GIANNOTTI, DONATO

Giannotti, Donato. — Scholar, born in Florence on 27 Nov. 1492, died in Rome on 27 Dec. 1573. A follower of Savonarola and an opponent of the Medici, in 1527 he served as secretary to the *Dieci* as Machiavelli had done before him; after the fall of the Florentine Republic he was forced into exile.

Besides his early verse, he wrote comedies (*Il vecchio amoroso*, *La Milesia*) and, above all, political treatises.

Gianesino (Jansens), Cornelius (Kornelius). — Flemish theologian and exegete, born in Hulst in 1510, died in Ghent on 11 Apr. 1576. Educated at the University of Louvain, he taught theology to the Premonstratensians (at Tongerloo Abbey, 1534–42), then became parish priest of St Martin’s in Courtrai and, from 1560, dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, together with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He had a thorough knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasizes the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and most extensively on the four Gospels, which he wove into an orderly *Historia evangelica*. All these works, prized for their manifold merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit. Apart from his paraphrases of the Psalms, they rank among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*... (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libros sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

Gianesino, Cornelius — Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, known as “the Elder.” Frontispiece of *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*... Antwerp 1613.JANUS

(Dianus: the name of the god is sometimes explained by reference to the Sanskrit *yana* (to walk); this would refer to the path of the sun. The position of “beginning” (for which G. is also called “matutinus”) and other characteristics, such as the connection with water—emphasized especially, though not exclusively (cf. the dedication of a temple to him on the occasion of a naval victory; the spring near the Janus Geminus; the prow associated with his image on the *as* of the Republic)—by the myth, nonetheless advise against a simplistic equation between G. and the sun. The ancient places of worship of G. are: the Regia itself, where the *rex sacrorum* sacrifices the plough on the day of the *Agonium*; the *tigillum sororium* on the Mons Oppius, where the cult of Janus Curiatius is associated with that of Iuno Sororia (the legendary cult concerns the Horatius who defeated the Curiatii and, passing under the *tigillum*, expiates his fratricide; the festival is on 9 October); the monument, more than a temple, called Janus Geminus: this, founded according to tradition by Numa Pompilius, was to be open as long as Rome was at war, closed in time of peace (to this use is connected the double epithet *Patulcius Clusius* of the god); the temple near the Theatre of Marcellus, founded on the occasion of the victory at Mylae (the festival of the temple coincided with the *Portunalia* of the ancient calendar, 17 August); one may add the Janus Quadrifrons built under Domitian: the four-faced image would have been imported from Falerii. The cult of G. is almost exclusively public. The scant private participation and the lack of Greek models determine the poverty of the mythology surrounding the figure, which, however, is seen either as the first peaceful king of Latium or as an all-seeing god placed in amorous relations with water goddesses such as Iuturna and Venilia, or others such as Carna. More than to mythology, the figure of G. lent itself to cosmogonic speculations, in which it represented the origin, the beginning of the world, similar to the Greek Chaos (v.). The name of the Gianicolo (Ianiculum), its mythical seat, derives from the name of G. Perhaps here too G. had an ancient place of worship now forgotten.

Gianesino (Jansens), Cornelio and Gianesino.

Gianesino, Cornelio – Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, called G. the Elder. Title page of *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*… Antwerp 1613.

Gianesino, Cornelio (Kornelius). – Flemish theologian and exegete, b. at Hulst in 1510, d. at Ghent on 11 Apr. 1576. Educated at the University of Louvain, he taught theology to the Premonstratensians (abbey of Tongerloo, 1534–42), then became parish priest of St Martin at Courtrai, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He was well versed in Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasizes the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he wove into an orderly *Historia evangelica*. All these works, on account of their manifold merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit. They (except the paraphrases of the Psalms) are among the most notable Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*… (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libri sum. Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

He was well versed in Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasizes in them the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he himself wove into an orderly Historia evangelica. All these works, on account of their manifold merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit today. Apart from the paraphrases of the Psalms, they rank among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*... (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libros Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

Cornelius Gianesino – Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, known as G. the Elder. Title page of the *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*... Antwerp 1614.

Cornelius Gianesino (Kornelius). – Flemish theologian and exegete, b. at Hulst in 1510, d. at Ghent on 11 Apr. 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (abbey of Tongerloo, 1534–42), then served as parish priest of St Martin at Courtrai, and from 1560 as dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, together with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.Cornelio Gianesino (Kornelius). – Flemish theologian and exegete, born at Hulst in 1510, died at Ghent on 11 April 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (at Tongerloo Abbey, 1534–42), then became parish priest of St Martin’s at Courtrai, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, together with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He had a good knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasises the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he wove into an orderly Historia evangelica. All these works, prized for their many merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit. Apart from the paraphrases of the Psalms, they rank among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: Concordia evangelica... (Louvain 1549); Paraphrasis in omnes Ps. (ibid. 1568); Comm. in Prov. Salomonis (ibid. 1569); Annotationes in libros sap. Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli. (Antwerp 1569); Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam (Louvain 1572).

Cornelio Gianesino – Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, known as Gianesino the Elder. Frontispiece of the Commentariorum in suum concordiam... Antwerp 1613.Gianesino, Cornelio (Kornelius). - Flemish theologian and exegete, born at Hulst in 1510, died at Ghent on 11 April 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (at Tongerloo Abbey, 1534-42), then became parish priest of St Martin at Courtrai, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He had a good knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasizes the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he wove into an orderly Historia evangelica. All these works, on account of their many merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit. They (except for the paraphrases of the Psalms) are among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*... (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libri sum. Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

Gianesino, Cornelio - Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, known as G. the Elder. Frontispiece of *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*... Antwerp 1615.

