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Recrudescence of the Jansenist controversy

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The

tried hard to kill it. For a while Louis XIV had stayed his handmainly out of regard for his cousin, Madame de Longueville, once the heroine of the Fronde, and now the great patroness of Port-Royal. But in 1679 she died, and the Court at once proceeded to severities. nuns of Port-Royal were forbidden to admit new members to their community; and Arnauld fled from France, never to return. Following the King's lead, the Oratory and other societies where Jansenism had found an entrance began to keep a closer watch over the opinions of their members. None the less, what was known as "mitigated Jansenism" — a doctrine which just managed to keep within the four corners of orthodoxy — found a large number of upholders. And among the laity a Jansenist spirit was kept alive by the Réflexions Morales sur le Nouveau Testament of Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719). This book-a popular devotional commentary, first published in 1671 — went through a number of editions without incurring any official censure; although the author was well known to be a Jansenist. In 1685 he had gone to share Arnauld's exile at Brussels; and on Arnauld's death in 1694 he succeeded to the official leadership of the party.

Round his Réflexions was now spun a web of complicated intrigues. As Louis XIV grew older and more devout, there began a fight for his soul between the Jesuit confessor, Father La Chaise (1624-1709), and Madame de Maintenon, an ardent disciple of the moderate school of Bossuet. In 1695 she secured the archbishopric of Paris for her friend, Noailles, Bishop of Châlons, a pious and well-meaning aristocrat, but woefully tactless and undecided. He was suspected, also, of a tenderness for Jansenism; he had certainly given official approval to Quesnel's Réflexions at Châlons, and this approbation he renewed in Paris (1699). Accordingly the Réflexions became the chief target of Ultramontane attack-so much so, as almost to supplant the Augustinus itself. While the work of denunciation was proceeding, a much more dangerous issue was unexpectedly raised. In 1701 an indiscreet Jansenist consulted the Sorbonne as to whether it was not enough to receive the condemnation of the Augustinus in "respectful silence" that is, with the purely external deference which good citizens might show to a law that they privately believed unwise. This casual question stirred the fires of fifty years before, and soon ecclesiastical France was in a blaze. In 1703 Louis wrote to Clement XI, suggesting that they should take concerted action to put an end to Jansenism for ever. In 1705 the Pope replied with a Bull condemning "respectful silence" outright.

The Bull only whetted Louis' appetite. The older he grew and the thicker disasters rained upon him, the more the ugly superstitious side of his character awoke. A frenzied anxiety seized him to propitiate his Maker, and save himself from another Blenheim or Malplaquet, by exterminating the enemies of the Church. This resolution was by no means weakened, when Father La Chaise died in 1709, and was succeeded by

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Father Tellier (1643-1719), a Jesuit of blood and iron, who has been immortalised by Saint-Simon in one of the most repulsive portraits in literature. Almost immediately he persuaded the King to expel the few remaining nuns from Port-Royal, the Holy Place of Jansenism. In 1711 their cemetery was violated, and their convent buildings pulled down.

After Port-Royal came the turn of Quesnel. In the winter of 1711 Louis proposed to the Pope to condemn the Réflexions in the most solemn possible form. In 1713 appeared the Bull Unigenitus, a censure not only of all that Jansenism said, but of all that it had tried to say. Even Fénelon, although a warm admirer of the Bull, admits that popular opinion credited it with having condemned St Augustine, St Paul, and even Jesus Christ. It went altogether beyond the technical questions raised by Jansenism-notably when it dealt a heavy blow against the practice of Bible-reading lately sprung up among French Catholics, under the auspices of Bossuet quite as much as of Port-Royal. Hence the appearance of the Bull was the signal of a popular outcry; Bishops supported Noailles in refusing to accept it. were spent by the Court in a feverish endeavour to throats; Noailles was only saved from deposition by the death of Louis in 1715.

even some fifteen The next two years force it down their

On the accession of the Regent Orleans bigotry at once gave place to cynical indifference. Orleans was a freethinker, and all he cared for was to keep the clergy quiet; hence he always sided with the stronger party, in the hope of crushing out the weaker. As the Bull was generally unpopular, he began by taking the part of its opponents; Tellier was got rid of, and Noailles became chief ecclesiastical adviser to the Court. But the Regent very soon found that he had underrated the strength of the Pope and the Ultramontanes; besides, his two chief Ministers - Dubois (1656-1723) and Fleury (1653-1743)-were ecclesiastics, and wanted a Cardinal's hat. The Regent accordingly swung round to the side of the Bull. Nothing daunted by this, its four most resolute opponents among the Bishops published an appeal from the Pope to a General Council (1717). After some wavering Noailles supported them; but in 1720 Dubois patched up a truce between him and the Pope. This really satisfied neither party, though it obtained for Dubois a red hat. But in 1723 both he and the Regent died, leaving Fleury to carry on their policy.

Meanwhile the appellant Bishops had "re-appealed" against the truce of 1720. So Fleury resolved to make an example of the most determined, Soanen of Senez (1647-1740). He was suspended from his functions, and exiled to a remote monastery in Auvergne. Noailles protested against his treatment; but soon afterwards he died (1629), characteristically signing two documents on his death-bed, one of which accepted the Bull, while the other rejected it. The chief appellant out of the way, Fleury proceeded to sharper measures. In 1730 Louis XV

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proclaimed the Unigenitus part and parcel of the law of the land, and ordered all the clergy to accept it, on pain of deprivation. This edict the Parliament refused to register; and a bitter struggle ensued, which lasted throughout the eighteenth century. But the questions at stake were really Gallican, rather than religious. The lawyers called themselves Jansenists, because they hated the Unigenitus; but they hated it mainly as a triumph of their hereditary foes, the Jesuits and the Pope.

