JANSENISM.
Jansenism is a convenient term wherewith to stigmatize as heresy
whatever is displeasing to Ultramontanism, whether in Church or State,
and it served as a pretext for the continued existence of the
Inquisition, after the older aberrations were exterminated. As a
concrete heresy, however, it defies accurate theological definition. It
took its rise in the interminable disputes over the insoluble questions
of predestination, grace and free will, as settled by St. Augustin and
the Second Council of Orange, and accepted by the Church, till the use
made of predestination by Calvin forced a modification by the Council of
Trent, and the daring Jesuit, Luis de Molina, revived the problem. Then
the discussion became a trial of strength between the rising Company of
Jesus and its elder rivals, the Augustinians and Dominicans, when
Clement VIII vainly imposed silence on the disputants. Cornelis Jansen,
Bishop of Ypres, sought to vindicate St. Augustin in his work entitled
"Augustinus," around which the controversy raged, until the Jesuits won
a victory, in 1653, by procuring the condemnation of the famous Five
Propositions, drawn from the work--a condemnation to which the followers
of Jansen assented, while denying that he had taught them.[582]
[Sidenote: _NATURE OF THE HERESY_]
Another contest, of which we shall see the results, was waged over the
writings of Cardinal Henry Noris, in which the Jesuits suffered defeat.
He was also an Augustinian and professor of ecclesiastical history at
Pisa, who busied himself in vindicating the doctrines of St. Augustin.
Two of his works, the _Historia Pelagiana_ and the _Dissertatio de
Quinta Synodo OEcumenica_, were accused, before publication, of
Baianism and Jansenism; the MSS. were ordered to Rome and were
carefully examined by revisers, who pronounced them orthodox and licence
to print was granted. When published, interpolations in the press were
charged and disproved. Noris was called to Rome as chief of the Vatican
Library by Innocent XI and, as this was regarded as a step to the
cardinalate, fresh accusations of Jansenism were brought against him.
His promotion was deferred; eight theologians were set to work upon his
books; their favorable report was confirmed by the Congregation of the
Inquisition, and Innocent appointed him one of its consultors. Attacks
on him continued, which he answered in five dissertations, printed in
1685, when Innocent gave him a cardinal's hat and made him member of
several important congregations, including that of the Inquisition, in
which he served with distinction, until his death in 1704.[583]
France, however, was the principal seat of Jansenism, where the
impalpable doctrinal points involved, after the decision of 1653, were
obscured by more living issues. The Jansenists represented the more
austere and puritanical portion of the clergy, as opposed to the
supporters of the relaxed morality of Probabilism, of which the Jesuits
were the foremost advocates--an aspect of the controversy which has been
immortalized by Pascal. Besides, as Rome had decided against Jansen,
those who had defended him were naturally led to minimize the authority
of the Holy See, to disregard its condemnatory utterances as
subreptitious, to assert the supremacy of general councils, and to exalt
the independence and privileges of the Gallican Church, which, since the
time of St. Louis, in the thirteenth century, had steadily resisted the
encroachments of the papacy. There was a reinfusion of theology in the
quarrel, when the Jesuits procured the condemnation, in the Bull
_Unigenitus_, of Quesnel's views on sufficing contrition and inchoate
charity, but this was only another incident in the struggle between
rigorism and laxism.
While Jansenism thus was denounced as a heresy, it really was concerned
much less with faith than with discipline and morals, and every one
hostile to Probabilism, Jesuitism and Ultramontanism was stigmatized as
a Jansenist. Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, who had persecuted the
original Jansenists, were of the sect, because of their enforcement of
the royal prerogative; Bossuet was suspected of Jansenism for his
defence of the Declaration of the Gallican clergy, in 1682, against the
Ultramontane doctrines of the papal power; Cardinal Aguirre was a
Jansenist, because he opposed the laxity of Probabilism, and so was even
the Jesuit General, Tirso González, because he wrote a book to prove
that the Jesuits were not all laxists. When, under the protection of
Leopold, Grand-duke of Tuscany, Bishop Scipione de'Ricci, in his Council
of Pistoja, in 1786, sought, without papal authority, to effect an
internal reformation of his Church, he was a Jansenist and, after his
protector had been transferred to the imperial throne, Pius VI, in 1794,
had the satisfaction of condemning, in the bull _Auctorem fidei_, no
less than eighty-five errors of the Council, mostly Jansenistic. In
France the clergy were, for the most part, attached to Gallicanism and
were largely rigorist, so practically Jansenism flourished and made
itself felt in such measures as the expulsion of the Jesuits. The
ex-Jesuit Bolgeni took his revenge by writing a book to prove that the
Jacobinism of the Revolution was merely Jansenism in action. In fact,
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 was clearly Jansenistic
because, without meddling with dogma, it embodied the democratic
development of Gallicanism.
