What Has Cartesianism to Do with Jansenism?

Author(s): Tad M. Schmaltz

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jan., 1999, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 37-
56
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3653999

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 What Has Cartesianism To Do
with Jansenism?

Tad M. Schmaltz

My title is modeled on the famous query of the third-century theologian,

Tertullian: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Tertullian's question asks
what pagan Greek learning has to do with the theology of the early Church. By
comparison my question asks what philosophical Cartesianism has to do with
theological Jansenism, and more specifically what these movements had to do
with each other in the France of Louis XIV. To anticipate, the answer is: not
much and plenty. I say not much, in the sense that there are profound differ-
ences in the approaches and interests of the namesakes of these two move-
ments: in the case of Cartesianism, the French critic of scholastic natural phi-
losophy, Rene Descartes, and in the case of Jansenism, the Louvain critic of
Jesuit theology, Cornelius Jansen (Jansenius).Yet I also say plenty, in the sense
that there was in the second half of the seventeenth century a fairly widespread
belief in France of an intimate link between the two movements that the work
of Descartes and Jansen inspired. What we need here is a story that shows how
despite the differences between these two thinkers, their French followers were
commonly associated with each other.
In order to tell such a story I need to consider some basic difficulties in
pinning down the nature of the movements themselves. There are of course
familiar problems with the appeal to generic "isms" in the history of ideas, but
I also want to consider special concerns pertaining to the definition of French
Jansenism and French Cartesianism. In the course of this consideration I sug-
gest that since both movements are to some extent constructs that emerged
from intellectual battles in late-seventeenth-century France, they must be un-
derstood in light of the political, theological, and philosophical goals of the
polemicists involved in these battles.
Perhaps the most obvious reason for the connection between the Jansenist
and Cartesian movements is that one of the most prominent of the Jansenist
theologians, the Port-Royalist Antoine Arauld, was also an enthusiastic de-

37

Copyright 1999 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

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38 Tad M. Schmaltz

fender of Descartes's metaphysical system. But while Arauld undoubtedly

played an important role in the emergence of this link, I think that the full story
of its emergence must include a consideration of the different role played by a
somewhat neglected figure in the history of early modem Cartesianism, namely,
the Lorraine Benedictine Robert Desgabets (1610-78). Desgabets was more
deeply involved than Arauld in the 1671 "Eucharist affair," which was impor-
tant for the polemical linkage of Jansenism to Cartesianism in France. Whereas
Amauld attempted to separate Jansenist theology from Cartesian philosophy,
Desgabets tried to provide Cartesian foundations for a theology with strong
Jansenist overtones. It was Desgabets more than Arauld, then, who was con-
cerned to apply Cartesian principles to issues of importance for the Jansenist
theologian.

What Has Descartes To Do with Jansen?

A primary trigger for the bitter "Jansenist controversies" in France during

the seventeenth century was the posthumous publication in 1640 of the
Augustinus of Jansen, the late Bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands.
This technical three-volume work attempts to draw from Augustine responses
to Pelagian and semi-Pelagian views concerning the prelapsarian state of inno-
cence, the fall from this state, and the grace required to overcome that fall.
Jansen's emphasis is on the pervasive corruption of original sin and on the
impossibility of meritorious action that does not derive from God's grace to the
elect. The Jesuits in Louvain saw the work as a throwback to the theses of
Michel du Bay (Baius) that Pope Paul V had condemned in 1567 due to pres-
sure exerted by their order, and they made an unsuccessful attempt to stop the
publication of the book.' After its publication this text drew the suspicion of
Cardinal Richelieu, who (correctly) believed Jansen to be the author of Mars
Gallicus, an anonymous pamphlet protesting Richelieu's anti-Habsburg poli-
cies. Richelieu chose a theologian of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Isaac Habert, to
launch an attack against the Augustinus. In a series of sermons starting in 1642
Habert criticized Jansen's assertion of the necessity of contrition for the abso-
lution of sins and his view that the effects of Christ's redemptive death are
limited since it is not the case that there is a "sufficient grace" given to all. After
Richelieu's death Amauld, then a newly appointed member of the Sorbonne,
took the offensive in his 1643 De la frequente communion by attacking the
"attritionist" position that absolution is possible even when repentance derives
not from contrition inspired by a love of God but rather from a fear of punish-
ment. The Jesuits clearly were the targets here, as they were more explicitly in

