THE GALLICAN CHURCH.

A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF FRANCE FROM THE CONCORDAT OF BOLOGNA, A.D. 1516, TO THE REVOLUTION, A.D. 1789.

CHAPTER IX.

REVIVAL OF THE BENEDICTINE RULE

The memorable reformation of the Order of St. Benedict in France was originated by Dom Didier de la Cour, prior of the abbey of St. Vanne at Verdun. After struggling with inflexible constancy and courage against the torrent of degenerate example that surrounded him, he succeeded in inducing some of his brother monks, and a few novices who joined them, to re-establish the Rule of St. Benedict in all its pristine severity. He was supported by his superior the Bishop of Verdun, who was also Abbot of St. Vanne; and Pope Clement VIII issued a brief expressly sanctioning the movement. By degrees the fame of Didier de la Cour was extended far and wide; and applicants arrived at St Vanne from distant parts of France, as well as from Germany and the Netherlands, soliciting the particulars of his system, and aid towards carrying out the same corrective measures in other monasteries. The first abbey which embraced the strict rule upon the model of St. Vanne was that of St. Augustin at Limoges, where the abbot, Jean Regnault, introduced it in 1613. The spirit of ancient discipline, once aroused, spread rapidly on all sides; the abbeys of St. Faron at Meaux, of St. Julien at Nouille, of St. Pierre of Jumièges, and of Bernay, followed the example of St. Vanne; and Didier de la Cour, so far as the resources of his house allowed, despatched members of his reformed congregation in various directions to explain his system and superintend its inauguration in other convents. But Lorraine, where St. Vanne was situated, did nut form at that period part of the kingdom of France; and in proportion as the reformed rule continued to gain acceptance, it was found difficult and almost impracticable to combine so many religious houses in close dependence on an authority which was seated in a foreign country. It was therefore determined, at a general chapter of the Order held at Toul in May, 1618, that a distinct Benedictine Congregation should be founded in France, to consist of the convents where the restored discipline had been already adopted, and of others which, in emulation of their zeal, might be led from time to time to take a similar course. By a special Act of the same date, it was ordained that the most intimate friendship and sympathy should be maintained between the two Congregations; that they should zealously promote this by intercommunion in prayers, sacraments, and works of charity; and that thus they should compose in reality but one corporate body.

The person mainly instrumental in executing this design was Laurent Benard, doctor of the Sorbonne and prior of the College of Cluny at Paris, who had some time previously made a journey to St. Vanne for the purpose of renewing his profession according to the reformed rule. He had for coadjutors several monks of the abbey of St. Vanne, chosen for their piety and general merit—Anselme Rolle, Colomban Regnier, Adrien Langlois, Maur Tassin, Martin Taisnière, and Athanase de Mongin. In August of the same year 1618 they obtained letters patent for the erection of the new congregation, to which they gave the name of the “Congregation of Saint-Maur,” from a venerated disciple of St. Benedict, who towards the middle of the sixth century first established the rule in France. Bernard was encouraged in his undertaking by various personages of high station and authority; Cardinal de Retz, Cardinal de Sourdis, the presidents Nicolai and de Hennequin, and particularly by Mathieu Mole, at that time Procureur-General, afterwards first President of the Parliament of Paris and Keeper of the Seals. The first monastery of which the brethren of St. Maur obtained possession at Paris was that of Blancs-Manteaux, where they were installed on the 8th of September, 1618. During the next ten years the order made such rapid progress in the provinces, that no less than forty convents had given in their adherence to the new system when it was introduced into the magnificent abbey of St. Denis “en France” in 1633. But the most celebrated seat of the Congregation of St. Maur was the abbey of St. Germain des Prés at Paris—perhaps the richest and most powerful monastic foundation in the kingdom. This church and monastery were originally built by King Childebert I, in 543, on the site of a Roman temple of Isis, in the midst of some spacious meadows bordering the left bank of the Seine. The abbey bore at first the names of Ste. Croix and St. Vincent, but was afterwards reconsecrated in honour of St. Germain Bishop of Paris, who was interred there in the year 576. During the middle ages this establishment acquired extraordinary privileges. It was a dependency of the Holy See, and exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishops of Paris. The abbot was invested with seigneurial powers, possessing both the “haute” and the “basse justice,” not only within the precincts of the monastery, but over a large district of the city, comprising the modern Faubourg St. Germain, and indeed almost the whole of Paris south of the Seine. In later times (1667) an arrangement was entered into by which the jurisdiction hitherto vested in the Abbot of St. Germain des Pres was transferred to the archbishop of Paris, on condition that the Prior of the Abbey and his successors should be ex officio Grand Vicars of the archdiocese, and that the abbot should retain his jurisdiction as ordinary within the precincts of the abbey. The corporate revenues of the house amounted to 350,000 livres per annum, and the abbot’s income was 170,000 livres. This splendid appointment was always held by a person of rank, not unfrequently by princes of the blood royal. Louis XIII. conferred it in 1623 on his natural brother Henri de Bourbon (a son of Henry IV by Henriette de Balsac), who also held the episcopal see of Metz. It was under the sanction of this prelate that the Benedictines of St. Maur took possession of St. Germain des Pres on the 14th of February, 1631, and it became thenceforward the ordinary residence of the Superior-General of the Congregation.