[Sidenote: _STRUGGLE IN FLANDERS_]
Spain paid little attention to the theological controversy over Jansen,
though his works and those of his followers were duly condemned by the
Inquisition.[584] It is a curious illustration of this indifference that
when the great bibliographer, Nicolás Antonio, in defending Prudentius
against the attack of Hincmar of Reims, pronounced as good Catholic
doctrine the assertion of Prudentius that the blood of Christ was shed
only for believers and not for unbelievers, this, which is virtually the
same as the fifth of the condemned propositions of Jansen, escaped
attention. The book was printed in Rome at the expense of Cardinal
Aguirre; the Spanish Inquisition took no note of it in the Indexes of
1707 and 1747 and the passage is retained in the edition of 1788,
produced under the auspices of Carlos III.[585] Yet Spain could not keep
wholly out of the quarrel, for its Flemish provinces were a hot-bed of
Jansenism which could not be eradicated from the University of Louvain.
In 1649 Doctor Rescht, as the representative of the University and of
its great protector Engelbert Dubois, Archbishop of Malines, came to
Madrid, where he printed and circulated a memorial against the bull of
Urban VIII and the Archduke Leopold so insulting to both that the
Inquisition suppressed it, by a decree of September 13, 1650.[586] This
did not cool the ardor of the Flemish followers of Jansen and, in 1656,
Alexander VII felt obliged to address Don John of Austria, then Governor
of the Low Countries, with an urgent exhortation to suppress the
propagation of the condemned errors.[587]
The struggle continued and, soon after 1690, Carlos II was induced to
issue an order that all Jansenists and Rigorists and other innovators
should be dismissed and excluded from all offices and preferment,
secular and ecclesiastical. Under this decree some of the prominent
Jansenists were deprived and exiled, among them five doctors of
Louvain--Gummare Huygens, E. van Geet, G. Baerts, R. Backz and Willem
van den Enden. The persecuted sect appealed to Rome and procured from
Innocent XII a brief of February 6, 1694, addressed to the bishops,
forbidding that any one should be defamed for Jansenism on vague
charges, or be excluded from any spiritual function or office unless
convicted, in the regular order of justice, of having merited a
punishment so severe. This trammelled episcopal action, for it was
represented that the bishops could not be expected to undergo the
expense and the labor of regular trials requiring absolute proof and
subject to legal cavils, but it did not affect the secular arm and the
Elector of Bavaria, then Governor of Flanders, reiterated in October and
November 1695, to the Councils of the Provinces and the University, the
repeated royal orders to exclude from all ecclesiastical dignities and
secular employment those suspected of Jansenism and Rigorism. Then, on
March 1, 1696, Carlos modified his decrees in a manner to embolden the
schismatics, who seem to have had abundant popular and official support.
We hear of a writing in defence of the Catholic party being publicly
burnt by the executioner in Brussels, in front of the palace and, on
January 29, 1698, the people of Brussels went tumultuously to the
Archbishop of Malines, Ferdinand de Berlo de Brus, demanding that he
should withdraw his opposition to N. van Eesbeke, who had been appointed
by the chapter of the church of Sainte Gudule as their parish priest.
This condition of affairs led the Jesuit General González to address a
memorial to Carlos warning him that this spirit unless suppressed would
lead to the ruin of religion and the destruction of his dominions, and
supplicating, in terms much less respectful than Spanish custom
required, that he should represent to the pope the dangerous
consequences of the papal brief, that he should punish those who
procured it as well as the authors of a memorial presented to Carlos in
1696 and that he should order the Flemish bishops to disregard the
pretexts put forward as to vague accusations. The Jesuits overshot the
mark in this insolent interference, and the memorial was suppressed by
the Spanish Inquisition, in a decree of September 28, 1698, as insulting
to the authorities, secular and ecclesiastical, of Flanders.[588]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _QUARREL OVER CARDINAL NORIS_]
Spain, though with less success than France, had long been struggling to
emancipate itself from papal control, and it is a curious paradox that
its most resolute assertion of political Jansenism arose from an attempt
to discredit doctrinal Jansenism. Jesuit influence had gradually
dominated the Inquisition and, as we have seen, Cardinal Noris was the
special object of Jesuit hatred. When, in 1721, the Augustinian Manso
published at Valladolid his "S. Augustinus de Virtutibus Infidelium,"
the work was condemned and suppressed in 1723, while virulent attacks on
him by Jesuits, in both Latin and the vernacular, were allowed free
circulation.[589] The culmination came when the Jesuit Padre Rábago,
confessor of Fernando VI, controlled the weak and irresolute
inquisitor-general Pérez de Prado y Cuesta, bringing about an anomalous
condition in which the Inquisition defied the Holy See, the so-called
Jansenists became the warmest defenders of papal authority, and the
Jesuits asserted the supremacy of the regalías.