See Nigel Abercrombie, The Origins ofJansenism (Oxford, 1936), 87-92; and J. Orcibal,
"De Baius a Jans6nius, le 'comma pianum,' " Revue des sciences religieuses, 36 (1962), 115-
39.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 39

the 1643 Theologie morale desjesuites, which Arnauld co-wrote. After finish-
ing these works, Arauld turned his attention to Habert, publishing two apolo-
gies over the next two years that defend Jansen's views on grace and salvation
against attacks in Habert that he took to rely on "some opinions which have
become for some time the most common and the most ordinary among the
theologians of the Church," primary among which were the opinions of the
Jesuits.

Descartes expressed great appreciation for Amauld's sympathetic set of

comments on the Meditations (the "Fourth Objections," published with Des-
cartes's text in 1641) but did not ally himself with the theological causes with
which Arauld identified himself in the early 1640s. There is no evidence that
Descartes even read the Augustinus, for instance, much less that he was con-
cerned to defend it. Moreover, he displayed at times relatively little interest in
the aspects of the free will debate that were of most concern to Jansen's defend-
ers. This lack of interest is clear enough from his remark in 1637 that his writ-
ings consider action only "in the sense of moral and natural philosophy, where
no account is taken of grace" and not in a theological sense, where "grace
comes into question."2 It is reinforced by his insistence in a 1644 letter, which
he repeated elsewhere in his correspondence, that "I keep away, as far as pos-
sible, from questions of theology."3
This neutrality may seem to render Descartes's system compatible with
Arnauld's promotion of Jansen's form of Augustinianism; certainly this was
how Arnauld saw the matter at times. Nonetheless, at the very moment Arauld
was attacking the attritionism of the Jesuits, Descartes was actively engaged in
the project of winning the approval of their order for his philosophical system.
Thus he wrote in 1645 to Etienne Charlet, a teacher at La Fleche (the Jesuit
school that Descartes had attended in his youth) that if the Jesuits examine his
work, "I venture to hope that they will find many things in it which they will
think true and which may readily be substituted for the ordinary views, and
serve effectively to explain the truths of the faith without, moreover, contra-
dicting the writings of Aristotle."4 The letter to Charlet was in fact part of an
extended campaign on Descartes's part to win the favor of the Jesuits. This
campaign dates at least to 1637, when Descartes sent his newly published Dis-
course to the Jesuit Etienne Noel and expressed the hope that his former teacher
would circulate the text among his colleagues at La Fleche.5 The response was
not what he had anticipated; in particular, Descartes's expectation that the sci-

2 Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery (1897-1920; Paris, 1964-73), I, 366
(hereafter cited as AT).
3AT, IV, 119.
4AT, IV, 157.
5 AT, I, 383-84, 454-56. See Roger Ariew, "Descartes and Scholasticism: The Intellectual
Background to Descartes' Thought," The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. J. Cottingham
(Cambridge, 1992), 58-90.

