LETTER XVI

P. 191, 1. 1. Voicy la suite de vos calomnies oit, etc. The sentence is close packed and obscure. The adverb où is mado to carry a great deal. Trs. " I corne now to the rest of your calumnies, and herein I shall reply first to those that remain to be dealt with in your warnings"; or, " In this letter I shall continue to deal vrith your calumnies and in it I shall first reply," etc.

P. 191, 1. 7. Mr. d'Ipre. Cornélius Jansen was bishop of Ypres from 16o6 to 1638. Nouet, in his Response à la XV* Lettre, chose to revive an ancient calumny against Jansen : " Donc," he cries ironically, " Jansenius no promet pas à cet abbé (Saint-Cyran) d'entretenir son neveu Barcos des biens d'un collège qu'il a entre ses mains, sans qu'aux contes qu'il en doit rendre, personne du monde n'en sçache rien ? " The story first took shapo in La Naissance du Jatisenisme découverte à Mojiseigneur le Chancelier (1654), by François Pinthereau, in which extracts are given from letters addressed by Jansen to Saint-Cyran, the originals being preserved in the Collège de Clermont. One of thèse letters refers to Martin de Barcos, Saint-Cyran's nephew, whom his uncle was sending to the collège of Sainte Pulchérie at Louvain, of which Jansenius was then Principal. On 19 May, 1617, Jansen writes

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to his friend, " Il n'estoit pas besoin que vous ou Monsieur vostre frère se mist en peine avec tant de soin. Car je luy foumiray tant que vous voudrez tout ce qu'il luy faudra de l'argent du collège, je le dis naïvement, que j'ay entre les mains." . . . Pinthereau leapt to the conclusion that Jansen was promising to misappropriate collège funds, and he backed his conclusion by référence to a passage in another letter, tvro years later : " Quant à Barcos, vous vous mettez trop en peine du fournissement de ce qu'il aura besoin ... je vous ay tant de fois répété que cela ne m'incommode aucunement, et le dirois franchement, s'il estoit autrement : non pas que j'aye tant de moyens de moy-mesme qui n'ay rien sinon ma vie, mais c'est l'argent du Collège qui est en mes mains qui permet bien cela et davantage, sans qu'aux comptes que j'en rends toutes les années personne du monde en sçache rien." Pascal silences the accusation of embezzlement by quoting a passage from a third letter of a later date, vrhich makes it quite clear that Jansen vyas only proposing a loan from monies over which he had undisputed control.

P. 192, 1. 5. vostre conte ridicule du Tronc de S. Merry. Cf. VII' Imposture, "Nous n'approuverons jamais celle (i.e. la méthode) du Prestre Janséniste, qui inventa l'an passé la méthode d'ouvrir le tronc des Eglises, et qui en fit l'essay dans la cave de St. Merderic ". . . . The priest was Dr. J. E. Ariste, chaplain of St. Merri in the Quartier du Temple, v?ho was accused in 1655 by the churchwardens of theft from, and appropriation of , the poor box. The Parlement dismissed the first charge, but, by confirming the church in possession of the box, it gave colour to the belief that the chaplain had for some reason removed it. It seems to hâve been a trumpery charge.

P. 192, 1. 17. Ce fameux directeur, etc. This was a graver business. The •• famous director " is M. Singlin of Port-Royal, to whom a certain M. de Chavigny had, without the consent of his parish priest and without the knowledge of his wife, made a death-bed confession. On Singlin's advice Chavigny handed to him a considérable sum of conscience money, to be applied in making restitution, for much of his large fortune had been made by moneylending, and we know how the seventeenth century regarded that practice. Singlin informed the widow, who protested vigorously. The case was referred to arbitrators, who decided that Madame de Chavigny should give up 100,000 livres and keep the rest. In this arrangement the foes of Port-Royal smelt captation; but there is no manner of doubt that Singlin and the arbitrators were actuated by the highest motives.

P. 192, 1. 24. vos grands Profés. The Jesuit novice becomes after two years a " scholastic" and takes the vows of poverty, chastity, and obédience. Some years later he takes a fourth vow, that he will go wherever he is told, and he is ranked as " coadjutor " or " professed ".

P. 192, 1. 27. vou^ avez osé imputer, etc., in Meynier's pamphlet. Le Port-Royal et Genève d'intelligence ... for which see below, note on p. 193, 1. 33.

