Vineam Domini

VINEAM DOMINI. - It is the bull issued by Clement XI on July 15, 1705, confirming the constitutions of Innocent X and Alexander VII concerning the controversies over the condemnation of Jansenius's Augustinus, in which the Jansenist quibble of "respectful silence" is rejected as insufficient.

In 1702 a pamphlet entitled Un caso di coscienza circulated widely. Among other things, it raised a question: can a churchman who does not accept the five propositions condemned by Innocent X, but who, as regards the "fact" of whether they are contained in Jansenius's book, maintains an obsequious silence, be absolved? The Sorbonne, to which the question was put, answered in the affirmative through forty doctors, but Fénelon disapproved of the answer, and Clement XI himself condemned obsequious silence. Almost all the doctors of the Sorbonne withdrew their approval, but it was widely echoed in France. To restore order Clement XI issued the bull V. D. The Pope declared that "in order to remove henceforth every and any pretext for error... respectful silence did not satisfy the obedience owed to the preceding papal constitutions, but all the faithful had to repudiate with mouth and heart as heretical the sense of Jansenius's book, which was contained in those five condemned propositions and was expressed by the same literal tenor." The Jansenists had in fact counterfeited the decisions of Clement XI and Innocent XII in their favor by interpreting the Clementine peace as a limitation of the preceding pontifical decrees. The five propositions extracted from Jansenius's Augustinus would have been condemned in their natural and literal sense, but that sense would have been different from the sense the five propositions have in Jansenius's book. Therefore, they affirmed, obedience to the pontifical decisions did not require that the five propositions be inwardly rejected as heretical, but that a respectful silence was sufficient. They even went so far as to assert that it was lawful to sign the formulary of condemnation without being intimately convinced that Jansenius's book contained a heretical doctrine. In the bull Clement XI expressly declared that the five propositions reproduced the essential content of the Augustinus, that the preceding Popes had condemned them in the sense of Jansenius, and that this sense and the sense of the whole book was heretical. The exegetical controversy and its interpretation seemed by now settled, but the Jansenists objected that this definition was not issued as a proposition of faith, along with other captious distinctions concerning respectful silence, considering themselves free in conscience. From this arose new difficulties, aggravated by the Gallicans, regarding its acceptance, but in the end it was received by the French church. Only the bishop of St-Pons, Percin de Montgaillard, resisted, polemicizing with Fénelon, obliging first the Congregation of the Index, then the Pope himself to intervene. Port-Royal also opposed it with its surviving nuns, and it was this opposition that motivated the destruction carried out by order of Louis XIV on Jan. 22, 1710.

Benvenuto Matteucci