SAINT-CYRAN Du VERGIER de HAURANNE, JEAN, abbot. — Jansenist, born at Bayonne in 1581, died in Paris, where he carried out the principal part of his religious activity, on 11 Oct.
1643. S
C., so called from his appointment as abbot of the abbey of S.-C. (1620) by the bishop of Tours, contributed, together with Jansenius (v.) ARNALDISTI (v.), to the formation of Jansenism and, in particular, to its dissemination. A friend of Jansenius, whom he met in Paris around 1610, he was more practical and positive than he: Jansenius constructed, while S.-C. set the reform in motion and gave it a mystical appeal and a polemical vigor.Indeed, from Jansenius’s Augustinus he became convinced that Calvin had been Christianized (s. Vincent de Paul recounts of him: «il disait que Calvin n'avait pas mal fait, mais qu'il s'était mal défendu»), and in Arnauld he chose the defense attorney for this conviction of his. Jansenius at Bayonne and Arnauld at Paris, or more precisely at Port-Royal, represent the convergent points of his friendship. At Bayonne, beginning in 1611, he shared with Jansenius an intimate life of study concerning the Fathers and the Councils of the Church, and together with him prepared a plan of ecclesiastical reform (Pilmot), theological and ascetical, moral and disciplinary, which he sought to Port-Royal (v.), where in 1633 he was introduced by Sebastiano Zamet as confessor and spiritual director. S.-C.’s dogmatic doctrine is Baius (v.) and Jansenius (v.) concerning justification, Grace, and Predestination. In moral doctrine as well, he repeats the penitential and Eucharistic rigorism, together with the desire to return to primitive liturgical and disciplinary simplicity understood in a Calvinist sense.
But above these theological ideas he uttered a cry of revolt, deforming the penance that expiates into a penance that condemns, and prayer that unites into a disquisition that divides. That is, he wished to reform the Church without the living Christ (the Pope), far from the infallible Church (Rome), fixed upon the schemes of a historicist reformism that was too personal and too susceptible to the influences of Protestant polemic. If Jansenius theoretically thought of freeing theology from a supposed philosophism and rationalism that he saw gathered together in scholasticism, S.-C. accompanied him in practice with a lively desire to purify the Church, which, he said, was entangled in errors, cabals, and curial intrigues. The Society of Jesus, he asserted, corrupted theological science through Molinism and Christian life through probabilism. His reform would therefore have attacked the Society of Jesus simultaneously in its theological and moral aspects.
A friend of Cardinal de Bérulle and of s. Vincent de Paul, who in vain interposed their friendly and prudent reservations before his reforming ardor, he enjoyed immense favor among bishops, prelates, and pious women, such as the Countess de
Chantal, on account of his irreproachable life and ascetic spirit. Ardent like a mystic, he was always ready to sacrifice himself for his ideals and to throw himself into the fray. He possessed the gift of communicating himself; he knew how to instill in spirits the same ardor that animated him, not only through force of will but almost through magical force, by virtue of that mystery with which he surrounded himself and of the prophetic and inspired tone in which he pronounced his decisions.
(do J. Calvet, St. Vincent de Paul, Paris 1918, plate 2) SAINT-CYRAN, JEAN, abbot «Portrait, engraved by Alix from a painting by Philippe de Champagne (17th century).
When, suspicious of his innovative ideas, «mauvaises maximes... fausse doctrine», Cardinal Richelieu had him arrested on 14 May 1638 and imprisoned at Vincennes, where he remained until 6 Feb. 1643, to Condé’s efforts to secure his release the cardinal replied: «Do you not know that he is more dangerous than six armies?». This imprisonment helped to refine his ascetic spirit and to create around his name, on the part of the Jansenists, an aura of martyrdom.
There was undoubtedly a complete coherence between his actions and his doctrine, which could have made him the continuator of s. Charles Borromeo, s. Francis de Sales, and Bérulle had he succeeded in mastering his wild nature and repressing the vanity born of his erudition and the pride of his austere life. The study of a stronger and more vigorous Christianity, such as that of the Fathers, was thus able to occupy his spirit for a long time without touching his heart. The Apologie pour la Rocheposay (Paris 1615), the various pamphlets he published, including the Lettres chrétiennes et spirituelles (ibid. 1645), and especially the Oeuvres de Petrus Aurelius (4 vols., ibid. between 1632 and 1635), Gallicanism (v.); the invectives against the Jesuits of Poitiers, and the insults hurled against Fr. Garasse: these and other manifestations of his soul in fact betray that subtle vice which mystics call «collère spirituelle». An ungrateful disposition, physical and moral illnesses, the pernicious influence of the age, and a libido sciendi that made him swear that «toutes les actions du monde ne sont rien en comparaison de la science» prevented him from reforming himself before reforming others.
Yet in the century in which he lived, by the unanimous testimony of biographers and historians, he stands not only as one of the most learned French ecclesiastics, but also as one of the souls most austere and most sensitive to religious problems.