P. 193, 1. 2. de Port-Royal. Almost a technical expression. The

Solitaries were "of Port-Royal"; the convent had many friends who were not " of it," as, for instance, the Duc de Liancourt, who was the accidentai cause of the Lettres provinciales and a "Solitaire amateur". No more than he, was Pascal " of Port-Royal ". Tho distinctive feature of the Solitaires was complète renunciation of the world, and Pascal, when he wrote the Provinciales, had by no means accomplished this. He was still an " honnête homme " in the seventeenth century sensé. He did renounce the world before his death, but by that time he had come very near to renouncing Port-Royal and the cause for which in the Letters he so vigorously fights. See Strowski, Pascal et soii temps, t. iii., p. 210; and Stewart, Tlie Holineas of Pascal, Lecture I., and notes.

P. 193, 1. 6. ces pieux solitaires qui s'y estaient retirez. The period of the Solitaries extended from 1637, when Antoine Le Maître and M. de Séricourt were provided with lodgings in the Court of Port-Royal de Paris, till March, 1656, when " les Messieurs " were driven from Port-Royal des Champs by order of the King.

P. 193, 1. 7. leurs ouvrages. The writers, par excellence, of Port- Royal were Amauld, Nicole, and M. de Saci.

P. 193, 1, 17. tout ce que j'ay receu de luij. There seems no need to read into thèse words, as Havet does, a note of personal pride. The most modest of men may openly dedicate himself to God and his gifts ito His service. Nicole's rendering is simply quicquid de illo accepi.

P. 193, 1. 22. pour vous en obtenir le pardon. Havet and Molinier regard this passage as mère rhetoric, not far removed from hypocrisy. " (Ces prières) ressemblaient sans doute à celle que l'Eglise elle-même fait pour les Juifs le vendredi saint " (Havet). " Si jamais il y eut de théologiens batailleurs, pour ne pas dire aggressifs, ce fut bien à Port- Royal " (Molinier). No doubt; but it should be remarked that Pascal has hère in mind, not the great polemists of Port-Royal, Amauld and Nicole, but the nuns and their Directors ; and the character of no one of thèse last is open to the charge of harshness or insincerity — not M. Singlin, forced into the priesthood against his will by Saint-Cyran ; not M. de Saci, despite the Enlumineures (" seule erreur," says Sainte- Beuve, P. -2Î., ii., 87); not M. Sainte-Marthe, because of his Défense des Religieuses (see Sainte-Beuve, ib., iv., p. 345). Theso men who were the "directors" known to Pascal, were human, but they were profoundly Christian, and we may believe that they would and did pray for their enemies, and would teach those whom they directed to do the same.

P. 193, 1. 23. point de part a cette injure, " no share in that calumny ".

P. 193, 1. 26. Impie fades eorum ignominiâ, Ps. Ixxxii. 17 (Vulg.).

P. 193, 1. 33. Le Port-Royal et Genève, etc. In this gross and stupid

libel Meynier accused Saint-Cyran and Amauld of having corrupted

the faith of the Port-Royal nuns by means of the Chapelet du Saint

Sacrement (a séries of méditations invented by the Mère Agnès) and

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the Fréquente Communion. For le Port-Royal, cf. Haïase, § 31, C, Rem, II.

P. 194, 1. 7. L'institution du S. Sacrement, etc. An Institut for the perpétuai adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was founded by Madame de Longueville under a Bull of Urban VIII. in 1627. It was housed in the Maison du Saint Sacrement in a street near the Louvre, and la Mère Angélique was appointed superior, with three sisters of Port- Royal. They stayed hère till 1633, when, the founders having died without securing sufïicient maintenance for them, they had to return to Port-Royal, taking with them the property and privilèges of the Dévotion. By the sale of the house they were enabled in 1647 to build a church which was dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament and the Virgin, and the same year they exchanged the black scapulary of their Order (Cistercian) for a white scapulary with a red cross, signifying the Body and Blood of Christ (see Helyot, Hist des Ordres Monastiques, v., 457 ff.). Henceforward the nuns of Port-Royal were known as the " Filles du Saint Sacrement ".

P. 194, 1. 36. significative, «' figurative," the word uaed by Meynier with référence to the Calvinistic doctrine.

P. 194, 1. 38. d'une figure vraye et réelle. The editors of the Œuvres de P., who let little escape them, say that they cannot find the source of this quotation. But surely it is simply Pascal's expansion and justification of the term " significative ".

P. 195, 1. 12, en plusieurs lieux. Cf. " Dominus noster in caelum sublatus localem corporis sui praesentiam nobis abstulit". Calvin, Conf. Fidei de Eucharistia.