Gianesino, Cornelio (Kornelius). - Flemish theologian and exegete, born at Hulst in 1510, died at Ghent on 11 April 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (at Tongerloo Abbey, 1534-42), then became parish priest of St Martin at Courtrai, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He had a good knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; G. emphasizes in them the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he himself wove into an orderly Historia evangelica. All these works, on account of their many merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit today. They (except for the paraphrases of the Psalms) are among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*... (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libros Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

Gianesino, Cornelio – Portrait of G. C., bishop of Ghent, known as G. the Elder. Title page of *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*... Antwerp 1616.

Gianesino, Cornelio (Cornelius). – Flemish theologian and exegete, b. at Hulst in 1510, d. at Ghent on 11 Apr. 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (abbey of Tongerloo, 1534–42), then became parish priest of St Martin at Courtrai, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, together with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.Cornelius Jansenius (Kornelius Gianesino)

Portrait of Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ghent, known as Jansenius the Elder. Title page of *Commentariorum in suum concordiam*... Antwerp 1617.

Cornelius Jansenius (Kornelius). – Flemish theologian and exegete, born at Hulst in 1510, died at Ghent on 11 April 1576. He was educated at the University of Louvain, taught theology to the Premonstratensians (at Tongerloo Abbey, 1534–42), then became parish priest of St Martin at Courtray, and from 1560 dean of the Faculty of Theology at Louvain. Margaret of Austria sent him, together with Hessels and Baius, to the Council of Trent (1563); in 1568 he was appointed Bishop of Ghent, where he implemented the norms of the Council of Trent.

He had a thorough knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His writings are exegetical; in them he emphasizes the literal-historical sense. He commented on the Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and more extensively on the four Gospels, which he wove into an orderly *Historia evangelica*. All these works, on account of their manifold merits, were reprinted many times and are still consulted with profit today. With the exception of the paraphrases of the Psalms, they rank among the most distinguished Catholic commentaries of the 16th century. He published: *Concordia evangelica*... (Louvain 1549); *Paraphrasis in omnes Ps.* (ibid. 1568); *Comm. in Prov. Salomonis* (ibid. 1569); *Annotationes in libros Sap. et Commentarii in Eccli.* (Antwerp 1569); *Corn. Jansensi ep. Gand. commentariis in suum Concordiam ac totam hist. evangelicam* (Louvain 1572).

Having been elected abbot of St-Cyran, Jansenius returned to Louvain, where he rebuilt and then for some time directed the College of St. Pulcheria, obtaining the doctoral degree in theology in 1619, and from 1630 holding the chair of Sacred Scripture. In 1635 he was appointed bishop of Ypres by the court of Madrid, and following the approval of Urban VIII, he took possession of the episcopal see in 1636. But after only eighteen months of ministry, consumed by toil and contagion, he died piously. He had sympathetically received Marcantonio De Dominis’ *De republica Christiana*, and the Protestant Synod of Dordrecht (1619), which reiterated Calvin’s doctrine against the Arminians and Catholics; and these acceptances might have aroused suspicion of heresy. Yet at the same time he had published: *ALEXIPHARMACUM* (Louvain 1630), which he defended with a *Spongia notarum* (ibid. 1631) against Gilbert Voet; and *Maris gallicus* (s.l. 1635), in the first of which he defended the truths of the Catholic Church, denying Protestants the authority to reform the Church, and in the second, under the pseudonym Alexander Patricius Armacanus, he denounced with biting satire the alliances made by the kings of France with German, Swedish, and Dutch Protestants against a thesis propounded in 1634 by the theologian of Lyon, Besian Arroy. To these works he added the *Tetrateuchus* (Louvain 1639), a commentary on the Gospels; the *Pentateuchus* (ibid. 1641); and the *Analecta* (ibid. 1644), commentaries respectively on the Pentateuch, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Nothing therefore grave or censurable could have been cited against the deceased bishop of Ypres, had there not appeared posthumously the *Augustinus, seu doctrina s. Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses* (Louvain 1640), which, immediately reprinted in Paris in 1641, achieved an incredible success in editions and circulation.

How did Jansenius’ *Augustinus* come into being? One may see in it the ambiguity of a compromise. The reasons for this compromise, if they sprang from new sources, had much deeper and more distant roots, namely in the very historical origins of the problem of Grace as it appears in the doctrine of Pelagius and the predestinarians. In the age-old controversy over Grace and predestination, Jansenius’ *Augustinus* intervenes.