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40 Tad M. Schmaltz

entific "Essays" attached to the Discourse, especially the "Meteors," would be

taught at his former school was not realized. Nonetheless, he was encouraged
by favorable comments from one Jesuit at La Fleche, noting to a correspondent
that given "the communication and union that exists among those of that or-
der," these comments allow "me to hope that I will have them all on my side."6
Descartes's plan to win the support of the Jesuits was dealt a setback in the
early 1640s, when he became involved in a particularly heated battle with the
Jesuit Pierre Bourdin. Bourdin was a former teacher at La Fleche who wrote a
scathing critique of the Meditations that was published in the second edition of
that text. Also included in this edition was a letter to Bourdin's superior, Father
Dinet, in which Descartes requested that the Society of Jesus officially repudi-
ate Bourdin's objections. Whereas Descartes previously had taken Jesuit unity
to be a source of encouragement, it now was behind his worry that Bourdin
reflected unified Jesuit opposition to his writings.
By 1644, however, these worries had eased. That year Descartes visited
and was reconciled with Bourdin during a visit to France, with the latter offer-
ing to distribute Descartes's letters. Just prior to this visit, moreover, Descartes
received a sympathetic appraisal of the Meditations from another Jesuit at La
Fleche, Denis Mesland.7 Mesland informed Descartes that he had written an
abstract of this text for use in the schools, which led Descartes to write to
another Jesuit that Mesland's approval will "lend authority to my Meditations,
particularly since he has taken the trouble to adapt them to the style which is
commonly used for teaching."8
Descartes himself attempted to adapt his system to make it easier for Mesland
to promote it among the Jesuits. One particularly important adaptation, espe-
cially with respect to the quarrel in France between Jesuits and Jansenists,
concerns the question of whether the human will has what was commonly
called a "freedom of indifference." Descartes had written in the Meditations
that indifference cannot be essential for our freedom given that "the more I
incline in one direction ... the freer is my choice."9 He told a correspondent in
1641, moreover, that his account of human freedom is perfectly in accord with
the view in theDe libertate dei et creaturce of the Sorbonne Oratorian Guillaume
Gibieuf, itself directed against the Jesuits, that indifference is not essential to
human freedom.10 Yet in his Principles (1644) Descartes referred to our con-
sciousness of"the freedom and indifference that is within us" and spoke of our
free actions as "undetermined" (indeterminatas)." The fact that he was bend-

6 AT, I, 50.
7 See AT, IV, 11-20.
8 AT, IV, 122.
9 AT, VII, 58.
'0 AT, III, 360.
" AT, VIII-1, 20.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 41

ing here to the Jesuit identification of freedom with a kind of indifference is

indicated by his conciliatory comment in a 1644 letter to an unnamed corre-
spondent, most likely Mesland, that "since you regard freedom not simply as
indifference but rather as a real and positive power to determine oneself, the
difference between us is merely a verbal one, for I agree that the soul has such
a power."12 In the same letter he told his correspondent that from what he knows
about the then just published work on freedom by the Jesuit Denis Petau, "it
does not appear that my views are very different."'3 Significantly, though not
for Descartes, Petau's work was a response to Jansen's Augustinus.
It was no doubt comments such as those in this 1644 letter that led the
usually supportive Arauld to write with reference to Robert Desgabets that

I find it again very strange that this good religious takes M Descartes
for a man strongly enlightened in matters of religion, despite the fact
that his letters are full of Pelagianism, and that, outside of points of
which he is persuaded by philosophy, as the existence of God and the
immortality of the soul, all that one can say for him is that he always
appeared to submit himself to the Church.'4

Francisque Bouillier's claim in his monumental study of early modem

Cartesianism that there is "a natural alliance between the doctrines of Jansenius
and those of Descartes" fails to take into account this sort of skepticism about
the usefulness of Descartes's own forays into theology.'5 What creates further
complications for Bouillier's generalization is that the Jansenist and Cartesian
movements are themselves somewhat amorphous.

What are Jansenism and Cartesianism?

The heading for this section alludes to the title of Jean Orcibal's 1953
article, "Qu'est-ce que le Jansenisme?"'6 Orcibal draws attention in particular
to the considerable difficulties involved in providing a definition of the term
jansenisme. These difficulties are not entirely unexpected given that Jansen
had followers in countries as diverse as the France, the Spanish Netherlands

12 AT, IV, 116. Cf. Descartes's claim in a later letter, perhaps again to Mesland, that
"absolutely speaking" we can always "hold back from pursuing a clearly known good, or from
admitting a clearly perceived truth" (AT, IV, 173).
'3 AT, IV, 115.
14 Oeuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld Docteur de la maison et societe de Sorbonne
(Paris, 1775-83), I, 671 (hereafter cited as OA).
15 Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne (Paris, 1868), I, 434.
16 J. Orcibal, "Qu'est-ce que le jans6nisme," Cahiers de I'association internationale des
etudesfrancaises, 3 (1953), 39-53.