P, 195, 1. 35. Theolog. fam., i.e. Théologie familière avec divers autres petits traitez de dévotion by Saint-Cyran (? 1643). Among the petits traitez are three to which Pascal refers in this Letter ; (1) L'Explication des Cérémonies de la Messe, (2) L'Exercice pour la bien entendre, and (3) Les Raisons de la Cérémonie et de l'ancienne coustume de suspendre le Saint Sacrement dans les Eglises au-dessus du grant Autel.

P. 196, 1. 1. voyagere, •' itinérant hère on earth," a rare word, for which Littré quotes Montaigne : " quelque bonne compagnie resseante ou voyagere ".

P. 196, 1, 1. De la suspension, i.e, Saint-Cyran's third traité. See above, note on p. 195, 1. 35.

P. 196, 1. 3. appuyées. According to the Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy, the subject lies below and thus supports the accidents,

P. 196, 1. 7. Heures, dans la prose, etc. Heures, i.e. " de Port- Royal," the name given to a kind of Prymer — l'Office de l'Eglise, in Latin and French, with the hymne in French verse, published in 1650 by M. de Saci, under the pseudonym of Jean Dumont.

P. 196, 1. 7. la prose du Saint Sacrement. This is the famous séquence for Corpus Christi Day, vie. St. Thomas's Lauda, Sioti, Salvatoi-em. The verse to which Pascal alludea is No. 7 : —

Sub diversis speclebua, Signis tantum et non rébus, Latent res eximiae.

" Mais la substance change en laissant discernable les voiles du dehors." The verse given by Molinier, ad loc., is from Saci's ti-anslation of the hymn Verbum sujjernum prodietis, v. 3, and doea not correspond to Pascal's quotation. The éditera of the Œuvres de Pascal wrongly refer to the Office du Samt Sacrement, which was not published till 1659.

P. 196, 1. 25. Défense du Chapelet, etc., i.e. Réponse aux Eemarqties d'un Théologien contre le Chapelet du très Saint Sacrenient, by Saint- Cyran (1634). For Chapelet see above, note on p. 193, 1. 33.

P. 196, 1. 32. Comme l'Escriture parle. Cf. 2 Cor. v. 15.

P. 196, 1. 32. Ib., p. 153, i.e. in the Explication des Cérémonies de la Messe, one of the treatises in the Theolog. Fam.

P. 197, 1. 15. Mestrezat. Jean Mestrezat (1592-1657), for forty-two years minister of the " temple " at Charenton.

P. 197, 1. 17. que c'est un viensoiige, etc., quoted from Arnauld's Seconde Lettre.

P. 197, 1. 24. Controverses, i.e. the short title of Traité qui contient la Metlwde la plus facile et la plus asseurée pour convertir ceux qui sont séparez de VEglise, par le Cardinal de RicJwlieu (1651). This work was found among the Cardinal's papers after his death in 1643. Pascal summarizes a dozen Unes.

P. 197, 1. 32. L'Exercice, etc. See above, note on p. 195, 1. 35.

P. 197, 1. 34. Heures de Port-Royal. See above, note on p. 196, 1. 7.

P. 198, 1. 16. qu'on ne doit point donner, etc. Free summary of the passage in La Fréquente.

P. 198, 1. 22. ai vous suiviez, etc. For thèse words of Brisaoier, see above, Letter XV, p. 186, 1. 35.

P. 198, 1. 26. Mascarenhas. Manuel de M., Portuguese Jesuit (1604- 1654).

P. l'.)8, 1. 27. Toute sorte de personnes, etc. From Tractaius de Sacrame7itis (Paris, 1656), Tr. iv. Pascal omits to state that Maacarenhas gives as reason for his opinion the absence of any text forbidding communion or célébration on the part of a truly contrite sinner who has duly confessed.

P. 19J, 1. 19. Il n'y a rien de pire, etc. Of. Ecolus. x. 10.

P. 199, 1. 27. d'un Ordre tout diffeitnt. Cf. the magnificent passage in the Pensées, No. 798.

P. 199, 1. 41. p. 33 should be^. 55.

P. 200, 1. 6. le livre de Petrus Aurelitis : Pétri Aurelii Tlwologi opéra . . . (Paris, 1632). This V7ork was oomposed by Saint-Cyran (? and his friends) in defence of episcopal jurisdiction against the English Jesuits who objected to the claims of Richard Smith, appoiuted in 1625 titular bishop of Chalcedon and vicsur apostolic. Cf. Stillingfleet, Discourse cojicerning idolatry (1672), pp. 369 ff.