Between the rigid determinism of the predestinarians and the Reformers and Catholic doctrine, Jansenius places his compromise. He seeks in Augustine a neutral ground and appeals for reconciliation. He had been preceded by Baius, whose reading is necessary for anyone wishing to study the Jansenist movement. Jansenius so closely defends Baius that, had circumstances been otherwise, the word “Baiansim” might have taken in theological vocabulary the place now occupied by “Jansenism.” From Baius Jansenius learned to import, in the name of St. Augustine, his own critique into Revelation, outside the authority of Revelation itself, studying the Catholic doctrine of Grace outside the Church’s magisterium; and though he affirmed his reliance on the Church, he preferred the ancient Church, distrustful of the contemporary one. Like Baius, he believed that the Fathers of the Council of Trent had hurled too many anathemas against the Reformers; and failing to grasp the balanced wisdom of the conciliar definitions, he held that the censures were not justified and that the condemned propositions were not such. In opposition to the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, as Luther had done, he followed his own critical judgment in the primitive tradition, and since in the ancient Church Augustine dominated with his doctrine, and the volumes of the Reformers and Catholic treatises rested on his authority—indeed the Council of Trent repeatedly cited him in its decrees—Jansenius sought in Augustine’s works the charter of reconciliation more decisively than Baius. Baius, in fact, was too Pelagian to satisfy the Lutherans and too Lutheran to please the Catholics. He pleased neither party, thus ending the history of Augustinianism and beginning that of Jansenism.

II. THE CONDEMNATION

On 19 August 1641 the Sacred Congregation of the Index and the Inquisition condemned 18 works, including Jansenius’ *Augustinus*. With this condemnation begins the history of an alleged heresy born, according to the last words of the bishop of Ypres, against the will of its founder, who was not expressly a heretic. Jansenius, in fact, in his will (which some consider forged), but more explicitly in several places in his authentic *Augustinus* (cf., e.g., vol. II, bk. 29), protested: «Sento enim aliquid difficulter mutari posse. Si tamen Romana Sedes aliquid mutari velit, sum obediens filius, et illius Ecclesiae in qua semper vixi usque ad hunc lectum mortis obediens sum». «Sento aliquid difficulter mutari posse» and «obediens sum»: with an act of pride and a protest of faith begins and ends the posthumous history not only of the *Augustinus* but of every Jansenist work. The *Augustinus* appeared in three folio volumes. Jansenius had worked on it for twenty-two years, rereading ten, twenty, and even three hundred times the writings of the great African Father. The first volume is divided into 8 books and expounds and refutes the heresy of Pelagius with the authority of St. Augustine. The second volume, after delineating the limits of reason in theology and the authority of St. Augustine, treats of the status of fallen nature and the status of pure nature. The third volume directly proposes the doctrine of Grace, freedom, predestination, and reprobation. It concludes with a critical comparison between the condemned doctrine of the Massilians and the Molinist doctrine of the Jesuits. The *Augustinus* is therefore chiefly a treatise on Grace, a collection of doctrinal developments on Grace documented with isolated texts from St. Augustine. In defining the method of theology, Jansenius declares philosophical reason «the mother of all heresies,» calls the scholastics «dogs that bark in the schools,» and opposes to them «memory,» that is, tradition. Yet in tradition he has little sympathy for the Greek Fathers, and of the Latin Fathers he recognizes only Augustine—«Pater Patrum, doctor doctorum, primus post scriptores canonicos, inter omnes vere solidus, subtilis, irrefragabilis, angelicus, seraphicus, excellensissimus et ineffabiliter mirabilis» etc. In doctrinal matters he cares only to ascertain what St. Augustine’s opinion was, and when he encounters a proposition condemned by the Apostolic See: «Quid ad propositionem quam proscripti Apostolica Sedes?» he asks himself. «Haereo, fateor. Sed quid ad doctrinam Augustini?... Nec enim ego quid verum aut falsum, quid tenendum et non tenendum in Catholica Ecclesiae doctrina tradidi, sed quid Augustinus tenendum asseruerit et docuerit». «Si quis vobis annuntiaverit»—he repeats, paraphrasing St. Paul—«praeter id quod ex Augustino accepistis, anathema sit» (vol. II, bk. III, ch. 22; vol. III, ch. 1, partitio dicendorum).

In establishing the doctrine of Grace, Jansenius resumes Baius’ interpretation, the doctrine of double love (the duplex delectatio). Adam before sinning was free; he could sin because he possessed only sufficient Grace (called by Augustine *auxilium sine quo non*). After sinning, he lost his freedom and for every good act required efficacious Grace (*auxilium quo*) that would infallibly determine the will. Man, through sin, is intrinsically corrupted and dominated by concupiscence, and thus dragged to evil without being able to resist, invincibly. His will is dominated by earthly cupidity or earthly love. His works are sins unless the charity or heavenly love intervenes to infallibly determine the will to good. This double love is the principle of our physical, moral, and supernatural conduct, and hence it is called

but «delectatio victrix». The man subjected to the iron law of an invincible love remains thus enslaved either to earth or to heaven, without personal merit or demerit, dragged toward good or evil, salvation or damnation, by an irresistible celestial or earthly delight. While Bañezians and Molinists, while safeguarding the omnipotence of Grace and human freedom, admit that there is a sufficient Grace, given by God to all men, which confers upon them the proximate power to fulfill the commandments, and which receives its efficacy either from the supernatural action within us (Bañezians) or from the assent of our freedom (Molinists). Jansenius, following in the footsteps of Baius, proclaims that every Grace is efficacious and therefore invincible, and that under the action of efficacious Grace we can do nothing of our own. God predestines to hell or to paradise with a will antecedent to any consideration of merit. Christ died only for the predestined, and to them alone does He give efficacious Grace. Freedom therefore does not exist, and if Jansenius speaks of freedom it is only exemption from external violence or physical coercion. The entire Augustinus is an immense polemical and partisan arsenal, as his followers would later demonstrate, in defense of the duplex delectatio carried to the paroxysm of a personal prejudice; the “magna charta” of Jansenist theology which Fénelon would rightly call “cousin germain du calvinisme.”