When Prado y Cuesta assumed his office, in September, 1747, it was
announced that the Suprema had a new Index Expurgatorius in an advanced
state of preparation by the Jesuits Casani and Carrasco. The printing
was nearly finished, when the 1744 edition of the _Bibliothèque
Janseniste_ of the Jesuit Dominique de Colonia reached Madrid. This was
substantially a polemical work, a catalogue of writers and books opposed
to Jesuitism, and the Jesuits conceived the brilliant idea of printing
it as an appendix to the Index, and thus suppressing at one blow all
antagonistic literature. Some trifling omissions were made but, when the
Index appeared, it contained Noris's _Historia Pelagiana_ and
_Dissertatio_. There were many other equally orthodox books, but these
became the storm-centre as they had been repeatedly and formally
approved by the Holy See, after special examination. Appeal was made to
Benedict XIV, who addressed, July 31, 1748, to Prado y Cuesta a brief in
which he recited the investigations into Noris's books and pointed out
that all questions concerning them had been finally settled by the
solemn judgement of Rome, so that it was not lawful for the Spanish
Inquisition to reopen the question, and much less to condemn the books.
He could not patiently endure the injury thus without reason inflicted
on Noris and he admonished Prado y Cuesta to find means to avert discord
between Spain and Rome.[590]
The inquisitor-general adopted the favorite inquisitorial device of
evasion. He replied that he had found the Index nearly printed when he
assumed office; he had endeavored to have it issued without his name,
but this was impossible; he had not known that Noris's name was in it
until the Augustinians complained, and he dwelt on the difficulty of
making a change, especially in view of the grave reasons for which the
books had been included. This correspondence was strictly secret, but
the brief had been shown in Rome to the Augustinian procurador-general,
who sent a copy to Madrid, where it was busily transcribed and
circulated throughout the land, creating a tremendous sensation. Prado
y Cuesta, addressed, September 16, 1748, a bitter complaint to Benedict,
dwelling on the indiscretion of allowing such matters to be gossiped on
the streets, and of affording such comfort to the heretics. The Jesuit
party openly proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Inquisition in
such matters, and asserted that its honor was at stake. Padre Rábago
undertook to manage the king and induced him to inform the pope that he
would not permit any invasion of the privileges of the Inquisition.
The affair dragged on. Portocarrero, the ambassador to Rome, hurried to
Spain and came to a compromise with Prado y Cuesta, but Rábago, who
would agree to nothing but the submission of the Holy See, persuaded
Fernando to hold firm and the affair became a struggle between the
regalías and the papal supremacy, in which Noris was merely an incident.
Fernando wrote, July 1, 1749, to Benedict, stating plainly that he would
not permit his rights and those of the Inquisition to be impaired. It
was of no importance whether the faithful in Spain could or could not
read the works of Noris, but it was of supreme importance to him to
remove the discord excited among his subjects. Benedict replied
moderately and the king relented in so far as to offer a compromise,
which would have closed the matter had it not become doubly embroiled by
a papal decree of September 24th condemning Colonia's _Bibliothèque
Janseniste_, thus putting on the Roman Index a considerable section of
the Spanish. In a letter to the Spanish agent in Rome, Rábago threatened
in retaliation that the king would not only prohibit the works of Noris
but the Roman Index itself. Still more audacious were the instructions
which he sent to Portocarrero. Of these there were two sets, one long
and argumentative, the other briefer, to be used only in case of
necessity. It insolently asserted that the papal eagerness in defence of
Noris was a new argument against infallibility; that Popes Liberius and
Honorius, for suspicions no graver, had been anathematized by a synod,
and it would be humiliating to his Holiness if the same should happen to
him. Portocarrero was a trained diplomatist but, in an audience of
November 26, 1749, he handed to Benedict a copy of this portentous
document, translated into choice Italian, and the next day he wrote
cheerfully to Rábago that he thought it would end the affair; the pope
was displeased but, knowing his character, this need cause no alarm.
