SAINT-CYRAN-DU-VERGIER DE HAURANNE, Jean, Abbot of. - Jansenist, b. at Bayonne in 1581, d. at Paris, where he carried on the chief 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, together with Jansenius (v.) and Antoine Arnauld (v.) contributed to the formation of Jansenism and in particular to its spread. A friend of Jansenius, whom he met in Paris around 1610, he was more practical and positive than he: Jansenius constructs, S.-C. sets the reform in motion and gives it a mystical suggestion and a polemical verve.
From Jansenius's Augustinus he became convinced, in fact, that Calvin had been Christianized (St. Vincent de Paul relates of him: «il disait que Calvin n'avait pas mal fait, mais qu'il s'était mal défendu») and in Arnauld he chose the defending advocate of this conviction of his. Jansenius at Bayonne and Arnauld at Paris, or more precisely at Port-Royal, represent the converging points of his friendship. At Bayonne, beginning in 1611, he had with Jansenius an intimacy of life and of studies on the Fathers and the Councils of the Church, and with him he prepared a plan of ecclesiastical reform (Pilmot) — theological and ascetic, moral and disciplinary — which he sought to carry out in the convent of Port-Royal (v.), where in 1633 he was introduced by Sébastien Zamet as confessor and spiritual director. The dogmatic doctrine of S.-C. is the same as that of Baius (v.) and of Jansenius (v.) on justification, on Grace and on Predestination. In moral doctrine too he repeats the penitential and eucharistic rigorism, together with the desire to return to the 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 the prayer that unites into a disquisition that divides. That is, he wants to reform the Church without the living Christ (the Pope), far from the infallible Church (Rome), fixed on the schemes of a historicist reformism too personal and too responsive to the influences of Protestant polemic. If Jansenius thought theoretically of freeing theology from a supposed philosophism and rationalism that he saw gathered together in Scholasticism, S.-C. accompanied him practically with a lively desire to purify the Church, which he said was entangled in errors and in cabals and in curial intrigues. The Society of Jesus, he asserted, corrupts theological science with Molinism, and the Christian life with probabilism. His reform would therefore have attacked the Society of Jesus together with its theological and moral aspects.
A friend of Card. de Bérulle and of St. Vincent de Paul, who in vain interposed their friendly and wise reservations to his ardors for reform, he enjoyed immense favor among bishops, prelates, pious women, such as the countess of Chantal, for his blameless life and his ascetic spirit. Ardent as a mystic, he was always ready to lose himself for his ideals, to throw himself into the fray. He had the gift of communicating himself, he knew how to instill in spirits the same ardor that animated him, not only by force of will, but almost by magical force, through that mystery with which he surrounded himself and through the prophetic and enlightened tone with which he pronounced his decisions.
(from J. Calvet, St. Vincent de Paul, Paris 1918, pl. 2) SAINT-CYRAN, JEAN, abbot of «Portrait, engraved by Alix from a painting by Philippe de Champaigne (17th cent.).
When, made suspicious by his innovating ideas, «mauvaises maximes... fausse doctrine», Card. Richelieu had him arrested on 14 May 1638 and imprisoned at Vincennes, where he remained until 6 Feb. 1643; to Condé's urgings to free him, the cardinal replied: «Non sapete che è più pericoloso di sei armate?». This imprisonment helped to refine his ascetic spirit and to create around his name, on the part of the Jansenists, a halo of martyrdom.
He had without doubt a full coherence between his actions and his doctrine, which could have made of him the continuer of St. Charles Borromeo, of St. Francis de Sales and of Bérulle, had he succeeded in mastering his wild nature and in repressing the vanity that was born of his erudition and the pride of his austere life. The study of a Christianity more strong and vigorous, such as that of the Fathers, could thus occupy his spirit for a long time without touching his heart. The Apologie pour la Rocheposay (Paris 1615), the various pamphlets that he published, among them the Lettres chrétiennes et spirituelles (ibid. 1645) and in particular the Oeuvres de Petrus Aurelius (4 vols., ibid. between 1632 and 1635), which foreshadow Gallicanism (v.); the invectives against the Jesuits of Poitiers, the insults hurled against Fr. Garasse — these and other manifestations of his soul betray in fact that subtle vice that mystics call «spiritual anger». An ungrateful disposition, physical and moral illnesses, the pernicious influence of the times, 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.
But in the century in which he lived he stands out, by the unanimous confession of biographers and historians, not only as one of the most learned French ecclesiastics, but as one of the most austere souls and the most sensitive to religious problems.
Bibliography6 works
Benvenuto Matteucci