III. DEVELOPMENTS OF JANSENISM

It seems strange, and no one would have imagined it, least of all Jansenius, that a doctrine so stretched and grim, and so different from the sweet vivacity of the French genius, would find in France and the Latin countries a vast and fortunate conquest.

Bremond was struck by this: “one would attribute the birth of Jansenism to a sort of spontaneous generation. The nose of Cleopatra... historical Jansenism is for me a true monster. As a monster it could owe its birth only to strange and unforeseeable encounters.” It was instead the natural refuge of the dissatisfied, of the discontented in France and Belgium after the condemnation of Calvinism, of those who, without prejudicing themselves against civil and ecclesiastical authority, saw in Jansenius’ doctrine a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism. Moreover, for some restless spirits, Jansenius’ theories could represent the best part of the Catholic Reformation; yet they diverted the desire for a moral and religious rebirth—which was necessary and urgent in that century and in that society—into the choice of a reforming principle, preferring the canons of the Council of Trent and the authority of the Roman pontiff to the ambiguities of reform and the personal criterion of interpretation and judgment. If, however, this social and spiritual climate favored the development of heresy, unforeseen encounters, as Bremond affirms, facilitated its path. Jansenism indeed finds its raison d’être more in psychology than in religious metaphysics. The anathemas of Rome, which mark the progressive death of other heresies, become, for a time, its fortune. Indeed, it is born, reveals itself, consolidates, weaves its history in the dates and forms of various papal condemnations. When the Jesuits obtained some printed sheets of the Augustinus, they immediately denounced II. Urban VIII hastened to prohibit the continuation of the printing, which was secretly supervised by Fromond and Calenus. But despite the opposition of the Jesuits, the internuncio of Brussels, and the University of Louvain, the printing continued and was completed under the protection of Cardinal Ferdinand, Infante of Spain and governor of the Netherlands, to whom it was dedicated, and it appeared with the privileges of the King of Spain and Emperor Ferdinand III granted in January 1638 and February 1640, and with the favorable censorship of Enrico Calenus and Giacomo Pontano, who declared the work “heavenly... necessary and most useful to the Church... in conformity with the doctrine of St. Augustine.” The diffusion and reprints were numerous, even in Rome in 1643, encountering the most varied and heated controversy.

Saint-Cyran affirmed that after St. Paul and St. Augustine, Jansenius was the third who had “spoken most divinely of Grace and created the book of devotion for modern times.” When the work was submitted to the judgment of the Sacred Congregation of the Index on June 10, 1643, it was first condemned by a decree of the Inquisition (March 4, 1641), then by Urban VIII’s bull In eminenti, drafted by Francesco Albizzi (March 6, 1642), by Innocent X’s constitution Cum occasione (May 31, 1653), and finally by Alexander VII’s Ad Sacram beati Petri Sedem (October 16, 1656). Innocent had appointed five cardinals and thirteen theologians to examine the Augustinus. The examination lasted more than two years in 36 sessions. The Pope himself attended the first ten sessions. The defenders of Jansenius were allowed to plead their cause, but their defense did not avert the condemnation, which was included in the five following propositions declared rash, impious, blasphemous, deserving of excommunication, heretical (cf. Denz-U, 1092-96):

1) Some precepts of God are impossible even with the good will of righteous men, according to the present powers of nature, because they lack that Grace which renders them possible;
2) Interior Grace in the state of fallen nature is never resisted;
3) To acquire merit or demerit, freedom from internal necessity is not required, but only freedom from external coercion;
4) The Semi-Pelagians admitted for individual acts even at the beginning of faith the necessity of interior Grace arriving, and were heretics inasmuch as they granted to human will the power to resist or obey Grace;
5) It is a Semi-Pelagian error to affirm that Christ died for all.

But this condemnation did not greatly disturb the admirers of Jansenius, some of whom wished to appeal from the Pope to an ecumenical Council. In their judgment, the Pope was incompetent. But such an appeal would have prejudiced the Augustinus even more. This controversy with Rome made the dispute more lively, broadening the dogmatic aspect of the nascent heresy, initially soteriological, to include ecclesiastical errors such as that of reducing papal power (the Pope was conceived as primus inter pares among bishops, first in dignity but not in authority, inferior and subordinate to the ecumenical Council).

Yet the theories of Jansenius were to find their proving ground, their practical realization, at Port-Royal in Paris.

IV. Port-Royal

PORTO-ROYAL (v.) marks the passage of Jansenist heresy from a theological aspect to a polemical and ascetical form not unlike schism. The condemnations had already revealed the ambiguity of the Augustinus and of Jansenist belief, rebellious and intolerant children who refuse to leave the house and live within the family in continual strife. Jansenism thus appears as an heresy within the house, a schism within the family. Yet of this rebellion within the family, Saint-Cyran would encounter in Paris the controversialist diplomat ARNALDISTI (v.), a subtle and astute disputant who would teach Jansenism its indefinable polemical tactic. Author of the Logique de Port-Royal, defender of the Augustinus, he knew the hesitations, ambiguities, and equivocations of both defense and attack. He organized Jansenist ideas, infused them with a soul, and created a system. To theology he joined asceticism; to dogmatic reform on Grace he associated sacramental reform, though never clarifying his personal opinions. He taught never to reveal oneself, to scatter in the pages defending heresy remarks that were orthodox and beyond reproach. If ever he was suspected, he would immediately realize it, ready to affirm the contrary. With Arnauld the centrifugal parabola of heresy reaches its end. It begins with Jansenius, the theologian; passes through Saint-Cyran, the imperious figure; and concludes with Arnauld, the controversialist diplomat.