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42 Tad M. Schmaltz

(Belgium), the United Provinces (Holland), Italy, and even Japan in periods
spanning from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.'7 This diversity pro-
vides a significant impediment to the formulation of precise characterizations
of the Jansenist movement that apply universally but also take into account
local conditions.

One could address this sort of problem by attempting to carve out a non-
arbitrary space-time slice of Jansenist history. Here, in fact, I propose that we
follow Orcibal in focusing for the most part on Jansenism as it existed in France
during the period between the publication ofAugustinus and the condemnation
of Pasquier Quesnel in Unigenitus (viz., 1640-1713).18 There are reasons, how-
ever, to be skeptical that the term Jansenism picks out a discrete unit even when
it is restricted to this period in France. The very history of the term tends to
support the caustic comment of Pierre Bayle in 1684 that "Jansenism is a spe-
cies of heresy that no one can define, but that one imputes to whomever one
will, and that always suffices for the conviction that one has the evil of being
accused of it."'9 The Jesuits had in fact introduced the term around the middle
of the seventeenth century in order to insinuate a connection, which Catholic
defenders of Jansen emphatically denied, between the jansenistes and the he-
retical followers of Calvin, the calvinistes. Equally polemical was the standard
Jesuit tack of defining Jansenism in terms of the "Five Propositions" on grace
and meritorious action that Innocent X condemned in the 1653 Cum occasione
and that AlexanderVII explicitly attributed toAugustinus in the 1656Adsacram.
Arnauld himself claimed that since Jansen's work does not contain the con-
demned propositions, there is only a "pretended Jansenism" that is merely a
"phantom" of its Jesuit critics.20
Another reason that French Jansenism is so phantom-like is that it lacks
the internal identity and organization of religious orders such as the Jesuits. It
was a loose collection of individuals who sympathized in different ways with
the religious practices of the Cistercian convent of Port-Royal. The Augustinus
was of course a rallying point, though there was disagreement over Arauld's
claim that the five propositions are not to be found there. Moreover, evenArnauld,
in his later years, was led by his reading of Thomas Aquinas to reject certain

17 See J.-R.Armogathe and M. Dupuy, "Jans6nisme," Dictionnaire de spiritualite: ascetique

et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris, 1974), VIII, 102-48.
18 This corresponds to what Cognet (Le Jansenisme [Paris, 1961]) has called "first
Jansenism," which, in contrast to a "second Jansenism" that emerges from the writings of
Quesnel and reflects battles in the late 1670s concerning Louis's attempt to extend the regale,
emphasizes theological issues over political ones.
19 Receuil de quelques pieces curieuses concernant la philosophie de Monsieur Descartes
(Amsterdam, 1684), 23.
20 See, for instance, OA, III, 392.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 43