Eventually the Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur became the occupants of more than one hundred and eighty conventual houses in different parts of France, which were divided into six “provinces”; namely, 1. France. 2. Normandy. 3. Burgundy. 4. Toulouse. 5. Brittany. 6. Chezal-Benoit.

This celebrated body was governed by a Superior-general, two assistants, and six visitors, who were elected every three years at a general chapter of the order, held at Marmoutiers near Tours. The superiors of each monastery were also chosen triennially; but the General might retain office by successive nominations during life.

One of the chief objects contemplated by the Benedictine reform was to train up a succession of monks formed according to the true pattern of primitive Monachisni. With a view to this one or more houses called Noviciates were established in each “province” for the reception of young men preparing to make profession of religion; from these, after one year’s probation, the candidates were transferred to different monas­teries, where the two following years were devoted to a further course of systematic training; and these being completed, a period of five years more was spent in the study of philosophy and theology, with particular reference to the interpretation of Scripture and of the works of the Fathers. These labours were succeeded by a year which was termed the year of “recol­lection this was prescribed as a special preparation for receiving holy orders; it was to be passed in strict retirement, and exclusive application to devotional exercises.

During the earlier years of its history this noble institution was directed with rare tact and energy by the first Superior general, Dom Jean Gregoire Tarisse, who was elected in 1630. His first care was to make a personal visitation of all the monasteries, many of which he found in a state of lamentable dilapidation, from the ravages of the religious wars and the negligence of former abbots. The work of restoration was commenced without delay, and Tarisse had the satisfaction of seeing twenty Benedictine houses entirely rebuilt, and upwards of fifty more or less repaired. Under bis vigilant rule many scandalous abuses were reformed, animosities and contentions were appeased, and strict discipline was re-established. Tarisse was warmly supported in his plans by Cardinal Richelieu, who made him a member of his “conseil de conscience,” and frequently sought his advice. He also stood high in the esteem of Anne of Austria; and lived on terms of confidential intimacy with Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, the president Mathieu Mole, and with Vincent de Paul. But perhaps the chief merit of Tarisse consists in his having laid the foundations of that illustrious school of ecclesiastical learning which has secured for the Congregation of St. Maur the lasting gratitude and admiration of succeeding ages. Himself a man not more remarkable for fervent piety than for enlargement of mind and cultivated taste, he laboured to kindle among the reformed Benedictines a spirit of literary enterprise and industry. Under his direction libraries were established in all the convents, and the best-qualified brethren were employed in collecting precious manuscripts and printed works on a wide circle of subjects—classical antiquity, the Greek and Latin Fathers, the oriental languages, history, archaeology, hagiology—which had hitherto been very imperfectly explored by the scholar and the critic. The impulse thus given to various branches of study wrought astonishing effects. Troops of enthusiastic students thronged the venerable cloisters of S. Germain des Près, whose immense services to the Church and to the world of letters have rendered their names and fame imperishable.