To him are owed the evasions of papal condemnations, by which Port-Royal would become famous. Arnauld warned: «ne risponde jamais absolument, mais toujours par si. Par là non se s'engagera à rien». Thus, when faced with the condemnation of the five propositions and those who called the Pope incompetent and wished to appeal to an ecumenical Council, he advised them to condemn, together with the Pope,

The Five Propositions. He nevertheless denied that they were to be found in the work of Jansenius or, if they were, he claimed that they were not condemnable in the sense intended by the author, who was that of St Augustine, which the Pope had certainly not reprobated nor could reprobate. Then thirty-eight bishops, assisted by many theologians, on 28 March 1654 declared that the Five Propositions had been marked by Jansenius and condemned in the sense intended by Jansenius. The Pope expressly defined: «We declare and define that those five propositions have been excerpted from the book of the aforementioned Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, entitled Augustinus, and condemned in the sense intended by the same Cornelius.»

But this was not enough. In two letters in defence of the Duke of Liancourt in February 1655, Arnauld distinguished between the question of law and the question of fact. The Church, the Pope, is infallible when judging matters of dogma or morality contained in Revelation and in the exposition of their doctrine (quaestio iuris), not in the judgment passed on the doctrine of a book by a human author or on the true sense which he may have given to his words (quaestio facti). In the quaestio iuris an interior assent to the decisions of the Church is prescribed; in the quaestio facti the Church has no power, at most it may demand respectful silence (silentium obsequiosum). Moreover, he added with a spirit altogether Jansenist, that St Peter, in his fall, lacked the necessary grace.

Together with Arnauld, an advocate of this equivocal policy, was Pierre Nicole, to whom are owed the works: *Les imaginaires ou lettres sur l'hérésie imaginaire* and *Tractatus de distinctione iuris et facti in causa jansseniana*, fundamental for understanding the wiles and artifices of Jansenism. From heresy one declines into schism, from error concerning the doctrine of grace into error concerning the infallibility of the papacy. The Pope, Nicole repeats, can infallibly condemn a doctrine as heretical, but cannot infallibly determine that that doctrine is to be found in a book (*Augustinus*); the five condemned propositions are not to be found in the *Augustinus* or at least not in the sense in which they have been condemned. The Pope is ill-informed or, if well-informed, is not infallible by himself but only with the consent of the universal Church. And if this consent is attained (as in the Council of Trent) one appeals to a future council (ready to appeal again ad infinitum), just as one appeals to the discipline of the ancient Church to overturn the discipline of the contemporary Church.

The Jansenists, by insisting on the reforming movement of the autonomy of reason in matters of faith, did not realise that they were placing alongside the dying Catholic faith their own faith. In defence of Arnauld, his friend Blaise Pascal (q.v.) became entangled in the intrigues of the Jansenist party. At Port-Royal he had his sister Jacqueline as ‘a directrice’, as he called her. Out of love for his sister and in fulfilment of a friendship with Arnauld he wrote a ‘pamphlet’, a literary apology of Port-Royal, a diatribe against Molinism, the *Provinciales* (1656–57), which might be defined as the canonisation of mockery at the expense of the Society of Jesus. But Pascal, like Nicole, soon realised that all this controversy had become ‘a mere comedy and a joke in bad taste’ (Nicole) and that ‘one cannot make an idol of the very truth, because truth without charity is not God, and is an image and an idol that must neither be loved nor worshipped’ (Pascal), and they withdrew from the subtle and refined subtleties that could save neither charity nor truth.

V. DA PORT-ROYAL A PISTOIA.

It was natural that, by turning away from the spiritual authority of the Church, Jansenism should fall back, in order to survive, upon the temporal power of the State and forms of superstition. To the first phase of the history of Jansenism, centred on grace, predestination and sacramental rigorism, there succeeded a second in which theology and morality seem to drown in Gallican theories and in hyper-mystical manifestations. The controversy of Port-Royal, which continued that of the Protestants by casting scorn on the ecclesiastical magisterium, had prepared the way for II. Already in the *Petrus Aurelius* of Saint-Cyran one finds essentially the theories of Richer and De Dominis, of Pithou and De Marca. Cardinal Richelieu had welded France into political and religious unity, but at the same time had sharpened the desire of the King of France to place the Church under his protection. Rome appeared almost as a foreign power, and Gallicanism sought to subject it to the absolutist state of Louis XIV. Under the banner of national sentiment historical and political forms were deified to the detriment of doctrine and of Catholic and supernatural life, which accumulated Jansenism with Protestantism in the Gallican courts.

