
ask explanations from Rome before accepting the
Bull. This was the beginning of lengthy discussions,
the gravity of which increased with the death of
Louis XIV (1715), who was succeeded in power by
Philippe d'Urleans. The regent took a much less
decided stand than his predecessor, and the change
soon had its eflect on various centres, especially on the
Sorbonne, where the sectaries had succeeded in win-
ning over the majority. The faculties of Paris,
Reims, and Nantes, who had received the Bull, re-
voked their previous acceptance. Four bishops went
even farther, having recourse to an expedient of which
only heretics or declared schismatics had hitherto be-
thought themselves, and which was essentially at va-
riance with the hierarchical concept of the Church;
they appealed from the Bull "Unigenitus" to a gen-
eral council (1717). Their example was followed by
some of their colleagues, by hundreds of clerics and
religious, by the Parlements and the magistracy No-
ailles, for a long time undecided and always inconsist-
ent, ended by appealing also, but "from the pope
obviously mistaken to the pope better informed and to
a general council".
Clement XI, however, in the Bull " Pastoralis officii " (171S), condemned the appeal and excommunicated the appellants. But this did not disarm the opposi- tion, which appealed from the second Bull as from the first; Noailles himself published a new appeal, no longer chiefly to the pope " better informed ", but to a coimcil, and the Parlement of Paris, suppressed the Bull "Pastoralis". The multiplicity of these defections and the arrogant clamour of the appellants might give the impression that they constituted, if not a majority, at least a very imposing minority. Such, however, was not the case, and the chief evidence of this lies in the well-established fact that enormous sums were devoted to paying for these appeals. After al- lowing for these shameful and suggestive purchases, we find among the number of the appellants, one car- dinal, about eighteen bishops, and three thousand clerics. But without leaving France, we find opposed to them four cardinals, a hundred bishops, and a hundred thousand clerics, that is, the moral unanimity of the French clergy. What is to be said, then, when this handful of protesters is compared to the whole of the Churches of England, the Low Countries, Ger- many, Hungary, Italy, Naples, Savoy, Portugal, Spain, etc., which, on being requested to pronounce, did so by proscribing the appeal as an act of schism and foolish revolt? The polemics, however, continued for several years. The return to unity of Cardinal de Noailles, who submitted without restriction in 1728, six months before his death, was a telling blow to the party of Quesnel. Henceforth it steadily grew less, so that not even the scenes that took place at the cemetery of Saint-Medard,of which mention is made below, restored it. But the Parlements, eager to de- clare themselves and to apply their Galilean and roy- alist principles, continued for a long time to refuse to receive the Bull "Unigenitus". They even made it the occasion to meddle in scandalous fashion in the administration of the sacraments, and to persecute bishops and priests accused of refusing absolution to those who would not submit to the Holy See.
VI. The Convulsionahies. — We have reviewed the long series of defensive measures contrived by the Jan- senists: rejection of the five propositions without rejec- tion of the" August inns "; explicit dist inction 1 ictween thequcsli(inorrightaiidthe(|uestionof fact; restriction of ecclesiastical inl'allibility to the question of right; the tactics of respectful silence, and appeal to a general council. They had exhausted all the expedients of a theological and canonical discussion more obstinate than smcere. Not a .single one of these had availed them anything at the bar of right reason or of legiti- mate authority. They then thought to invoke in their behalf the direct testimony of God Himself,
namely, miracles. One of their number, an appel-
lant, a rigorist to the point of having once passed two
years without communicating, for the rest given to a
retired and penitent life, the deacon Francois de Paris,
had died in 1727. They pretended that at his tomb
in the little cemetery of Saint-Medard marvellous
cures took place. A case alleged as such was exam-
ined by de Vintimille, Archbishop of Paris, who with
proofs in hand declared it false and supposititious
(17.31). But other cures were claimed by the party,
and so noised abroad that soon the sick and the cu-
rious flocked to the cemetery. The sick experienced
strange agitations, nervous commotions, either real or
simulated. They fell into violent transports and in-
veighed against the pope and the bishops, as the con-
vulsionaries of Cevennes had denounced the papacy
and the iVIass. In the excited crowd women were
especially noticeable, screaming, yelling, throwing
themselves about, sometimes assuming the most as-
tounding and unseemly postures. To justify these ex-
travagances, complacent admirers had recourse to the
theory of "figurism". As in their eyes the fact of
the general acceptance of the Bull "Unigenitus" was
the apostasy predicted by the Apocalypse, so the
ridiculous and revolting scenes enacted by their friends
symbolized the state of upheaval which, according to
them, involved everything in the Church. They re-
verted thus to a fundamental thesis such as has been
met with in Jansenius and St-Cyran, and which these
latter had borrowed from the Protestants. A journal,
the " Nouvelles EcclSsiastiques ", had been founded in
1729 to defend and propagate these ideas and prac-
tices, and the "Nouvelles" was profusely spread,
thanks to the pecuniary resources furnished by the
Boile a Perreite, the name given later to the capital or
common fund of the sect begun by Nicole, and which
grew so rapidly that it exceeded a million of money.
It had hitherto served chiefly to defray the cost of ap-
peals and to support, in France as well as in Holland,
the religious, men and women, who deserted their con-
vents or congregations for the sake of Jansenism.
The cemetery of Saint-Medard, having become the scene of exhibitions as tumultuous as they were in- decent, was closed by order of the court in 1732. The auvre des convulsions, as its partisans called it, was not, however, abandoned. The convulsions reap- peared in private houses with the same characteristics, but more glaring. Henceforth with few exceptions they seized only upon young girls, who, it was said, possessed a divine gift of healing. But wliat was more astonishing was that their bodies, subjected dur- ing the crisis to all sorts of painful tests, seemed at once insensible and invulnerable; they were not wounded by the sharpest instruments, or bruised by enormous weights or blows of incredible violence. A convulsionary, nicknamed "la Salamandre", re- mained suspended for more than nine minutes above a fiery brazier, enveloped only in a sheet, which also re- mained intact in the midst of the flames. Tests of this sort had received in the language of the sect the de- nomination of secours, and the secouristes, or partisans of the secours, distinguished between the petits-secours and the grands-secours, only the latter being supposed to require supernatural force. At this point, a wave of defiance and opposition arose among the Jansen- ists themselves. Thirty appellant doctors openly de- clared by common consent against the convulsions and I he .secours. A lively discussion arose between the scniurixics and the anti-secouristes. The secouristes in turn were soon divided into clisrrniiiiilcs and mc- laniiixtrs; the former {listinguishing between the work itsi'lf and it sgrotes(|Uc or object ioiialile feat liri-s, which they aseribecl to the Devil or to liuniau weakness, while the latter rega riled the convulsions and the secours as a single work coming from God, in which even the .shocking eleiiients had purpose and significance.
Without entering further into the details of these
