PASCAL, JACQUELINE. - Third and last daughter of Etienne P. and of Antoinette Begon, after Gilberte and Blaise, b. at Clermont on 5 Oct. 1625, d. at Paris on 4 Oct. 1661.
permeable to the Guianesian spirituality that entered the P. family in that year through the solicitous and faithful friendship of the Norman gentlemen Deslandes and la Bouteillerie. The young girl renounced marriage and, having moved the following year to Paris, turned her aspirations toward the nearby monastery of Port-Royal-des-Champs. She did not interrupt her literary activity, though it was limited exclusively to pious subjects, as attested by 51 quite remarkable Pensées édifiantes sur le mystère de la mort de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1650).
After her father's death in Sept. 1651, no obstacle seriously stood in the way - not even some disagreement with Blaise - of her decision, already matured in 1648, to enter the convent (4 Jan. 1652), and, a year later, to pronounce her vows there under the name of Sister Ste-Euphémie. From Port-Royal she followed her brother's spiritual crisis, which culminated in the so-called second conversion (1654) and then in the controversy of the Provinciales. Assigned to the care of the novices, and then to the education of the girls, she had occasion to draft their rules and to take an interest in the pedagogical value of the Nouvelle méthode de lecture (based on the phonetic and non-conventional enunciation of the letters) devised by her brother. When the schools of Port-Royal were closed in Apr. 1661, in July J. out of obedience was induced to sign the formulary condemning the Augustinus and its five propositions approved at the Ecclesiastical Assembly of 1656: a submission that was very painful for her. She died a few months after her prioress, Angélique Arnauld.
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Enzo Bottasso