If, like Luther, Jansenism had overthrown every authority in matters of faith, and in like manner as Calvinism had assumed a democratic and revolutionary character, with its ecclesiastical criticism, akin to the free examination, it drove not only to the denial of revealed truth but to the search for a point of support amidst the successive anathemas of Rome. To continue in their criticism and to escape or at least safeguard themselves from papal condemnations, the Jansenists resorted to a religious hybridism which forced them into a double life. Jansenism and Gallicanism cannot in fact be confused. The true Jansenists could ill tolerate the authority and infallibility of the papacy, but they were equally intolerant of every state interference, and when they turned to the Parlements it was to escape ecclesiastical condemnations. They did, however, have a common point: the Pope is inferior to the council; the decisions of the Pope, even in matters of faith, are not irreformable unless after the consent of the Church. If the Jansenists found in the Gallicans a refuge, the Gallicans found in the Jansenists a pretext. National reasons and theological reasons, and more still polemical reasons, made them close and friendly, so friendly as to believe them twins born of the same bed, but the difference existed. Bossuet, a Gallican, was always an adversary of the Jesuits. The Gallicans, heirs of Philip the Fair, are decisive; the Jansenists, followers of Arnauld, temporise, they do not like to compromise themselves or take a stand.

It is repeated that if the doctrines of Baius and of Jansenius approached the Gallican spirit it was through the work of Pasquier Quesnel (q.v.). This is not exact. The union between the two movements is due to the particular politico-religious situation determined by the jurisdictional struggles between the French Court and Rome. His *Réflexions morales* (1671) are a telling witness to this. In captious form they repeated exactly the doctrine of Jansenius and of Arnauld, reviving their controversies. They were prohibited by Clement X in 1675, but this prohibition gave rise to a flood of polemical pamphlets and did not prevent Quesnel, revising and expanding them, from republishing them many times and in various formats.

Amidst so much polemical literature there caused a stir a pamphlet published in 1702 under the title *Un cas de conscience* whether one should absolve those who maintained an ‘obsequious silence’ regarding the condemnation of the Five Propositions. Clement XI on 12 February 1702 proscribed even obsequious silence and three years later (16 July 1705) confirmed with the bull *Vineam Domini* (Denz. II, 1350) the condemnations of his predecessors. The nuns of Port-Royal, which remained as a centre of propaganda and ‘foyer d'agitation frondeuse’, who opposed the papal bull, were dispersed and the monastery by royal decree was razed to the ground (1710).

But the *Réflexions* of Quesnel kept the Jansenist questions alive for decades among the Parlements, the bishops, the religious Orders and the secular clergy, above all because of the equivocal attitude of Cardinal Noailles who, after having approved it, had taken the defence of Quesnel’s book. When a direct and decisive intervention of the Holy See was requested, this came on 8 September 1713 with the bull *Unigenitus* (Denz. U, 1351–1451) which condemned 101 propositions of Quesnel, that is, the whole theological, ascetical, moral and ecclesiastical doctrine of Jansenism. Some Jansenists appealed from this to an ecumenical council (1717), thus creating the party of the Appellants, who were excommunicated by Clement XI with the bull *Pastoralis officii* (1718).

After the death of the Regent Philip of Orleans (1723) and of Noailles (1729), the Jansenists had their only support in the Parlement and thus, rebellious and factious, they became a politico-philosophico-religious sect with an ever more aggressive accent against the theology, the morality and the piety of the Society of Jesus, particularly against probabilism and devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Heart of Jesus. From 1727 the *Novelle ecclesiastiche* became the organ of the party, Utrecht (v.) a moral point of reference. The movement of the convulsors of St Medard (v.) and Figurism (v.) contributed rather to divide than to unite minds (degenerating doctrine into facts and superstitious beliefs) in the religious controversy which lasted throughout the 18th century and in which the Parliaments became involved until Benedict XIV in 1756 renewed the prohibitions of the bull *Unigenitus*. During the French Revolution, Grégoire, Mouton and a few other Jacobin priests repeated Jansenist names and facts, but true Jansenism was now overwhelmed by the new Enlightenment theories.