P. 200, 1. 10. de sa mémoire, " from her own memory ". P. 200, 1. 16. trois assemblées générales, etc., in 1635, 1641, 1645-1646. P. 200, 1. 22. vos confrères d'Angleterre. Knott and Floyd. Cf. Bayle, Diet., s.v. Knott.

P. 200, 1. 32. qiie Dieu nous donne, etc. Amauld défends himself on the same Unes in his Seconde Lettre.

P. 201, 1. 23. le Cardinal du Perron. Jacques Davy Du Perron (1556- 1618), cardinal, 1604. He preached the funeral sermon of Ronsard, he engaged in long controversy with Bishop Andrewes, and he was a chief agent in procuring the conversion to Catholicism of Henry IV. His Traité du Saint Sacrement de V Ev^charistie (1622) was written to confute Du Plessis Mornay's attack on the Mass.

P. 201, 1. 27- la Manne. Cf. " C'est ce Sacrement que Saint Jean appelle dans l'Apocalypse une manne cachée ". Pascal to Mlle Rouannez, October, 1656.

P. 201, 1. 30. S. Eucher. Bishop of Lyons, ca. 434. The passage hère quoted is from his Liber formularum spiritualis intelligentiae (MPL, 1., col. 746). Cf. " La Synagogue ne perissoit point parce qu'elle estoit la figure ... la figure a subsisté jusqu'à la vérité " {Pensées, No. 646).

P. 201, 1. 37. c'est le propre de la loy, etc. Cf. Heb. x. 1. P. 201, 1. 39. lafoy . . . n'est point, etc. Cf. Heb. xi. 1, Rom. iii. 20-22, Gai. v. 4-6.

P. 202, 1. 7. abhorrer les Calvinistes. Havet exclaims : " Combien une telle expression nous étonne ! " But the editors of Œuvres de Pascal point out, quoting Darmsteter and Hatzfeld, that " abhorrer" has also the sensé of '♦ avoir un grand éloignement pour," in which sensé Pascal uses it in his Traité sur le Vide.

P. 202, 1. 16. ce que M. Amauld a dit, etc., in La Fréquente. P. 202, 1. 27. Annat. Cf. Besponse à quelqties demandes. For this work, see above, note on p. 32, 1. 9.

P. 203, 1. 3. ces termes . . . n'y furent jamais. Maynard makes a great point of the fact that although the expression "local présence" is avoided in the canons of the 13th session of the Council of Trent, yet the Ist chapter of that session says : " nec enim haec inter se pugnant ut ipse salvator noster semper ad dextram Patris in caelis assideat juxta modum existendi naturalem, et ut multis nihilominus aliis in locis sacramentaliter praesens sua substantia nobis adsit," etc. But Pascal knows this and admits it (see p. 204, 1. 6, " miraculeusement en plusieurs lieux à la fois "). He might havo shown that Meynier was a poor scholastic in not recognizing the différence between " esse in loco " and " esse localiter in loco," i.e. according to the conditions by which bodies ordinarily occupy place, or, as he says himself, "dans l'estendue ordinaire des corps en leur lieu ". He might hâve referred Meynier to Du Perron, Traité de l'Eucharistie, iv., c. 23, where the question is fuUy handled. But on the principle that " les impostures no méritent d'estre refutées qu'en passant," he contents himself with pillorying the

Jesuit's distortion of the canons of Trent and his ignorance of St. Thomas.

P. 203, 1. 28. Rougissez, etc. Cf. Ecclus. iv. 30.

P. 203, 1. 37. Vestendue. " L'étendue " is the property of a body to occupy a position in space. So Descartes, Discours de la Méthode. See above, note on p. 203, 1. 3.

P. 204, 1. 19. Jarrige. Pierre Jarrige (1604-1670). He abjured not only his Order but his religion in 1647, and published in 1648 a panaphlet. Les Jesuistes mis sur Veschafant pour plusieurs crimes capitaux par eux commis dans la province de Guyenne. This he retracted two years lator. He was reoeived back into the Ohurch and disappeared into a Jesuit house at Antwerp.

P. 204, 1. 38. cœur de pierre, etc. Cf. Ezek. xi. 19.

P. 205, 1. 23. Filleau. A Poitiers lawyer, uncle of the good friend of Port-Royal, Filleau do la Chaise (to whom we owe the account of Pascal's plan for his great apology, see Stewart, Holhtess of Pascal, p. 52), published in 1654 an extravagant story of a conférence supposed to hâve been held at Bourg-Fontaine, near Villers-Cotteret, in 1621, between Jansen, Saint-Cyran, and a number of frienda, for the express purpose of destroying Christianity in favour of Deism. A conférence no doubt took place, but its object was probably the reform o£ morals rather than of doctrine.