Tarisse, who had long been suffering from the inroads of a painful and incurable disease, resigned his charge in the year 1648, and died a few months afterwards. But he left behind him at S. Germain des Pres men formed under his own eye and by the power of his own example, and amply qualified to carry on the work to which his life had been devoted. The most conspicuous of his immediate followers was Dom Jean Luc d’Achery, a native of St. Quentin, where he was born in 1609. He originally made his profession at the Benedictine convent of that town, but migrated in 1632 to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Vendome, which was then in the hands of the Congregation of S. Maur. Shortly afterwards he was induced to remove to S. Germain des Pres at Paris, and in that establishment he passed the remainder of his life. Hero the Superior-general Tarisse, quickly appreciating his talents, appointed him curator of the library; and he at once commenced his labours by drawing up accurate catalogues of its vast contents, among which were manuscripts of great value, mouldering in the accumulated dust of centuries of neglect. The results of his researches were given to the world from time to time in a series of learned tomes, consisting chiefly of works never before published. The most celebrated production of D’Achery is that entitled Veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis, maxime Benedictinorum, latuerant, Spicilegium. Under this modest appellation he edited a voluminous collection of materials for the Church history of the middle ages; chronicles, acts and canons of Councils, lives of saints, charters of religious houses, royal grants, poetical pieces, letters, and a mass of other documents which had never hitherto seen the light. The work extends to thirteen volumes quarto. It is to D’Achery, moreover, that the Church is indebted for the conception, and in part for the execution, of that noble undertaking which was completed after his death by his associate and disciple Mabillon, the ‘Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti.’ This appeared in nine folio volumes, the first of which was published in 1668.

The female communities of the Benedictine rule were by no means behindhand in this great movement of conventual reform. One of them, the Abbey of Port Royal des Champs, has obtained a worldwide celebrity, not only on account of the extraordinary character of the Abbess by whom its restoration was effected, but also from its close connexion with that controversy on the doctrines of free will, election, and efficacious grace, which agitated the Church during the latter half of the 17th century. For this very reason, however, it is a matter of no small difficulty to disentangle the complicated web of this eventful history; for where party interests are deeply involved, the recklessness of party spirit never hesitates to warp and distort facts in different directions in favour of some foregone conclusion. The pens which have delineated Port Royal have seldom, if ever, been free from partiality and prejudice; the reason of which is manifest. Not only did the great struggle of which it was the centre array in two antagonist camps the ablest thinkers and writers of the particular age which gave it birth, but the results of that struggle have survived from that day to the present; they are continually reappearing on the surface of Church history; continually forcing themselves on the attention of observant minds, under manifold phases and varying designations. Nor are they matters of exclusive moment to the Roman Communion. Every section of Christendom, every school of religious sentiment, has its interest, more or less, in encouraging this or that view of the disputed questions and the exciting, yet often obscure, transactions identified with the story of Port Royal.

