NICOLE, PIERRE. – Jansenist, born at Chartres on 19 October 1625, died at Paris on 16 November 1695. He pursued his studies in philosophy (1642–44) and theology at Paris (1644–49). The controversies concerning the “five propositions” of Jansenius (v.) immediately interested N., who withdrew from the doctorate and from Holy Orders and remained throughout his life merely tonsured. From his teaching of literature in the lower schools attached to the monastery of Port-Royal des Champs, and from his collaboration with Arnauld, whom he met in 1654, arose the Logique ou l'art de penser, better known as the Logic of Port-Royal, a classic text for elementary philosophical instruction.
Arnauld was already involved at that time in the Jansenist campaign. When Arnauld was accused at the Sorbonne, N. wrote various memoranda in Latin, which Arnauld presented as his own; he supplied Pascal with important documents for his Provinciales. Moreover, it was he who proposed and then increasingly defended the celebrated distinction between “fact and right,” characteristic of the Jansenist mentality and activity, according to which one could maintain that the “five propositions” of Jansenius, as they were read in extracts in the work of Fr. Cornet, were heretical, but that they were not so in Jansenius himself; one could indeed say that the Pope was infallible in right, but not always so in fact; and that Jansenism was heretical insofar as it was founded upon the propositions attributed to it, but was not so in reality, since those propositions had an entirely different meaning from that which was believed, and everything ultimately came down to a phantom devised by the adversaries of Augustinian doctrine and sound moral tradition. N. took an active part in the controversy aroused by Pascal’s Provinciales, with the writings Tredecim theologorum vota (1657), Belga percontator (published under the pseudonym Franciscus Profuturus), and Disquisitiones sex Pauli Irenai (1657); N. also translated the Provinciales into Latin (Ludovici Montolti Epistolae, under the pseudonym of Guglielmo Wendrock, 1658), in order to make them better known. After a long journey through Flanders and the Rhineland, in 1658 N. returned once again to Arnauld’s side and offered his assistance with various writings and initiatives of others. Indeed, he collaborated on M. de St-Mart’s Apologie pour les religieuses de Port-Royal (1664) and, later, on the celebrated New Testament known as that of Mons, an initiative of M. de Secy but, in reality, a collective work of the Port-Royalist group: this translation, prohibited in France, was subsequently published in Belgium, at Mons, in 1667. When in 1663 Alexander VII ordered all the bishops to sign the formularies, without distinguishing between “fact” and “right,” he defended the cause of the bishops of Pamiers, Aleth, Beauvais, and Angers, who refused to sign. The distinction between “fact” and “right” was then developed by N. in the ten Lettres sur l'hérésie imaginaire (1664–65), an imitation of Pascal’s Provinciales, in which the controversial questions arising from the anti-Jansenist polemic were also examined. The “peace of the Church” established by Clement XI in agreement with Louis XIV (23 October 1668), by which the recalcitrants were permitted to sign concerning “right,” while reserving their position regarding “fact,” seemed to be a practical reaffirmation of the validity of the principles and methods dear to N. He then turned to combat Protestant doctrine concerning the Eucharist more intensely: from a controversy with a Calvinist pastor arose a work on the continuity of Catholic faith regarding the Eucharist (called Petite perpétuité, 1664), taken up and expanded in Perpétuité de la foi touchant l'Eucharistie (better known as the Grande perpétuité, 1669, 1672, 1676, 3 vols.). This work was often attributed to Arnauld, but in reality he had written only its preface.
The archbishop of Paris, Francesco de Harlay, proved highly hostile; consequently, intimidated, N. left Paris for Belgium. There, on 10 July 1679, he met Arnauld; but he would not agree to follow him to Holland. The two former friends parted affectionately; but N. was by then following a path different from that of his friend. Indeed, he addressed to the archbishop of Paris a letter expressing complete submission; after a long wait and various journeys, on 17 May 1683 he received permission to withdraw to Chartres. There
he spent the final part of his life, working on various works of theology, morality, and anti-Calvinist polemic. In the Système de la Grâce générale (1691), against the thesis that God, the cause of everything, could also be regarded as the cause of ruin for the damned, he developed the idea of a “general Grace” given to everyone and sufficient, in right, for salvation, even though, in fact, because of original sin, a “special Grace” of God is required, superimposed upon the first and alone effective for salvation. Arnauld, initially, though amicably, and Quesnel thereafter, criticized this theory, arguing that if nature is common to all human beings, Grace is given only to some, and therefore one cannot speak of “general” Grace. Death overtook N. while he was engaged in drafting various works, among them the unfinished Instructions théologiques. His most celebrated work, however, is Essais de morale (under the pseudonym of Mombrigny, 6 vols. in all: I–IV, 1671–78; V–VI, posthumously, 1700–14), in which the various problems of Christian life and education are treated with psychological subtlety and in the light of a great, though pessimistic, moral vision. He also viewed with distrust the manifestations of the great mystical movement contemporary with him, being especially struck by certain aberrant forms of it, and combated the Quietists in the Réfutation des principales erreurs des quiétistes (1695). His moralistic and antimystical view of life is summarized in the Traité de la prière (1694).