P. 206, 1. 12. cet ecclésiastique de mérite. The expression is Filleau's.

P. 206, 1. 15. ces six personnes. Thèse were designated in Filleau's account by initiais. Only one of them, said Filleau, was still alive when he wrote, viz. a certain A. A. The Jesuits, who took up the story with avidity, would hâve liked to expand this into Antoine Arnauld, but he was a child of nine at the date of the conférence ; so, for want of a better, they fell back on his elder brother, Robert Arnauld d'Andilly, whose initiais, on the principle adopted by Filleau, ought to hâve appeared as R. A. D. A.

P. 203, 1. 28. Valerieti. See above. note on p. 187, 1. 31.

P. 206, 1. 32. que ce ne sera point, etc. Another quotation from Valeriano Magni.

P. 206, 1. 35. Chappelet secret du S. Sacrement, i.e. Histoire du cJiapelet secret, etc., by la Mère Agnès. See above, note on p. 193, 1. 33.

P. 206, 1. 41. la Censti/re de feu M. Varchcvesque. See above, note on p. 132, 1. 2.

P. 207, 1. 16. On V entend aujourd'huy. ... A référence to the miracle of the Holy Thom. Cf. Pensées, No. 841.

P. 207, 1. 24. Dicastillus, Oans, Penalossa. See above, note on p. 178, 1. 32.

P. 207, 1. 30. I et II Concile d'Arles. The dates are 316 and 353. The canons dealing with calumny are No. xiv. of the first council and No. xxiv. of the second.

P. 207, 1. 30. Coticile de Latran. I can find no Lateran canon to this effect; but the Fourteen Council of Carthage (a.d. 39S) in its

55th canon says, " ut episcopus accusatores fratrum excommunicet. Et si emendaverit vitium recipiat eos ad communionem, non ad clerum ". Perhaps Pascal is thinking of this.

P. 207, 1. 32. Les Papes, e.g. Gregory III. and Adrian I. See Corp. Jur. Can. (Décret., Pt. II., Causa, v., q. i., ce. i. and ii.).

P. 207, 1. 37. flagellentur. The Pope's words are " Qui in alterius famam publice scripturam aut verba contumeliosa confinxerit, et repertus scripta non probaverit, flagelletur" {Corp. Jur. Can. ad loc. cit.).

P. 208, 1. 7. s'il n'est en estime d' abhorrer, trs. " unless he is reported to hâte ". Cf. " L'estime de modération qu'il avoit " (Bossuet).

P. 208, 1. 11. ces saints et pieux calomniateurs. The quotation is borrowed from Amauld (Préface to the Enlumineur es).

P. 208, 1. 22. avec S. Paul. ... Cf. 1 Cor. vi. 9.

P. 208, 1. 34. la vérité vous en délivrerait. Cf. John viii. 31, 32.

P. 208, 1. 40. un prophète. Cf. Is. xxviii. 15.

P. 208, 1. 43. D''autant . . . que vous avez mis, etc. Cf. Is. xxx. 12-14.

P. 209, 1. 6. test = tesson, " potsherd ".

P. 209, 1. 8. un autre prophète. Cf. Ezek. xiii. 22, 23.

P. 209, 1. 24. dans VEvangile. Cf. Matth. vii. 1, John vii. 24.

P. 209, 1. 32. Le démon, etc. Cf. Introduction à la vie dévote, Pt. III., ch. 29.

P. 209, 1. 33. M. de Genève. St. François de Sales was still simple bishop. He was not canonized till 1665.

P. 209, 1. 35. Gant. 24, i.e. Sermo 24 in Cantica {MPL, clxxxiii., col. 896).

P. 209, 1. 41. Le peu de temps, etc. The editors of Œuvres de Pascal point out that Pascal was anticipated in this famous phrase by Balzac in his Soerate chrétien (1652).

P. 210, 1. 7. peur des Bénédictins. See above, note on p. 187, 1. 30.

P. 210, 1. 9. Auteur de vos Apologies, viz. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin ; see above, note on p. 190, 1. 3. Desmarets was not in the least mollified by this extremely handsome apology, if we may l'udge by the fnrious tone of his Response à l'Insolente Apologie des Religieuses de Port-Royal, etc., which he published ten years later.