The Abbey of Port Royal des Champs was situated in a deep valley near the town of Chevreuse, fifteen miles southwest of Paris. It was founded in the year 1204 by Mathilde de Garlande, wife of Mathieu de Marli, a cadet of the noble house of Montmorency, who had set out two years before to join the Fourth Crusade. Port Royal belonged to the order of Bernardines or Cistercians, which followed substantially the rule of St. Benedict; and was subject to the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Citeaux. The close of the 16th century found Port Royal, like the majority of the religious houses in France, in a state of scandalous degeneracy. Its professed rule was ignored; the nuns had ceased to observe even the law of seclusion; the prescribed routine of daily devotion and ascetic exercises was exchanged for habits of frivolous amusement and luxurious indulgence. In 1599 Marie Angelique Arnauld, at that time a child between eight and nine years of age, was appointed coadjutrix to Jeanne de Boulchard, the Abbess; and this event, however unpromising in appearance, led to a com­plete revolution in the state of affairs both in that and in many other French convents, and made them no less distinguished for exact regularity and high-souled piety than they had once been notorious for negligence, sloth, and worldliness. It need hardly be observed that the admission of a girl like Angelique to the cloistered state (as well as of her sister Agnes, who at the same time became Abbess of St. Cyr) was a flagrant infraction of the canons, though by no means unusual in those days. Immediately after taking the vows Angelique was placed in the Cistercian convent of Maubuisson near Pontoise, of which Angelique d’Estrées, a sister of La Belle Gabrielle, the mistress of Henry IV, was then superior. Here she remained till the summer of 1602, when, upon the death of the Abbess de Boulchard, she proceeded to take possession of her office at Port Royal, and was consecrated by the Superior general of the order, the Abbot of Citeaux. On the same day she made her first communion, having at this time just completed her eleventh year.

There were then at Port Royal only eleven professed nuns (three of whom were in a state of imbecility) and three novices. The confessor of the convent was grossly ignorant, the sisters careless and light-minded. The Holy Eucharist was celebrated in the chapel only once a month and on the greater festivals. Preaching had been wholly disused for thirty years past. Masquerades and other unbecoming exhibitions were practised during the Carnival. During the next six years the new abbess allowed things to continue in the same course; but at the end of that time her mind was providentially awakened, and received profound religious impressions, through the preaching of a vagrant Capuchin friar, who visited Port Royal apparently by accident, and was requested to occupy the pulpit in the convent church. From this epoch (Lent, 1608) Angelique dated her conversion; and marvellously indeed did that event develop the latent faculties both of her intellectual and moral nature. She now determined to undertake a radical reformation of the abbey; to practise the rule of St. Benedict in all its severity herself, and to enforce its observance by those over whom she was set in authority. Her first step was to make a solemn renewal of her vows, as she held her former profession to be invalid on account of the uncanonical age at which it had been made. She next caused the convent to be walled in, and exacted from the nuns a rigid compliance with the primary obligation of seclusion. Angelique took care to exhibit in her own person an example of the strictness and self-abnegation which she required from others. On one remarkable occasion (known in the convent annals as the “Journée du guichet,” September 25th, 1609), she refused admission even to her own father and mother and other near relatives; nor could their passionate tears and angry remonstrances induce her to revoke this prohibition. By degrees, though not without stubborn opposition, Angelique succeeded in winning over the whole sisterhood of Port Royal to her own views. Her gentleness and patience, combined with transparent sincerity and steadfastness of purpose, were irresistible; and within the space of five years she had re-established all the rigorous observances of the Benedictine rule.

The reforms at Port Royal became famous; emulation was excited; and although the work was ridiculed in many quarters, and even condemned by several of the Superiors of the Order, the services of Angelique were soon put in requisition in behalf of other Benedictine houses, and the movement rapidly extended throughout the north of France. In February, 1618, Angelique was commissioned by the Abbot of Citeaux to assume the temporary government of the convent of Maubuisson, where she had spent some years of her early youth. The Abbess d’Estrées had recently been removed from office for gross misconduct, and confined, by order of the Parliament, in a penitentiary at Paris. Angelique repaired without delay to Maubuisson, taking with her four sisters from Port Royal, and laboured energetically to improve its condition; but in the course of a few months the deposed abbess found means to escape from her imprisonment, and reappeared at Maubuisson under the escort of a band of gay cavaliers from Paris, with whose assistance she forcibly expelled Angelique and her nuns, and resumed her place as abbess. She was speedily recaptured by a guard of soldiers under the “Prevot de l’Isle ” in person, and once more consigned to prison. Angelique was now reinstated in peaceable possession of the convent, and remained there for nearly five years, during which time she carried-but her plans of reformation with eminent success, particularly by introducing many fresh nuns of a poorer class, whom she trained assiduously on her own system.

