Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:42:25.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

50 - Port-Royal and Jansenism

from STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Glyn P. Norton
Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The terms ‘Port-Royal’ and ‘Jansenism’ serve in different ways as metonyms for the (originally theological) ethos of Augustinian pessimism which dominated a significant part of French thought and writing in the later part of the seventeenth century. Port-Royal was the name of two convents: one in the Vallée de Chevreuse, near Paris (Port-Royal-des-Champs), now in ruins; and the other in the city (Port-Royal-de-Paris), currently a hospital. The communities associated with the two sites were, first, an order of Cistercian nuns, reformed by Angélique Arnauld, who had become abbess in 1602, and of which Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran and student contemporary of Jansen, became spiritual director in 1634, following the nuns' move to Paris in 1625–6. Secondly, a group of laymen, the so-called ‘solitaires’ or ‘Messieurs de Port-Royal’, who occupied the rural convent from 1637, and who founded in the vicinity a series of respected schools (‘les petites écoles’), whose most celebrated pupil was Jean Racine. The term ‘Jansenism’ stems from the name of the bishop of Ypres, Cornelius (gallicized Corneille) Jansen, whose seminal (posthumously published) work, the Augustinus (1640), provided the principal theological point of reference for the movement. Neither term is fully definitional or comprehensive; but both have to some extent become interchangeable shorthands.

Taken first at a theological level, the current of Augustinian pessimism was a phenomenon associated with the Catholic (or Counter-) Reformation which, in its various (and on occasion conflicting) manifestations, replied to or, in this case, arguably reflected the Protestant Reformation of the previous century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnauld, Antoine, and Lancelot, C.Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal, Geneva: Slatkine, 1980.Google Scholar
Arnauld, Antoine, and Nicole, Pierre, La logique ou l'art de penser, édition revue et augmentée, Paris: Savreux, 1664.Google Scholar
Arnauld, Antoine, and Nicole, Pierre, La logique ou l'art de penser, ed. Clair, P. and Girbal, F., Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.Google Scholar
Bénichou, P.Morales du grand siècle, Paris: Gallimard, 1948.Google Scholar
Cognet, L.Le Jansénisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961.Google Scholar
Goldmann, L.Le dieu caché, Paris: Gallimard, 1959.Google Scholar
La Bruyhère, Jean de, Les caractères, ou les mœurs de ce siècle, ed. Garapon, R., Paris: Garnier, 1962.Google Scholar
La Rochefoucauld, François duc, Maximes, suivies des Réflexions diverses, ed. Truchet, J., Paris: Garnier, 1983.Google Scholar
Marin, L.La critique du discours, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1975.Google Scholar
Melzer, S.Discourses of the fall, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Nicole, Pierre, Essais de morale, Geneva: Slatkine, 1971, 4 vols.Google Scholar
Pascal, Blaise, Œuvres complètes, ed. Lafuma, L., Paris: Seuil, 1972.Google Scholar
Racine, J.Œuvres complètes, ed. Picard, R., Paris: Gallimard, 1966, 2 vols.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, A.Jansenism in seventeenth-century France, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×