Figurism

FIGURISM. - A system of interpreting Holy Scripture, according to which the events and figures of the Bible would be prefigurations of events and personages in the history of the Church, especially of the 18th century. It is due to G. B. de Sesne de Ménilles, abbot of Etémare (1682-1770), a Jansenist, and it is connected to the convulsionary movement (v. CONVULSIONARI di S. MEDARDO) with the aim of drawing from this interpretation of Scripture motives of defense in favor of the condemned heresy. The general apostasy of the Church, according to Etémare, occurred with the universal acceptance of the bull Unigenitus; false doctors are the pope and all those who oppose the doctrine of efficacious Grace, representatives of Pelagianism and of lax morality. The Roman Church is already foretold in the Beast of the Apocalypse;

Saint-Cyran is the Mattathias of the Maccabees; Arnauld, Judas Maccabeus; the ass of Balaam, all the priests who under the harassment of the bishops accept the bull Unigenitus, which when it prophesies means Mother Angelica Arnauld and all the nuns who openly declared themselves against the Roman constitution. The proclamation of the bull Unigenitus and its acceptance is a sure sign of the end of the world, of the conversion of the Jews and of the appearance of Elijah the prophet. Elijah in fact will reappear on earth at the head of the convulsionaries and will re-establish the faith in the sense and doctrine of Quesnel and of the appellants.

This novelty gave rise, more or less clandestinely, to little books De l'avènement d'Elie; Confectures des derniers temps and various prophecies, among them the one that indicated a Jew as a future pope. Etémare's pupils, Joubert, De Fourquevaux, the two Des Essarts, developed the master's ideas to the point of constituting a veritable sect, to which adhered Jansenist bishops such as Colbert, Spane, Varlet; publicists such as the editor of the Jansenist periodical La roche; and, it was asserted, the deacon Paris himself, whose death gave occasion to convulsionarism. Not only were the personages prefigured in the Bible designated, but the dates of the events were determined. The time when Elijah would appear was already known, and preparations were made to go to meet him; on 24 March 1730 the war of the apocalyptic beast had begun with the royal declaration of acceptance and in Sept. 1733 it was to end. It was necessary, however, that the measure be full, that the earth be abominated by sin, so that the final judgment for the wicked and the retribution for the good might come about. To hasten this divine division some even went so far as to commit every sort of enormity. Meanwhile, here and there, precursors appeared who declared themselves sent by God to forewarn of the judgment. The abbot Vaillant called himself Elijah and founded the "elisei". Gian Roberto Cose, "brother Agostino", called himself servant of the servants of God, announcer of Elijah, fourth person of the Trinity; he placed himself on a table in the position of the Immaculate Lamb and demanded adoration. Moved by these and by other figurist appeals, and in Paris the convulsionaries organized nocturnal expiatory processions to obtain the renewal of the Church, which took the road to Port-Royal, stopped on the ruins of the monastery, and the convulsionaries killed a beast and with its blood marked the houses as far as Versailles, those houses namely that were to be spared by the destroying angel at the coming of Elijah. They even cast lots for one of their number who was to be crucified in expiation; and the lot fell to the abbot Sévin, and they were already beginning to scourge him. But as he resisted and declared that such a sacrifice had to be voluntary and that a spiritual preparation was necessary, in the likeness of the Passion of Jesus in the garden of Olives, they granted him twenty-four hours' time, so that he might acquire the necessary dispositions of spirit; but when the term expired, he was not to be found. Such profanations seem incredible today, and are instead the natural conclusion of a degeneration due to rebellion against the authority and the dogmas of the Faith, and together to the superstitious fanaticism that always takes hold of souls proud and rebellious against discipline. Degeneration and fanaticism that lent weapons to unbelief, as to the skeptic David Hume regarding the "miracles" of the deacon Paris (Essays and treatises on several subjects, II, London 1777, p. 133).

Benvenuto Matteucci