In this blog post, we give a warm welcome to both Shaun Blanchard and Richard T. Yoder as they discuss their book Jansenism: An International Anthology. Shaun Blanchard is lecturer in theology, University of Notre Dame, Australia. Richard T. Yoder is a doctoral candidate in history at Penn State University.
For those who are not aware, can you give a brief overview of what ‘Jansenism’ is and who ‘Jansenists’ are?
RY: “Jansenism,” named for Cornelius Jansen, was the title given to a set of theological tendencies, moral teachings, and sacramental disciplines in the early modern Catholic Church, especially in France. Jansenism was generally marked by rigorism, a strong commitment to the predestinarian theology of St. Augustine, reformism, skepticism towards ultramontane visions of the papacy, and enmity towards the Jesuits. But of course, the so-called “Jansenists” never claimed this title for themselves. They thought they were just good Catholics, defenders of the Church’s tradition against innovation and decay. More specifically, the Jansenists were those who identified with the reform of the Abbey of Port-Royal des Champs, whose nuns offered intransigent opposition to papal and royal condemnations of Cornelius Jansen’s theology. Their circle originally included erudite hermits known as the solitaires de Port-Royal (among whose associates Blaise Pascal is the most famous).
Two major grievances solidified this identity: the royal suppression of Port-Royal in 1709, and the Papal Bull Unigenitus in 1713. The latter document condemned 101 propositions taken from a popular work of Jansenist biblical piety, and, upon its imposition in France by Louis XIV, ignited a firestorm. Some Jansenists appealed to miraculous phenomena as justification for their cause—these “convulsionaries” shook wildly and prophesied a coming apocalypse. Those Jansenists who had a strong foothold in the French judicial system and clandestine press played a role in many of the increasingly combative controversies leading up to the Revolution, including the suppression of the Jesuits. During that time, international figures like the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and Scipione de’ Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia-Prato, took inspiration from the French Jansenists in their own abortive attempts at church reform. In part because of these (mostly anti-papal) reform efforts, and in part because of the violence of the Revolution itself, “Jansenism” became a theological bogeyman in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To some extent, it remains so today in popular Catholic discourse.
SB: I can’t improve on Rick’s excellent historical overview above, so I’ll add some discussion of the basic challenges one faces when considering the term “Jansenist” in the primary sources themselves and the subsequent historiography and discourse.
Under the entry for “Jansenism” in his Dictionary of Received Ideas, the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote “people don’t know what it is, but it’s chic to talk about” (On ne sait pas ce que c’est, mais il est chic d’en parler). Flaubert was being cheeky, but he was also pointing out the real confusion over the use of the term “Jansenist” and the elastic nature of evoking it. If this was true in the nineteenth century (Flaubert lived from 1821 to 1880), it was even more of a confused picture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Think of polemical intra-Catholic debate today: what is “Modernism” and who is a “Modernist”? Sometimes the term is flung at anyone who is seen as more progressive or more accommodating than the one making the accusation (even if he is the pope! Indeed, I have even heard Ratzinger denounced as a Modernist). Something similar happened in early modernity with the term “Jansenist”— and this has continued, unhappily, to this day. People still repeat the myth that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland was a hotbed of Jansenism, and that the Irish exported this plague around the English-speaking world.
While “Lutheran” and “Calvinist” were originally used as terms of abuse for Protestants (implying they followed a man, a heresiarch, rather than the universal Catholic faith), Lutherans and Calvinists soon became more or less happy to own these terms as descriptions of their communions. The challenging thing for the case of “Jansenists,” however, is that for the most part, Jansenists not only denied that they were themselves Jansenists, they even denied that such a thing existed at all. An Austrian priest encapsulated this dynamic in a tract published in 1776, Jansenism: A Boogeyman for Children (Der Jansenismus, ein Schreckenbild für Kinder). Instead, Jansenists argued they were simply following the traditional doctrine of the Church on divine grace and predestination, on sacramental discipline, and on the moral life. But they knew, of course, that their positions made them a minority, and that they needed to seek out and cultivate networks of like-minded Catholics. In their own eyes, these people were “the friends of the Truth” who practiced “solid piety” and “true devotion.”
Building on that, can you talk a little bit about Jansenist theology and how it fits into Catholic and European history?
RY: As we argue in the book, Jansenist theology, though widely considered heretical, represents an important alternative vision of Catholic Reform in an era when the precise shape of that reform was still in flux. It is thus an alternative pattern for what Catholic modernity might have looked like. Jansenists generally broke from the norms of Catholic theology in a few important regards. First, they practiced what was called “Positive Theology,” a historical and scriptural method of writing theology which in some ways anticipates the Ressourcement of the 20th century. They prioritized the Church Fathers at the expense of the Scholastics, and generally regarded the Scholastic method as inferior. Second, they mounted the first serious critique of casuistry, a method of moral theology that relied on the use of hypothetical “difficult cases.” Casuistry came to be associated with the Jesuits, and with hypocrisy, in part because of Jansenist attacks. Finally, Jansenists frequently valued Catholic women’s voices, actions, and approaches to the Bible on their own terms. Several scholars working today have argued that they were either feminist or proto-feminist, though not all historians agree. In a broader sense, historians have argued that Jansenism is an important source for the growing constitutionalism which fed the early French Revolution.
SB: Again, Rick has hit the nail on the head. So I’ll offer some brief reflections on the ways that the conflict between Jansenism and its indefatigable opponents have helped to shape the Catholic world we know today.
