UNIFICATION. — A spontaneous tendency and reasoned purpose of individuals and society, aimed at balancing the growing complexity and dissipation that social life particularly suffers from due to the division and specialization of labor, as well as from the excesses of free will in production and exchange.
It is parallel to the generalizing tendency of theoretical sciences and the standardizing tendency of applied sciences. In production, unification results in the determination of commodity and construction types, as well as in measures and systems of measurement; in exchanges, it manifests through the unification of commercial customs and contract clauses. In Italy, the establishment of a Committee for Industrial and Mechanical Unification (UNIM) dates back to 1921; this was later transformed into UNI (Unificazione Nazionale Italiana) and finally (1946) into the Ente Nazionale Italiano di Unificazione, a national body federated with similar organizations in the ISO (International Standard Organization), based in Geneva.
Contractual unification is realized by so-called public services, the greatest example of which is the Universal Postal Union (v. ADMINISTRATIVE UNIONS); and processes of legal unification are subject to (international, commercial, maritime, and private law; the defense of intellectual property, etc.), economic and social policy (customs lists and tariffs, provisions and assistance, labor contracts, markets, currencies, armaments, etc.). The general aim of all unifications is to achieve greater simplicity and correctness in economic life, and consequently in social life, through the concentration of services and the increased efficiency of bureaucratic and exchange work.
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**“UNIGENITUS,” BULL.** — Under the title *Unigenitus Dei filius*, Pope Clement XI issued on September 8, 1713, a bull condemning 101 propositions extracted from the book *Réflexions morales* Quesnel (v.).
The final draft appears to have been the work of Cardinal Agostino Fabroni, but its preparation required three years of assiduous consultations among the most eminent masters of various theological schools and the personal revision of Clement XI, who is said to have devoted three or even four hours of study to each proposition. The bull *Unigenitus*, due to the difficulties it raised in France, its influence throughout Church history until the 18th century, and especially the complex doctrine and Jansenist controversies it defined, can be considered decisive in the formulation of Jansenist heresy in all its aspects. The bull *Auctorem fidei* of August 28, 1794, merely reiterated, with precision regarding new controversies, the propositions prescribed by the bull *Unigenitus*.
To avoid interpretive subterfuges through a single blanket condemnation, it was preferred to condemn errors distinguished in propositions and filtered through various aspects when the subject required II. From the use of ecclesiastical magisterium manifested in councils, constitutions, decrees, and bulls, doctrinal terms and expressions were drawn to qualify the errors, along with the formulas and various phrasings, known as theological notes, used to condemn the 101 propositions with varying nuances and degrees. Fearing that even this explicit and particular condemnation might give rise to evasions or justifications by the Jansenists, the bull concludes by observing that an examination of Quesnel’s book revealed many similar and related propositions, others that fostered disobedience and rebellion, and not a few alterations to the text of the New Testament; therefore, the entire book was condemned.
The errors, selected and systematically arranged so as to complement one another, were thus condemned in their entirety, with twenty censures applied to each of the 101 propositions, particularly targeting the doctrines of Baius and Jansenius on grace, Richter’s theories regarding the Church, and those of the Port-Royalists and Gallicans. Thus, the fatal predestination of Jansenius, the rigorism of Saint-Cyran, and Gallicanism can be considered definitively condemned (Denz-U, 1351-1452). Four prelates appealed against the bull: La Broue of Mirepoix, Colbert of Montpellier, Langle of Boulogne, and Soanen of Senez; this act sparked an epidemic of appeals, in which Jansenism mingled with Richerism, asserting not only the right of bishops but also of all ecclesiastics to appeal. The appeal was deemed not only a right but a duty. This resulted in widespread confusion; where a bishop refused to accept the bull, opposing curates accepted it, and where a bishop accepted it, appealing curates opposed it, so much so that Marshal de Huxelles jokingly declared that to restore order, it would be necessary to send the people of Reims to Montpellier and those of Montpellier to Reims. Soanen was tried by the Council of Embrun under the direction of Fleury, but within the parliaments and among the Jansenists, a spirit of insubordination and popular sovereignty was fermenting—a political or clerical democratic movement against the Pope and royal authority. Jansenism thus became more a means and occasion than an end, shifting from doctrinal and moral principles to practical and procedural secular aspects and political and Gallican controversy. The alliance of Jansenist clergy and the Parliaments against the Papacy and the King indeed provoked a crisis of authority that foreshadowed the French Revolution. In the second half of the 18th century, Jansenism was nothing more than a religiously exacerbated form of Gallicanism.
The bull *Unigenitus* is thus, in the historical context in which it was issued, not only a document defending the traditional deposit of the Catholic faith and clarifying revealed truths but also a testimony of the Church in favor of civil society itself, which these errors undermined at their root.
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