VI. Italian Jansenism

Although the Jansenist diaspora was vast individually, socially it presented only two territorial centres: Utrecht, and more properly Pistoia. But in Utrecht the Jansenists found only a moral refuge and received encouragement in their struggle with Rome. Overwhelmed by condemnations, they turned, as they liked to say, to the Dutch schismatic bishops out of sympathy for persecution, seeing in them a shared martyrdom for the truth against Roman tyranny. In Italy, however, Jansenist heresy seemed to take on an aspect of continuity. Together with philosophical and scientific thought, religious questions entered by parallel paths at the end of the 17th century, but above all in the 18th. Port-Royal was known through Pascal’s *Provincial Letters*, and Jansenism was prepared by anti-Quesnellian polemics, by the Gallican politics of the courts, and by controversies over Grace and morality. The most notable ecclesiastical figures to whose influence an orientation towards Jansenism is due—though none of the three professed or was a Jansenist—are Cardinals Noris, Fulgenzio Bellelli, and Lorenzo Berti, Augustinians, called semi-Jansenists because they affirmed the necessity of Grace not *ex necessitate*, but only *ex decentia*. That is, they defended the Augustinian system while rejecting the interpretation of Jansenius. Accused of Baianism and of Jansenism, they vigorously defended themselves against these charges. Their intention was to insist on the distinction between the two states, before and after the Fall. Before the Fall, they said, Adam, under the influence of a versatile grace, could freely determine himself for good or evil; after the Fall, choice is possible only under the influence of an efficacious Grace *ab intrinseco*, that is, one which gives both possibility and act. The efficacy of this Grace consists in delight—not relative, that is, by superiority of degrees, but absolutely victorious, by which God infallibly moves the will to free consent. There is a sufficient Grace (*auxilium sine quo*) which can be resisted and remains without effect unless the medicinal aid of efficacious Grace (*auxilium quo*) supervenes. Berti constantly emphasised the differences which, in his opinion, separated his system from that of Jansenius. Delight, he affirmed, does not come necessarily, but infallibly, without violating human freedom. Sympathy for anti-Quesnellians, rigorists, and French appellants was found not only among Augustinians but also among seculars such as Giovanni Bottari and Francesco Foggini, and among cardinals such as Passionei; and in general among the Oratorians. Indeed, in Rome at the *Archetto* and the Oratory in the 18th century, the principal Italian Jansenists—Tamburini, Zola, Scipione de’ Ricci, Serrao, G. Capecelatro—met, formed relationships, and made friendships. Rome represented in the first half of the 18th century the formative, albeit underground, timid, and uncertain phase of Italian Jansenism, which in the second half of the century would give rise to a generation of rebels in the two principal centres of Pavia and Pistoia. Pavia, with Pietro Tamburini, became a centre for the dissemination of ideas, Pistoia, with Scipione de’ Ricci, a field of experimentation. But Jansenists were also to be found in Genoa—citing only a few names: Palmieri, Degola, Solari—in Naples: Serrao, Capecelatro, Simioli, Natale—in Turin, Milan, and Venice. Italian Jansenism was in fact an aristocratic phenomenon of small groups, not a broad movement as in France which had penetrated almost all social strata; it lacked a unitary and original character, varying from region to region, and often from person to person; it possessed only scant theological and doctrinal foundations. To the primitive doctrines of Jansenius, Saint-Cyrán, and Arnauld, it preferred the spirit as revealed in Quesnel and Duguet, deriving immediately from the French appellants through the Count Dupac de Belle-garde and the missionaries of the schismatic Church of Utrecht, and incorporating febronian, richerist, and Enlightenment elements. Thus there arose a regalist Jansenism in Milan and Pavia, a revolutionary and republican Jansenism in Genoa, and an ecclesiastical and liturgical Jansenism in Pistoia. In other words, the religious problem (religion and Church to be reformed) became a social and political one (an aspect not Jansenist in the heresy itself, but a support for it). The *Annali ecclesiastici*, modelled on the French journal of the same name, bear witness to how theology and morality were overwhelmed by political and jurisdictional concerns. Law and theology changed with events, even though among the epigoni there remained a faith in the theories of the three traditional fathers of Jansenism.

In Austria and in Lombardy the stronghold of Jansenism was Joseph II, in Naples Tanucci, in Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo (1765–90). Scipione de’ Ricci became its faithful minister of Grace and Justice. They worked together, though with different aims: Leopoldo for political ends, Ricci for religious illusion. Thus were born ecclesiastical reforms which, through the bishop’s agency, had Pistoia as their experimental centre. Yet other bishops too, such as Monsignor Sciarelli of Colle and Monsignor Pannilini of Chiusi and Piacenza, gave the reforms a regional aspect. Besides the two episcopal presses—Bracali in Pistoia and Vestri in Prato—other centres of editorial propaganda at Turin, Venice, Lugano, Florence, Naples and Pavia contributed to the movement.

The reforms were in part praiseworthy, but were undermined by a subtle poison of schism and heresy which found concrete expression in the Synod of Pistoia in 1786, attended by 234 priests styled “Fathers of the Council.” The Synod was meant to prepare an assembly of bishops and archbishops of Tuscany that would culminate in a national council and perhaps in a separate Church on the model of Utrecht, to which Ricci and the other Italian Jansenists were devoted. The Assembly held in Florence in 1787 frustrated the schismatic plan through the opposition of the bishops. The people, uncomprehending of theological issues and irritated by liturgical reforms, rose in a series of disturbances that forced Ricci and the other reformers to withdraw and the grand-ducal government to take measures.

Yet the Synod had rekindled Jansenist hopes in France, Spain, Austria and Holland. When the Holy See was asked for a definitive judgment, on 28 August 1794 it promulgated the bull *Auctorem Fidei*, drawn up by Cardinal Gerdil, which condemned in 85 propositions, arranged under 44 headings according to the diversity of subject-matter, all the inherited and adventitious errors of Jansenism (Denz.-U., 1501–99). To avoid the malignancy of the Jansenists by a blanket condemnation, as in the bull *Unigenitus*, each assertion was condemned with its proper qualifications and the various meanings it might bear. Seven propositions were condemned as heretical, the rest proscribed with differing censures. It was the tombstone of Jansenism.

That distinctly Enlightenment character which Jansenism assumed among us, combined with a desire for doctrinal, disciplinary, interior and moral reform, survived in Eustachio Degola (q.v.), who at the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century felt himself alone, “owing to the extreme paucity of successes of the Maccabees of Port-Royal.” At Paris, Saint-Severin, the last Jansenist church, grew ever more deserted. The scattered Jansenists entrusted themselves to the constitutional clergy of the Revolution. Even Ricci envisaged a possible restoration, but it was a vain mirage. When on 29 October 1809 “the friends of truth” marked a pilgrimage to the ruins of Port-Royal, Degola delivered a panegyric there; yet by now one lived only by memory and recollection. On those ruins the Genoese lingered from 1801 to 1810, melancholy amid brambles, stones and ruins, measuring the ground, sketching plans, discovering tombstones, taking notes and writing poems. With Ricci’s death, Jansenism expired in Eustachio Degola, who in the same memory joined the material ruins of Port-Royal with the spiritual and symbolic ruins of the Synod of Pistoia.