A few years ago, I wrote a book on eighteenth-century forerunners of Vatican II (The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II). I ended up arguing that if we push back our perspective and consider Vatican II in light of early modern Catholicism—and not just from the perspective of a twentieth- or nineteenth-century historical backdrop—we can see the contours of a very interesting synthesis of sorts between ideals and agendas from Catholics that were at ideological loggerheads.
This is a simplistic binary, but for the sake of a brief illustration: from a Jesuit-ultramontane wing, modern Catholicism has taken a certain conception of the papal office, a powerful missionary vigor, an openness to inculturation (theologically and liturgically), an optimism regarding goodness and truth in non-Christian religions and the possibility of salvation outside the Church, a promotion of frequent communion, and a view of the confessional as a place primarily of mercy, not judgment. Think Pope Francis (the first Jesuit pope!): “Todos, todos, todos!”
However, from a Jansenist-Gallican wing in the early modern Church (sometimes scholars call this collusion of interests “Reform Catholicism”), modern Catholics take an insistence on returning to the scriptures and church fathers, a recognition of the centrality of Bible reading and liturgical participation in the life of the faithful (including in the vernacular), an emphasis on infallibility as a gift to the entire Church, a recovery of concepts like sensus fidei and eccesial “reception”, a commitment to ecumenism and a mistrust of Catholic triumphalism, support for “constitutional” mechanisms of church government at every level (including “synodality”), religious liberty and a tolerant attitude to Jews and Protestants, and an exaltation of the office and rights of diocesan bishops.
In suggesting this kind of synthesis between early modern Jesuit-ultramontane Catholicism and Jansenist-Gallican “Reform Catholicism,” I am not at all arguing that, say, reformers at Vatican II were primarily inspired by early modern authors when they promoted liturgical reform or religious liberty. But what I am arguing is that there was an unbroken – if oscillating – line of thinkers and traditions advocating all these ideas, and the mix we ended up with is, I think, a fairly happy one. Historians aren’t supposed to use this word, but as a Catholic theologian I would call it “providential.”
This volume is published in our ‘Early Modern Catholic Sources’ series. How is it connected to other books in this series, and how does it stand alone?
RY: There are several other titles in the series which pair well with Jansenism: An International Anthology. The most obvious match is Guido Stucco’s partial translation of Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinus, published in the series as The Predestination of Humans and Angels. Our anthology opens with a different selection from the same text translated by Stucco. Likewise, Lisa Redmond’s translation of Cardinal Bérulle, Discourse on the State and Grandeurs of Jesus, is essential to understand the broader context of French Catholic Reformation spirituality. Bérulle was a major influence on early Jansenism (along with several other movements). And both the Catholic Enlightenment anthology edited by Ulrich Lehner and Shaun Blanchard as well as the forthcoming edition of Muratori’s On the Moderation of Reason in Religious Matters provide an insight into reformist movements that, if not Jansenist per se, nevertheless interacted with Jansenists in complex ways during the eighteenth century.
SB: The above titles are certainly all quite closely connected to our work. I think from a big-picture perspective, we are showing how Jansenism was at the nerve center of so many disputes in early modernity. Jansenists and their wide array of sympathizers and detractors were not just concerned with the classic debates over grace and penance, they ended up—deliberately or through happenstance—arguing over non-Christian religions, liturgical reform, Bible reading, religious toleration, constitutionalism and monarchy, the Enlightenment, the rights of conscience, the limits of authority, and the roles of women, the laity, the papacy, diocesan bishops, and ecumenical councils. In a sense, to study Jansenism in the manner our team lays it out in the Anthology—internationally, including the voices of lay men, women, nuns, bishops, and politicians, and over a nearly 200 year timeframe—is to study the great debates, successes, and failures of early modern Catholicism writ large. And that’s what this great CUA Press Series is about on a holistic level: making this rich and exciting era accessible in English.
Putting together an edited collection with 31 chapters can’t be easy. What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting this anthology together?
RY: On my own end, it was sometimes hard to focus on my translation and editorial work while also balancing my PhD program—I went from coursework to fieldwork to dissertating over the span of this project. But I was able to do it (largely because of Shaun’s partnership on the project), and I’m proud of that. I think in general, though, the hardest thing was just coordination. Keeping everyone on the same page, with the same schedule, was occasionally hard to pull off.
SB: I’m sure I had a much easier time of it than Rick did. I can’t imagine trying to keep up with all this during my PhD program. I could not be more impressed with Rick for doing so! I felt I was working with a seasoned veteran.
Honestly, the process, while very time consuming, was easier than I thought it would be. Our team was really excellent – skilled translators and great people all around. Even though much of our communication was via email or zoom, I feel we developed a real esprit de corps. Also, Rick and I never lost our fire for the material. If anything, it made us want to go deeper in learning about these fascinating and (at times) tragic people, and their hopes, fears, successes, and failures. The period, the characters, and the debates really came alive for us, as they did for many on our team.
Were there any surprises that you uncovered while putting this together, either in your own research or in the work of your fellow contributors?
RY: I was surprised by how hard some of our content decisions were! There were so many other texts we would have loved to have included, as well as themes we didn’t get to explore. But the anthology does have to have limits and a certain shape. While you know that going in, actually making those choices was a different matter.
SB: Yes, ditto. As you can see by our answers, Rick and I are very passionate about this, and it was so much fun coming up with these ideas when everything was a blank slate. It remained a real joy throughout the process, but we did have this eerie sense that, like a creative writer, we would have to “kill our darlings” and cut some amazing texts and authors that we would have loved to have included.