[Sidenote: _QUARREL OVER CARDINAL NORIS_]
Benedict seems to have passed over in dignified silence this indecent
threat that he might be anathematized for heresy, but the breach was
wider than ever. In the Spring of 1750 the affair was taken out of the
hands of Portocarrero and was confided to Manuel Ventura Figueroa, an
auditor of the Rota, who skilfully induced Benedict to drop the matter,
while with equal skill and unlimited bribery he negotiated the Concordat
of 1753, which virtually gave to the crown the patronage of the Spanish
Church. Then, in 1755, came the dismissal of Rábago, for his share in
exciting the resistance of the Jesuits of Paraguay to the treaty of 1750
transferring that colony to Portugal. He was succeeded as confessor by
Manuel Quintano Bonifaz who, in that same year, had become
inquisitor-general on the death of Prado y Cuesta. Benedict had never
ceased to claim the fulfilment of an offer once made by Fernando to
remove Noris's name from the Index and, in 1757 he urged the king to
afford him that satisfaction, before his death, in return for the many
favors bestowed.
Jesuit influence was no longer supreme, and Fernando ordered an
investigation. The documents were collected and were submitted to
Bonifaz who, in December, presented a consulta, dwelling upon the care
habitually bestowed by the Inquisition before condemning the most
insignificant book while, in this case, Casani and Carrasco had included
in the Index the works of Noris, without any preliminary examination and
without the knowledge of the inquisitor-general, which was a foul abuse
of the confidence reposed in them. Noris's book had been printed in
Spain in 1698, dedicated to Inquisitor-general Rocaberti, and had
undisputed circulation until these two padres discovered in it traces of
Jansenism. Bonifaz therefore concluded that the pope had just cause of
complaint and that the royal promise should be fulfilled. Accordingly,
on January 28, 1758, an edict was issued, reciting the prohibition and
ending with "But, having since considered the matter with the mature and
serious reflection befitting its importance, we order the removal of the
said work from the Index, and declare that both it and its most eminent
author remain in the same repute and honor as before." For this the good
old pope expressed his gratification in warm terms to Fernando.[591]
This may be assumed as the last struggle over what were conceived to be
the doctrinal errors of Jansenism, and subsequent persecution was
directed against it as the opponent of Ultramontanism and Jesuitism, and
as the supporter of the royal prerogative. There had been, under Philip
II, a strong tendency in the Spanish Church to the Gallicanism which
became known as Jansenism. In 1598 Agostino Zani, the Venetian envoy,
says that the Spanish clergy depend on the king first and then on the
pope; there was talk of separation from the Holy See and forming under
Toledo a national Church in imitation of the Gallican.[592] The
Concordat of 1753, which concentrated patronage in the crown, could only
strengthen this dependence of the clergy, while the second half of the
eighteenth century witnessed an ominous tendency throughout Europe to
throw off subjection to Rome. The celebrated work of "Febronius,"[593]
in 1763, boldly attacked the papal autocracy, and encouraged the
assertion of the regalías; the claims of the Holy See, in both spiritual
and temporal matters, were called in question with a freedom unknown
since the great councils of the fifteenth century, while the reforms of
Joseph II and of his brother Leopold of Tuscany and the "Punctation" of
the Congress of Ems were disquieting manifestations of the spirit of
revolt. It was convenient to stigmatize this spirit as heresy under the
name of Jansenism, which thenceforth became the object of the bitterest
papal animadversion.
[Sidenote: _ITS DEVELOPMENT_]
Fray Miguélez informs us that Bonifaz, for his share in the vindication
of Noris, was reproached with Jansenism, and that thenceforth the
Inquisition became a mere instrument in the hands of a court bitterly
hostile to Rome; that instead of being a terrible repressor of heresy,
it was the defender of the regalías and persecutor of Ultramontanism--in
other words, that it was Jansenist--and that it was used in an attempt
to lay the foundations in Spain of a schismatic Church like that of
Utrecht.[594] This was not the case, but as Jansenism was now merely a
doctrinal misnomer for a principle, partly political and partly
disciplinary, the Inquisition had a narrow and difficult path to tread.