If in the Italian Risorgimento there still surface names, correspondence and doctrines of certain Jansenists, the link may be discerned in the non-Jansenist character of Italian Jansenism, namely in the shared—though not univocal—conception of the temporal power of the pope. Other causes doubtless contributed, such as a democratic system of life and politics, a new direction in philosophy and religious problems, and above all a bitter antipathy toward the Roman Curia. Liberals indeed saw in the temporal power an obstacle to national political unity, Jansenists to religious reform. Hence the prejudiced historiography that exalted and still exalts all rebels against Rome as pure spirits and martyrs of liberty. Some Jansenist traces remained in the rigorist sacramental practice of certain dioceses, in the tragic conception of human nature in some literary works, in the anti-curial spirit of politicians, in the religious criticism of free-thinkers; yet these were like seeds carried on the wind and sprouting in a climate and soil already prepared by other doctrines and revolutions.

VII. JUDGMENT ON JANSENISM

As it had been born and nurtured in the shadows in the composition and printing of the *Augustinus*, so it remained in the Church an invisible and indefinable enemy, even when it participated in the politico-religious revolutions of the states. Indivisible and indefinable, yet not a “phantom,” as Arnauld would insinuate, nor an “imaginary heresy,” as Nicole would repeat. This the cardinal de Richelieu would learn when he tried to silence it by imprisoning the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, and Louis XIV when he first suppressed and then destroyed the monastery of Port-Royal. The whole vocabulary and phraseology of commonplaces about Jansenism among ancient and modern historians and writers needs revision. Jansenism is not a political party, a school of philosophy and religious life, an academy of scholars, a struggle against the Baroque and rhetoric, a return to the measured and historical sense of the Greeks, an enlightened rebellion against moral and rational ostentation, or a suggestive theme of love in culture; it is a heresy, or rather a complex of theological errors, a deviation from dogma, from morality and from ecclesiastical discipline. Its backbone is formed by the theology of grace (Jansenius), sacramental moralism (Arnauld), spiritual and disciplinary practice (Saint-Cyran), and the diplomatic polemic that sustained and defended it (Quesnel). Yet one element does not exclude another; it includes them all. Condemned, Jansenism assumed schismatic aspects at Port-Royal, Utrecht and Pistoia. For the sake of survival it now allied itself with Gallicanism, now with jurisdictionalism, now with a hybrid philosophy and religion, now with Enlightenment revisions—motives that were external, yet its soul remained the desire for reform, an attempt to reconcile Calvinism and Catholicism, a lingering survival of Protestantism. Its fundamental issues were predestination, the corruption of human nature, the doctrine of the efficacy of Redemption, a return to the discipline of the primitive Church, moral and sacramental rigorism. Its driving force: hatred of the Society of Jesus.

Yet it would be a grave mistake, as Gazier would have it by antithesis, to regard Jansenism as a monster created by the Jesuits and comparable to hippogriffs and unicorns. The Jesuits were the most intolerant enemies of the Jansenists for the same reason that the Jansenists were their ardent adversaries: not for personal or caste motives, nor merely for a disciplinary or moral controversy, but for a theological reason—the very theological reason of the Catholic Reformation. The *Augustinus* indeed survives in the climate of Protestantism: in the same distrust of philosophical reason in expounding

The attempt to claim the keys of tradition, in the critical spirit of free thought regarding faith, in the belief that we are directly illuminated by God and the depositories of truth, in the religious absurdity that opportunistically blends theology and politics, in the affirmation of an interior and invisible assent, in the conviction of representing the best part of a decadent Christianity, in the rebellion against every form of ecclesiastical authority as the norm of faith and the imposition of one’s personal judgment, in the accusation of casuistry when moral voluntarism is discussed and of tyranny when discipline is mentioned. But more evident is the *duplex delectatio* in certain spiritual harshnesses of modern literature, as in the novels of Bernanos and Mauriac; psychoanalytic literature seems to close the cycle of *delectatio terrestris* in divinized sex, just as autonomous and angelic literature fixes the *delectatio caelestis* in the human word elevated to divinity. This anti-humanistic presence has always rendered Jansenism an individual heresy, never a social one. Its history is the history of individual Jansenists, a collection of biographies annotated by a chronicle of events enveloped in a religious psychology in which theological, moral, social, and ecclesiastical errors take shape in various encounters and territorial appearances. In the reforms that Jansenism desired and implemented, especially in Italy, not everything is condemnable, nor was everything condemned. Indeed, in some reforms it anticipated the times, but the spirit animating them demanded a renewal of the Church outside the Church. From Baius to the Synod of Pistoia, there is in fact a secret continuity of doctrine and method, and whoever wishes to understand the nature and history of Jansenism—rather than the biography of its protagonists, who lived in misunderstandings and deceits—must focus on the study of texts, incriminating works, and condemnatory documents. Above all, these latter are to be recommended to those who desire a doctrinal knowledge of the Jansenist heresy.