During her sojourn at Maubuisson the Abbess Angelique became acquainted with St. Francois de Sales, who had come to Paris in 1618 on a mission from his sovereign the Duke of Savoy, to demand the hand of the Princess Christine, sister of Louis XIII, for the Prince of Piedmont. The Bishop of Geneva visited both Maubuisson and Port Royal, and at the latter convent administered the Sacrament of Confirmation. Relations of confidential friendship were ere long established between him and the abbess; she placed herself under his spiritual guidance, and corresponded with him constantly until his death. That event took place on his journey back to his diocese from this last visit to the French capital, on the 28th of December, 1622. Through St. Franco is Angelique was also brought into close communication with Madame de Chantal, who, in 1619, opened a convent of the Visitaudines at Paris. These two highly-gifted women were not long in learning to appreciate each other, and there ensued between them a correspondence which was kept up uninterruptedly for more than twenty years, to their great mutual comfort and edification.

In addition to her work at Maubuisson, Angélique Arnauld became the instrument of revived discipline at the Benedictine houses of Le Lys, near Melun; St. Aubin and Gomerfontaine, in Normandy; and the Iles d’Auxerre and Tard, in Burgundy. Detachments of nuns were sent from Port Royal to undertake these charitable missions as opportunity offered; and Angelique found a zealous auxiliary in her sister Agnes, Abbess of St. Cyr, who supplied her place as coadjutrix at Port Royal during her absence. An abbess of respectable character having at length been nominated to Maubuisson, Angelique finally quitted that convent and returned to Port Royal in March, 1623, attended by a train of twenty-five nuns, who had taken the vows during her residence there, and whom she had inspired with such affectionate attachment that they refused to leave her. Such was now the flourishing state of the community governed by Angelique, that Port Royal no longer afforded the accommodation necessary for their numbers; the convent, moreover, was in a damp, unhealthy situation, where the inmates suffered much from the defective drainage. Angelique was induced by these causes to obtain permission to transfer the establishment to Paris. Through the kind liberality of her mother, Madame Arnauld, and other ladies of distinction, a large house in the Faubourg S. Jacques was appropriated to their use; and thither Angelique removed, with her whole sisterhood of eighty-four nuns, in the year 1626; Their ancient habitation, thenceforth known as Port Royal des Champs, was left in charge of a single chaplain, to celebrate divine offices; and it subsequently became the residence of that illustrious company of recluses, whose names will be familiar to the latest posterity as “Messieurs de Port Royal.”

Further measures were adopted not long afterwards, which had an important bearing on the destinies of Port Royal. In 1627, a brief was procured from Pope Urban VIII, by which the convent was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Citeaux, and placed under that of the diocesan, the Archbishop of Paris. The step was taken from the most disinterested motives; but it proved, as the sequel will show, the source of some of the heaviest trials which befell the community in its days of persecution. Another object which Angélique had much at heart was accomplished in 1629: when Louis XIII renounced by letters patent the right of the Crown to nominate the superiors of Port Royal, and ordained that for the future the appointment should be made by election, and triennially. The necessary formalities having been completed, Angelique Arnauld divested herself of her abbatial dignity in the presence of the official of the Archbishop of Paris, in July, 1630; her sister Agnes resigning at the same time the office of coadjutrix, on the express condition that the reforms already introduced at the convent should be strictly maintained. The first election under the new arrange­ments took place on the 23d of July, when Marie Genevieve le Tardif was chosen Abbess, and retained the appointment, by a re-election three years afterwards, till 1636.