Carlos III was fully convinced of the extent of the regalías; he was
involved in constant struggles with the Roman court, and had little
hesitation in dictating to the Inquisition. It did not dare to interfere
with the royal prerogatives but, in so far as it could, it favored
Ultramontanism by persecuting those against whom it could formulate
charges under the guise of Jansenism.
The ministers of Carlos III, who survived into the earlier years of
Carlos IV, were animated with this spirit of revolt and there was an
active propaganda. The book of Febronius was secretly printed in Madrid
and was largely circulated for, although condemned, the Inquisition was
compelled prudently to close its eyes.[595] The acts of the Synod of
Pistoja were translated into Spanish and persistent efforts were made to
obtain licence for their publication, until Pius VI intervened with a
letter to the king and frustrated the attempt.[596] When the bull
_Auctorem fidei_, condemning, in 1794, the errors of the synod, reached
Spain the Council of Castile reported against its admission.[597] The
University of Salamanca was regarded as a Jansenist hot-bed. Jovellanos
tells us that all who were trained there were Port-Royalists of the
Pistoja sect; the works of Opstraet, Zuola and Tamburini were in
everybody's hands; more than three thousand copies were in circulation
before the edict of prohibition appeared, and then only a single volume
was surrendered.[598] We hear of the Marquis of Roda, one of the most
influential ministers of Carlos III, uttering warm praises of Port-Royal
and of the great men connected with it.[599] Naturally episcopal
vacancies were filled with bishops of the same persuasion and one of
them, Joseph Clíment of Barcelona, had trouble with the Inquisition for
lauding the schismatic Church of Utrecht. In 1792, Agustin Abad y la
Sierra, Bishop of Barbastro, was denounced to the Saragossa tribunal as
a Jansenist who favored the French Revolution, but soon afterwards his
brother Manuel was appointed inquisitor-general and the prosecution was
suspended, but, when the latter, in 1794, was ordered by Carlos IV to
resign, he was immediately denounced in his turn.[600]
The Inquisition, in fact, could not but be opposed to Jansenism, for one
of the objects of the Jansenistic movement was the restoration of
episcopal rights and privileges, so seriously curtailed by the Holy
Office, and the remodelling of its organization was regarded as
essential to the overthrow of Ultramontanism.[601] The Jesuits were
therefore inevitably the allies of the Inquisition; they had conceived a
strong hostility to Carlos III who, since his accession in 1759, had
diminished their influence by dismissing from office those who were
devoted to them. Their disaffection culminated in the tumults and
disturbances of April 1766, which spread through the kingdom from
Guipúzcoa to Andalusia, and humiliated Carlos to the last degree. These
were evidently the result of concerted action, intelligently directed
and supported by ample funds, working on popular discontent caused by
scarcity and high prices. Prolonged investigation convinced the king
that the Company of Jesus was responsible for the troubles, thus
explaining the rigor with which the expulsion was executed in 1767, and
the implacable determination of Carlos in demanding of Clement XIII and
Clement XIV the suppression of the Order.[602]
[Sidenote: _REACTION_]
The elimination of the Jesuits was a triumph for so-called Jansenism. It
left the educational system of Spain in confusion, and advantage was
taken of this to reconstruct it on lines which should train the rising
generation in Gallican ideas as to the relations of Church and State,
and should replace medievalism by modern science.[603] Yet the
Inquisition continued the struggle, and its jealous watchfulness is
indicated when, in 1773, some chance expressions of a student led to the
denunciation, to the Barcelona tribunal, of the teaching of the great
Catalan University of Cervera, as infected with Baianism and Jansenism,
in conformity to the _Théologie de Lyon_, a book condemned in Rome for
its Gallican principles--a denunciation which was duly followed by the
prosecution of one of the professors, a Dominican named Pier.[604]
A reaction in the policy of the court came with the rise to power of the
infamous royal favorite Godoy. By a decree of October 19, 1797, Carlos
IV permitted the repatriation of the survivors among the Jesuits
expelled in 1767. The occupation of the papal states by Napoleon had
deprived them of their Bolognese refuge, and they found themselves ill
at ease in the Ligurian Republic to which they had gone. They were
therefore compassionately allowed to return, under precautions that
should scatter them where they should not trouble the public peace, but
they speedily made their influence felt, and were busy in denouncing to
the Inquisition as Jansenists all who did not share their blind devotion
to the Holy See.[605] Still more threatening was the reception, in 1800,
of the bull _Auctorem fidei_, brought about by the influence of Godoy,
and enforced by a royal decree of December 10th, charging the bishops to
punish all opinions contrary to the definitions of the bull, while the
Inquisition was ordered to suppress all writings in support of the
condemned propositions, and the king promised to employ all the power
given to him by God to enforce these commands. The triumph of
Ultramontanism was complete, and Godoy richly earned the grotesquely
incongruous title bestowed on him, by Pius VI, of Pillar of the
Faith.[606]
The charge was one easy to bring, and the intelligent classes in Spain
were kept in a state of unrest and apprehension. An illustrative case
was that of two brothers, Gerónimo and Antonio de la Cuesta, one
penitentiary and the other archdeacon in the church of Avila. They
incurred the enmity of their bishop, Rafael de Muzquiz, confessor of
Queen María Luisa de Parma: he organized a formidable conspiracy against
them and they were denounced as Jansenists, in 1801, to the tribunal of
Valladolid. Muzquiz was promoted to the archiepiscopal see of
Compostela, but there was no slackening in the energy of the
prosecution. Antonio escaped to Paris but Gerónimo was thrown into the
secret prison, where he lay for five years. In spite of the mass of
testimony accumulated against him, he was acquitted by the tribunal, but
the Suprema refused to accept the decision and removed the inquisitors.
