PASCAL, JACQUELINE

PASCAL, JACQUELINE. - Third and last daughter of Etienne P. and Antoinette Begon, after Gilberte and Blaise, b. at Clermont on Oct. 5, 1625, d. at Paris on Oct. 4, 1661.

permeable to the Jansenist spirituality that penetrated the P. family that year through the solicitous and faithful friendship of the Norman gentlemen Deslandes and La Bouteillerie. The young woman renounced marriage and, having moved to Paris the following year, directed her aspirations to 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).

When her father died in Sept. 1651, no serious obstacle opposed her decision—not even some opposition from Blaise—which had already matured in 1648, to enter the convent (Jan. 4, 1652), and, a year later, to take 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 later in the controversy of the Provinciales. Assigned to the care of the novices, and later to the education of young girls, she had the opportunity 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 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 formula condemning the Augustinus and its five propositions approved by the Ecclesiastical Assembly of 1656: a submission that was very painful for her. She died a few months after her prioress, Angélique Arnauld.