Nicole, Pierre

NICOLE, PIERRE. - Jansenist, b. at Chartres on 19 Oct. 1625, d. at Paris on 16 Nov. 1695. He pursued his studies in philosophy (1642-44) and in theology at Paris (1644-49). The controversies over the "five propositions" of Jansenius (v.) immediately engaged N., who withdrew from the doctorate and from the sacred Orders and remained throughout his life a simple tonsured cleric. From his teaching of letters 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 by the name Logic of Port-Royal, a classic text for elementary philosophical instruction.

Arnauld was already at that time engaged in the Jansenist campaign. Accused in the Sorbonne on his account, N. wrote various memoranda in Latin, presented by Arnauld as his own; to Pascal he supplied important documents for his Provinciales. It was he, moreover, who proposed and then increasingly upheld the celebrated distinction of "fact and right," characteristic of the Jansenist mentality and action, according to which one could maintain that the "five propositions" of Jansenius, as they were read extracted in the work of Fr. Corneert, were heretical, but were not so in reality in Jansenius himself; it could well be said that the Pope was infallible in right, but was not always so in fact; and that Jansenism was heretical insofar as it was founded on the propositions contested against it, but was not so in effect, insofar as such propositions had an altogether different value from that believed, and everything was reduced, in substance, to a phantom devised by the adversaries of the Augustinian doctrine and of sound moral tradition. N. took a lively part in the controversy aroused by Pascal's Provinciales, with the writings Tredecim theologorum vota (1657), Belga percontator (appeared under the pseudonym of Franciscus Profuturus), Disquisitiones sex Pauli Irenai (1657); N. moreover 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 in Flanders and the Rhineland, in 1658 N. returned once again to Arnauld's side, and offered his help for various writings and initiatives of others. He collaborated in fact on the Apologie pour les religieuses de Port-Royal (1664) of M. de St-Mart and, later, on the celebrated New Testament known as of Mons, an initiative of M. de Secy, but in effect a collective work of the Port-Royal group: this translation, prohibited in France, later appeared in Belgium, at Mons, in 1667. When in 1663 Alexander VII ordered all bishops to sign, without distinction between "fact" and "right," the formulary, he upheld 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 were also examined the controversial questions to which the anti-Jansenist polemic had given rise. The "peace of the Church" established by Clement XI in agreement with Louis XIV (23 Oct. 1668), by which the recalcitrants were permitted to sign the "right" while reserving their position on the "fact," seemed to be a practical reaffirmation of the validity of the principles and methods dear to N., who then turned to combat more intensely the Protestant doctrine on the Eucharist: from a controversy with a Calvinist pastor arose a writing on the continuity of the Catholic faith concerning the Eucharist (called Petite perpétuité, 1664), taken up again 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 the latter in reality had written only the preface.

The archbishop of Paris, François de Harlay, showed himself quite hostile; therefore he intimidated N., who left Paris for Belgium. Here on 10 July 1679 he met Arnauld; but he would have nothing to do with following him to Holland. The two old friends parted affectionately; but N. was by now following a path different from that of his friend. He addressed in fact to the archbishop of Paris a letter of complete submission; after a long wait and various wanderings, he received on 17 May 1683 permission to retire to Chartres. Here he spent the last part of his life, working on various works of theology, of morals, of anti-Calvinist polemic. In the Système de la Grâce générale (1691), against the thesis that God, cause of all things, may be considered also the cause of ruin for the damned, he developed the idea of a "general Grace" given to all and sufficient, in right, for salvation, even if, in fact, on account of original sin a "special Grace" of God is required, superimposed on the first and alone efficacious for salvation. Arnauld, first, albeit in a friendly manner, and Quesnel afterwards, criticized that theory, maintaining that if nature is common to all men, Grace is given to some only and therefore one cannot speak of a "general" Grace. Death overtook N. while he was engaged in drafting various works, among them the Instructions théologiques, which remained unfinished. The most celebrated work is nevertheless the Essais de morale (under the pseudonym of Mombrigny, 6 vols. in all: I-IV, 1671-78; V-VI, posthumous, 1700-14), in which are touched, with psychological finesse and in the light of a great, albeit pessimistic, moral vision, the various problems of life and of Christian education. He also regarded with distrust the manifestations of the great mystical current of his time, by which he was impressed above all in certain aberrant forms, and he combated the Quietists in the Réfutation des principales erreurs des quiétistes (1695). His moralistic and anti-mystical vision of life is summarized in the Traité de la prière (1694).

Franco Bolgiani