JANSEN, CORNELIUS (1585–1638), bishop of Ypres, and father of the religious revival known as Jansenism, was born of humble Catholic parentage at Accoy in the province of Utrecht on the 28th of October 1585. In 1602 he entered the university of Louvain, then in the throes of a violent conflict between the Jesuit, or scholastic, party and the followers of Michael Baius, who swore by St Augustine. Jansen ended by attaching himself strongly to the latter party, and presently made a momentous friendship with a like-minded fellow-student, Du Vergier de Hauranne, afterwards abbot of Saint Cyran. After taking his degree he went to Paris, partly to recruit his health by a change of scene, partly to study Greek. Eventually he joined Du Vergier at his country home near Bayonne, and spent some years teaching at the bishop’s college. All his spare time was spent in studying the early Fathers with Du Vergier, and laying plans for a reformation of the Church. In 1616 he returned to Louvain, to take charge of the college of St Pulcheria, a hostel for Dutch students of theology. Pupils found him a somewhat choleric and exacting master and academic society a great recluse. However, he took an active part in the university’s resistance to the Jesuits; for these had established a theological school of their own in Louvain, which was proving a formidable rival to the official faculty of divinity. In the hope of repressing their encroachments, Jansen was sent twice to Madrid, in 1624 and 1626; the second time he narrowly escaped the Inquisition. He warmly supported the Catholic missionary bishop of Holland, Rovenius, in his contests with the Jesuits, who were trying to evangelize that country without regard to the bishop’s wishes. He also crossed swords more than once with the Dutch Presbyterian champion, Voetius, still remembered for his attacks on Descartes. Antipathy to the Jesuits brought Jansen no nearer Protestantism; on the contrary, he yearned to beat these by their own weapons, chiefly by showing them that Catholics could interpret the Bible in a manner quite as mystical and pietistic as theirs. This became the great object of his lectures, when he was appointed regius professor of scriptural interpretation at Louvain in 1630. Still more was it the object of his Augustinus, a bulky treatise on the theology of St Augustine, barely finished at the time of his death. Preparing it had been his chief occupation ever since he went back to Louvain. But Jansen, as he said, did not mean to be a school-pedant all his life; and there were moments when he dreamed political dreams. He looked forward to a time when Belgium should throw off the Spanish yoke and become an independent Catholic republic on the model of Protestant Holland. These ideas became known to his Spanish rulers, and to assuage them he wrote a philippic called the Mars gallicus (1635), a violent attack on French ambitions generally, and on Richelieu’s indifference to international Catholic interests in particular. The Mars gallicus did not do much to help Jansen’s friends in France, but it more than appeased the wrath of Madrid with Jansen himself; in 1636 he was appointed bishop of Ypres. Within two years he was cut off by a sudden illness on the 6th of May 1638; the Augustinus, the book of his life, was published posthumously in 1640.
Full details as to Jansen’s career will be found in Reuchlin’s Geschichte von Port Royal (Hamburg, 1839), vol. i. See also Jansénius by the Abbés Callawaert and Nols (Louvain, 1893). (St C.)
JANSENISM, the religious principles laid down by Cornelius
Jansen in his Augustinus. This was simply a digest of the teaching
of St Augustine, drawn up with a special eye to the needs of
the 17th century. In Jansen’s opinion the church was suffering
from three evils. The official scholastic theology was anything
but evangelical. Having set out to embody the mysteries of
faith in human language, it had fallen a victim to the excellence
of its own methods; language proved too strong for mystery.
Theology sank into a branch of dialectic; whatever would not fit
in with a logical formula was cast aside as useless. But average
human nature does not take kindly to a syllogism, and theology
had ceased to have any appreciable influence on popular religion.
Simple souls found their spiritual pasture in little mincing “devotions”;
while robuster minds built up for themselves a natural
moralistic religion, quite as close to Epictetus as to Christianity.
All these three evils were attacked by Jansen. As against the
theologians, he urged that in a spiritual religion experience, not
reason, must be our guide. As against the stoical self-sufficiency
of the moralists, he dwelt on the helplessness of man and his
dependence on his maker. As against the ceremonialists, he
maintained that no amount of church-going will save a man,
unless the love of God is in him. But this capacity for love no
one can give himself. If he is born without the religious instinct,
he can only receive it by going through a process of “conversion.”
And whether God converts this man or that depends on
his good pleasure. Thus Jansen’s theories of conversion melt
into predestination; although, in doing so, they somewhat
modify its grimness. Even for the worst miscreant there is
hope—for who can say but that God may yet think fit to convert him? Jansen’s thoughts went back every moment to his two spiritual heroes, St Augustine and St Paul, each of whom had been “the chief of sinners.”
Such doctrines have a marked analogy to those of Calvin; but in many ways Jansen differed widely from the Protestants. He vehemently rejected their doctrine of justification by faith; conversion might be instantaneous, but it was only the beginning of a long and gradual process of justification. Secondly, although the one thing necessary in religion was a personal relation of the human soul to its maker, Jansen held that that relation was only possible in and through the Roman Church. Herein he was following Augustine, who had managed to couple together a high theory of church authority and sacramental grace with a strongly personal religion. But the circumstances of the 17th century were not those of the 5th; and Jansen landed his followers in an inextricable confusion. What were they to do, when the outward church said one thing, and the inward voice said another? Some time went by, however, before the two authorities came into open conflict. Jansen’s ideas were popularized in France by his friend Du Vergier, abbot of St Cyran; and he dwelt mainly on the practical side of the matter—on the necessity of conversion and love of God, as the basis of the religious life. This brought him into conflict with the Jesuits, whom he accused of giving absolution much too easily, without any serious inquiry into the dispositions of their penitent. His views are expounded at length by his disciple, Antoine Arnauld, in a book on Frequent Communion (1643). This book was the first manifestation of Jansenism to the general public in France, and raised a violent storm. But many divines supported Arnauld; and no official action was taken against his party till 1649. In that year the Paris University condemned five propositions from Jansen’s Augustinus, all relative to predestination. This censure, backed by the signatures of eighty-five bishops, was sent up to Rome for endorsement; and in 1653 Pope Innocent X. declared all five propositions heretical.
This decree placed the Jansenists between two fires; for although the five propositions only represented one side of Jansen’s teaching, it was recognized by both parties that the whole question was to be fought out on this issue. Under the leadership of Arnauld, who came of a great family of lawyers, the Jansenists accordingly took refuge in a series of legal tactics. Firstly, they denied that Jansen had meant the propositions in the sense condemned. Alexander VII. replied (1656) that his predecessor had condemned them in the sense intended by their author. Arnauld retorted that the church might be infallible in abstract questions of theology; but as to what was passing through an author’s mind it knew no more than any one else. However, the French government supported the pope. In 1656 Arnauld was deprived of his degree, in spite of Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656–1657), begun in an attempt to save him (see Pascal; Casuistry). In 1661 a formulary, or solemn renunciation of Jansen, was imposed on all his suspected followers; those who would not sign it went into hiding, or to the Bastille. Peace was only restored under Clement IX. in 1669.
This peace was treated by Jansenist writers as a triumph; really it was the beginning of their downfall. They had set out