Up to this time Port Royal had not contracted any peculiar theological bias. During the earlier period of her career, the opinions of Angelique and her associates were mainly influenced by the teaching of St Francois de Sales; whose views of the mysterious doctrines of Grace were such as might be expected from his own generous and warm-hearted nature, as well as from his dispassionate study of the divinity of all schools and all ages, which preserved him from the snares of sectarian extravagance. St. François had learned to regard human nature, notwithstanding its fall from original righteousness, as still instinctively disposed to love God and goodness; but although disposed, he knew that man is not able to love God as he ought without the aid of supernatural grace. The human will, he taught, although degenerate, yet possesses the faculty of co-operating with Divine grace; according to the text “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.” “It is certain,” thus he expresses himself in the ‘Traité sur l’amour de Dieu,’ “it is certain that to him who is faithful in a little, and performs what lies in his power, the loving-kindness of God never denies His assistance to carry him forward more and more.” During the violent discussions which arose from the work of the Jesuit Molina, ‘De liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis concordia,’ St. François de Sales maintained a discreet reserve, declining, when consulted, to commit himself on either side; and with the wisdom of this course he had full reason to be satisfied, when, after the protracted debates of the Congregation “de Auxiliis,” which occupied no less than eleven years, the supreme authority of the Church adjourned the question indefinitely, and refrained from pronouncing any positive decision. The time, however, was now approaching, when this interminable controversy was to be revived under new auspices. Fresh champions were ready to descend into the lists, whose resources, resolution, and enthusiasm promised anything rather than a speedy adjustment of their quarrel. After the death of St. François de Sales, the community of Port Royal selected as their spiritual adviser Zamet, Bishop of Langres, a prelate who in early life had made a figure in the brilliant circles of the court, but had latterly renounced his worldly habits, and was distinguished for his devotion to the duties of the pastoral care. Zamet, in conjunction with the Duchess of Longueville, formed the project of a religious house dedicated to the perpetual adoration of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist; and having obtained a bull for the purpose from Rome, and letters patent from the Crown (which were granted with much difficulty in 1630) he commenced the work in a hired house in the Rue Coquillière, and placed Angelique at the head of the institution. Her sister Agnes, who likewise became an inmate of the “Maison du Saint Sacrement,” composed, for her private edification, a little book entitled ‘Le Chapelet secret du S. Sacrement.’ It was divided into sixteen heads, corresponding with the number of centuries since the institution of the Eucharist; and contained under each head some spiritual meditations suggested by one of the attri­butes or offices of the Divine Redeemer. This production was greatly admired by the sisters, several of whom copied it for their own use; and in course of time, having been approved by the Bishop of Langres, it appeared in print. A keen controversy arose upon its merits. It was attacked by Father Binet, a Jesuit; and Jean du Verger de Hauranne, Abbot of St. Cyran, who had already made himself known as an opponent of that Society, employed his pen in its defence. It is insinuated, indeed, by D’Avrigny and others of his school, that the authorship of the ‘Chapelet secret’ belonged to St. Cyran himself; so closely does it correspond with his known sentiments and style. But for this surmise there is no foundation. St. Cyran was at that time a total stranger to Port Royal. The manual was condemned by Duval and seven other doctors of the Sorbonne (June 18, 1633) as containing much that was erroneous, extravagant, and even impious; whereupon St. Cyran, to counterbalance this censure, procured an approbation of the work from his friend Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, and from another well-known doctor of the University of Louvain. Theologians being thus divided in opinion, the question was referred to Rome; and the Sovereign Pontiff pronounced that the volume was not deserving of censure on the score of false doctrine, but that it was expedient, nevertheless, to withdraw it from circulation, lest it might be misused by the simple and inexperienced to their injury. The ‘Chapelet secret’ was accordingly suppressed. The chief interest of this occurrence consists in its having been the means of bringing the Abbe de St. Cyran into connexion with Angelique Arnauld and the Society of Port Royal;—a connexion from which may be dated the rise of Jansenism in the Church of France. The Bishop of Langres, delighted with the versatile talents and acquirements displayed by St. Cyran, took the first opportunity of introducing him to the sisterhood of the St. Sacrement; and in the following year, 1636, on the return of Angelique to Port Royal de Paris, the Abbé was formally installed as director of the community. It would be premature to enter farther into the details of this portion of our narrative until other events have been reviewed, which will serve to show how closely Port Royal is identified with the general stream of the ecclesiastical history of the time.

CHAPTER X.

ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY OF RICHELIEU