The brothers had powerful friends at court, who prevailed on Carlos to
intervene, when he had all the papers submitted to him and decided the
case himself--an assumption of royal jurisdiction for which it would be
difficult to find a precedent. By royal decrees of May 7, 1806, he
ordered that the Valladolid inquisitors should be in no way prejudiced
by their removal but should be capable of promotion. Gerónimo was
restored to his dignity in the church of Avila, with ceremonies galling
to his adversaries; he was to receive all the arrears of his prebend;
his trial and imprisonment were not to inflict any disability on him or
his kindred, and his name was to be erased from the record so that no
trace of it should remain. The papers in the case against the fugitive
brother Antonio were to be sealed up and delivered to the Secretaria de
Gracia y Justicia. Heavy fines moreover were levied on all concerned in
the prosecution, to defray the expenses of the trial, and any excess was
to be paid to Gerónimo. They amounted in all to 11,455 ducats, assessed
upon twenty-one persons, all clerics except one or two officials and, in
addition to these, there were nine regulars--Carmelites, Benedictines,
Franciscans and Dominicans--who were banished for thirty leagues around
Madrid and royal residences. Two of them were calificadores and one a
notary of a commissioner, who were incapacitated for their
functions.[607]
[Sidenote: _DISAPPEARANCE_]
Archbishop Muzquiz did not wholly escape. Gerónimo's defence placed him
in the position of a calumniator and, in his efforts at extrication, he
accused the inquisitors of Valladolid and the Inquisitor-general Arce y
Reynoso of partiality. This exposed him to prosecution under the bull
_Si de protegendis_; his episcopal dignity protected him from arrest,
but he was fined in eight thousand ducats and the Bishop of Valladolid
who, when canon of Avila, had joined in the conspiracy, was fined in
four thousand. They would not have escaped so easily but for the
influence with Godoy of a lady who was popularly reputed to have
received a million of reales for her services.[608]
* * * * *
As we have seen, in Jansenism the doctrinal points involved were of
interest only to the sublimated theologian and they were virtually lost
to view at an early period. Being thus incapable of precise theological
definition, it was a favorite weapon for the gratification of enmity, as
it could be charged against all opponents of whatever character. Even as
the French Jacobins were stigmatized as Jansenists, so those Spaniards
who submitted to the "intrusive" government of Joseph Bonapart were
classed as Jansenists, and so were their most active antagonists, the
liberal members of the Córtes of Cadiz.[609] The fact is that the French
Revolution, which orthodox writers represent as the triumph of
Jansenism, was, in reality, its death-blow, for in that cataclysm
disappeared the powerful and well-organized hierarchy which alone could
struggle within the Church against the advance of Ultramontanism and its
attendant Probabilism.
We hear little of Jansenism under the Restoration, though it is
sometimes included subordinately in the charges of anti-political
opinions. The bitterness still felt towards it, however, is well
expressed by Vélez, Archbishop of Santiago, as late as 1825, when he
ignorantly declares that Jansen caused the rebellion of the Low
Countries against Spain in the Assembly of 1633, while his disciples,
uniting in Bourg-Fontaine and Portugal, conspired against the lives of
all princes. Jansen supported the doctrines of the Calvinists and
Lutherans against the faith and his followers promulgated the greatest
errors against the Church and its discipline.[610]