Editing Jansenism (section)

== Blaise Pascal and the campaign of the ''Provinciales'' ==
[[File:Blaise Pascal Versailles.JPG|thumb|[[Blaise Pascal]] (1623–1662). The Jansenist apologia ''[[Provincial Letters]]'', written 1656 and 1657, a literary masterpiece written from a Jansenist perspective, and remembered for the denunciation of the [[casuistry]] of the [[Jesuits]].]]
[[File:Ex-voto de Marguerite Périer attributed to François II Quesnel, 1657.jpg|thumb|[[Marguerite Périer]] (1646–1733), French Jansenist nun and niece of Pascal]]

When the censure of the ''Second letter to a duke and peer'' and the condemnation of Antoine Arnauld were certain, [[Blaise Pascal]] entered the controversy on the side of the Jansenists. He decided to devote himself to religion a little over a year before.<ref name="Le Guern-1987">{{Cite book |last=Le Guern |first=Michel |title=Préface |date=1987 |publisher=Gallimard |location=Saint-Armand |pages= |language=fr |trans-title=Preface}}</ref>{{Rp|page=8}} His sister [[Jacqueline Pascal]] was one of the major figures at Port-Royal, and he himself had numerous dialogues with the [[Solitaires of Port-Royal|Solitaires]] (notably the famous [[wikisource:Blaise Pascal/Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne|conversation with Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy on Epictetus and Michel de Montaigne]]).<ref name="Gazier-1923" />{{Rp|page=102|pages=}}

Pascal was invited by Arnauld to bring the matter before public opinion.<ref name="Le Guern-1987" />{{Rp|page=|pages=8–9}} On 23 January 1656, nine days before the first official condemnation of Arnauld, a fictional letter titled ''Lettre écrite à un provincial par un de ses amis, sur le sujet des disputes présentes à la Sorbonne'' ("Letter written to a provincial by one of his friends, on the subject of the present disputes at the Sorbonne"), was published secretively and anonymously.<ref name="Cognet-1992" /> Seventeen other ''Provinciales'' followed, and on 24 March 1657, Pascal made a contribution to a work titled ''Écrits des curés de Paris'' ("Writings of Parisian priests"),<ref name="Gazier-1923" />{{Rp|page=106|pages=}} in which the moral laxity of the Jesuits was condemned.

In his ''Provinciales'', Pascal denies the existence of a 'Jansenist party'. According to Augustin Gazier, "for the author of the ''Little Letters'', it was a matter of disabusing an overly credulous public, and of bringing out in all its light the perfect orthodoxy of those whom slander represented as heretics. Pascal did not hesitate to say that so-called 'Jansenism' was a chimera, a crude and abominable invention of the Jesuits, bitter enemies of Saint Augustine and of grace effective in itself."<ref name="Gazier-1923" />{{Rp|page=28|pages=}}

The ''Provinciales'' were a comprehensive defence of Augustinanism and an apology for Port-Royal, but they are best known for their ironical attacks made against the Jesuits, echoing Arnauld's {{lang|fr|Théologie morale des Jésuites}} (although unlike Arnauld, Pascal did not accede to {{lang|la|Cum occasione}} but believed that the condemned doctrines were orthodox. Nevertheless, he emphasised Arnauld's distinction about matters ''de jure'' and ''de facto''). They achieved great success among the cultured who formed public opinion at that time, as they appreciated Pascals' ridicule of the Jesuits, casuists and Molinists. If the first three letters are directly linked to the convictions of Antoine Arnauld, the following ones have a different purpose, since Pascal saw his convictions justified and so went on the counterattack. He violently attacked the Jesuits accused of advocating moral laxity. These letters, described as 'divine' by [[Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné|Marquess of Sévigné]], were a campaign to change public opinion, turning the public away from theological questions towards the denigration of the supposed moral laxity of the Jesuits. This was not received well by certain Jansenists, who saw in the attacks contained in the letters a breach of Christian charity.<ref name="Hildesheimer-1992" />{{Rp|page=|pages=45–46}}

The placement of the letters in the [[Index of Prohibited Books]] by Rome represents a context in which Jansenism was moving away from a theological quarrel to a movement increasingly known and established in the secular world. According to Gazier, the main reason for this prohibition was not the theology (which was 'unassailable'), nor even the attacks against the Jesuits, but rather the fact that religious debates were raised in public, "the doctrinal part of the ''Provinciales'' is unassailable; they could not be censored by the Sorbonne or condemned by the popes, and if they were put in the Index, like the ''[[Discourse on the Method]]'' [of [[René Descartes]]], it was because they were disapproved of for having treated, in French, for the people of the world and for women, contentious questions of which only scholars should have been aware."<ref name="Hildesheimer-1992" />{{Rp|page=|pages=103–104}}

The 'miracle of [[Marguerite Périer|Saint-Épine]]', which occurred on 24 March 1656, was effective in reducing the attacks against Jansenism and popularising it among the public. The niece of Pascal, Marguerite Périer, a boarder at Port-Royal, was cured of a lacrimal [[fistula]] that disfigured her, after having interacted with a relic of Saint-Épine. The Jansenists saw this as divine approval, and, with the Roman Catholic Church officially recognising the healing as a miracle, they were at peace for the moment.<ref name="Chantin-1996" />{{Rp|pages=45–46}}

While the Church in France had left the quarrel aside, it was on the political front that the Jansenists became seriously worried.