Genuine Jansenism only survived among the handful of "Quesnellists," and even they had fallen on evil days. Persecution can generally be trusted to induce hysteria in its victims, all the more so when they already accept a strong doctrine of conversion. Belief in one kind of miracle easily leads to belief in another; and even the great days of Port-Royal could furnish a long list of special providences, miracles, and signs. As Jansenism shrunk more and more to the proportions of a harassed sect, these were multiplied a hundred fold. About 1728 the "miracles of St Médard" became the talk of Paris. These were a series of astonishing cures, mostly of nervous diseases, effected at the tomb of the Deacon Paris, a cleric of singularly holy life, and a perfervid opponent of the Unigenitus. On mere miracles followed "speaking with tongues," and the rise of the "Convulsionaries." These worked themselves up, mainly by means of self-torture, into a state of frenzy, in which they prophesied and cured diseases. They were, however, soon disowned by the more serious Jansenists.

Banished from France, these had taken refuge in Holland, where the Catholic minority was in close sympathy with Jansenism. In 1702 it had broken loose from Rome, and was now organising itself into an independent "Old Roman Catholic" Church. But the old spirit of PortRoyal still lingered in many a convent and country parsonage in France, and led throughout the eighteenth century to chronic conflicts with authority. Often the causes of quarrel were trumpery enough, and Jansen's latter-day descendants by no means always showed themselves reasonable or broad-minded. Still, in their dim fashion they upheld the great principle of their school- that religion begins and ends as an inward "touch of the Spirit." And over the movements of that Spirit no Church has jurisdiction.

CHAPTER V

THE STEWART RESTORATION

THOUGH the restoration of Charles the Second was unconditional, it was none the less a compromise. The monarchy which was restored was not the purely personal rule which Charles I had endeavoured to establish, but the parliamentary monarchy which the statesmen of the Long Parliament had set up on its ruins in 1641. Theoretically the constitution as it existed in March, 1642, before the outbreak of the War came into force again as the basis of the new settlement. Practically any settlement must also contain some guarantee for the new interests which had developed during the last eighteen years, and it was only through Parliament that such security could be obtained. The Declaration of Breda had outlined such a scheme of settlement; but the extent to which the King's suggestions would be adopted depended upon the temper of the nation, or rather of the House of Commons, and on the statesmanship of the King and his Ministers.

Charles II was thirty years of age on the day when he re-entered London; he was now in the twelfth year of his reign by right; but, as he had been for the last eleven a king without a kingdom, he possessed no experience of administration. While he had a large knowledge of men he had none of popular assemblies. Yet he had great popular gifts when he chose to exert them, and was at once pliable and persistent. In the vicissitudes of his life he had learnt to adapt himself to the exigencies of the moment, and to adopt without scruple any expedient which seemed necessary for success. His political aims were simple and varied little throughout his reign. He desired to make the Crown independent of Parliament, but in order to be free from control rather than from love of power. He took throughout a genuine interest in the development of the commercial and naval power of England, and in the extension of its colonies. In religion he was half a follower of Hobbes and half a Catholic — with a preference for toleration, based partly on policy and partly on indifference, but not strong enough to resist the pressure of circumstances. It would be unjust to say that his policy was purely

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selfish, but in the long run personal considerations of family ties exercised a predominant influence on his political actions. At the end of his reign events gave him for a moment almost absolute power; but he used it with comparative moderation because he was resolved, as he said, "not to go on his travels again." At the beginning of his reign, when his position was infinitely less secure, the same motive was still stronger. Added to this, the King's pleasures made him incapable of prolonged attention to public business, and obliged him to devolve the burden of public affairs upon a Minister. "Naturally I am more lazy than I sught to be," Charles frankly confessed; but nature had given him great abilities, and he possessed a fund of dormant energy which time revealed.

Edward Hyde, who had been Lord Chancellor since 1658, and the King's chief adviser since 1652, became the ruling spirit of the Government. The hostility of the Presbyterian leaders and the intrigues of the Queen-Mother failed to overthrow his influence, and even the marriage of his daughter with the Duke of York in the end confirmed it. In November, 1660, he was raised to the peerage, and at the King's coronation in April, 1661, he was made Earl of Clarendon.

In most respects Clarendon was well fitted for his task. Upright, laborious, and faithful to his master's interests, he did not shrink from maintaining them against Court intrigue or popular opposition, or the King's own fluctuating will. In his political aims he was consistent, in his choice of means a strict observer of legality. No man was better qualified to restore the reign of law after a period of revolution; but he very imperfectly appreciated the changes which that period had effected in the temper of the English nation. Intellectually he was a contrast to his master-a slow-moving mind, inaccessible to new ideas, and neither quick to grasp new conditions nor ready to adapt his policy to them. He could rebuild the constitution upon the old lines, but he was not the man to reconcile conflicting parties, and his settlement contained the seeds of future strife.

In Clarendon's conception of the constitution the most important organ was a well-composed Council. Through it rather than through Parliament the machine of government was to be animated and directed. The Privy Council formed in June, 1660, represented the union of parties which had brought about the restoration. Monck, now Duke of Albemarle, Montague and Cooper, both also raised to the peerage, Manchester, Robartes, and Saye, sat in it side by side with Hyde, Ormond, Nicholas, and Southampton. In this and in other branches of the administration the fact that the royalist nobles had long been debarred from the management of affairs, while the ex-rebels were frequently experienced officials, gave the latter a weight out of proportion to their comparative numbers.

As a preliminary to the legislative settlement of the kingdom it was

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