tenets of the Augustinus without renouncing his allegiance to Port-Royal.2' He

had always insisted, with other partisans of Port-Royal, that he was an "Augus-
tinian" rather than a"Jansenist." But this designation hardly distinguishes them
from reform-mindedAugustinians such as the members of the Congregation of
the Oratory, some of whom (e.g., Nicolas Malebranche)22 explicitly rejected
Jansen's views on grace and free will. The boundaries become very blurry in-
deed when one considers the case of the abbe de Saint-Cyran (Jean Duvergier
de Hauranne), who was influenced by Cardinal Berulle, the founder of the
Oratory, but who also profoundly influenced Arauld and his sister Mother
Angelique, the prioress of Port-Royal.
Yet in history, as in politics, perception can be as important as reality. Even
if Jansenism is not a clearly defined group, there is still the question of why it
was perceived by its enemies to be a cohesive movement that posed a real
threat The answers are clear enough in the case of Louis XIV. Jansen and
Saint-Cyran were associated with anti-Richelieu agitation, and Parisian cures
sympathetic to Port-Royal played an active role in the rebellion in the Fronde
against QueenAnne ofAustria and her first minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin
was suspicious of Port-Royal, and it is through his influence that papal bulls
were produced that condemned the five propositions and that attributed them to
Augustinus.23 The fact that Mazarin oversaw the political education of Louis
makes it understandable that when the latter assumed full control of the gov-
ernment after the death of the former, he dedicated himself, as he indicated in
his Memoires, "to destroying Jansenism and to breaking up the communities
where this spirit of novelty was developing, well intentioned perhaps, but which
seemed to want to ignore the dangerous consequences it could have."24
But why the sharp opposition of the Society of Jesus? There was of course
genuine intellectual opposition in the order to the views of contrition, free will,
and grace in the works of Jansen. As Arauld emphasized, however, the follow-
ers of Jansen were no different from the Dominicans in opposing the Jesuits on
the last two issues.25 Indeed, it was a Dominican, Dominique Banez, who was
instrumental in bringing about the internal conflict over the account of free will
in the work of the Jesuit Luis de Molina that led Pope Clement VIII in 1598 to

21 See E. J. Kremer, "Grace and Free Will in Arauld," in The Great Arnauld and Some of
His Philosophical Correspondents, ed. E. J. Kremer (Toronto, 1994), 219-39.
22 Arauld in fact had objected to Malebranche's view that free consent derives from our
will rather than from God by saying, "I do not know whether Pelagius ever said anything more
pelagian" (OA, XXXVIII, 64849).
23 See P. Jansen, Le cardinal Mazarin et le mouvement janseniste francais, 1653-1659
(Paris, 1967).
24 Louis XIV: Memoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, tr. P. Sonnino (New York,
1970), 54.
25 OA, I, 291-94.

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44 Tad M. Schmaltz

convene De Auxiliis, a commission on the nature of divine grace.26 While there

certainly was a tension deriving from this battle that lingered throughout the
seventeenth century, nothing that I have found in what the Jesuits wrote about
the compromise with the Dominicans that ended De Auxiliis in 1605 matches
the vitriol of the remark of the Jesuit Rene Rapin, in response to the official
cessation of hostilities against the Jansenists, the so-called Paix de 'Eglise of
Pope Clement IX:

one has well seen that the heretics make false professions of faith to the
Holy See, as Pelagius, Celestius, and others, but one has never seen the
trophies of their deception, lies carried head raised by foot to the throne
of Saint Peter, and the mockery of the successor of Jesus Christ in all
the ceremonies capable of producing a dissimulation and a deception
more solemn, that is to say a deception with more affrontery and more
arrogance.27

Certainly the fact that the Arnaulds dominated Port-Royal helps to explain
the difference in response. After all, in 1594 the elder Antoine Arauld had
successfully argued the case in the Parlement of Paris for the expulsion of the
Jesuits from France, an act that Jansen's defenders labeled in an ironic manner
the "original sin of the Arauld family."28 Yet Habert, in his role as Richelieu's
point-man, touched on another relevant difference between the Dominicans
and the Jansenists when he took Jansen and the anonymous author of the
Apologie (viz., Amauld) to task for focusing too narrowly on the work of Au-
gustine and neglecting the importance of the broader Catholic tradition. Even if
the Dominicans were misguided on the issue of free will, at least they respected
the Christianized Aristotelianism of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom the Council of
Trent had declared a Father of the Church. By contrast, the Jesuits perceived
Jansenists such as Arnauld as indiscriminately rejecting this Aristotelian tradi-
tion in calling for a return to the theology and the practices of the early Church.
This feature of Jansenism must have been particularly threatening to the Jesuits
given that they belonged to a missionary order directed by the admonition that
"no one shall teach anything not in conformity with the Church and received
traditions" and that "no one shall defend any opinion that goes against the
axioms received in philosophy or in theology, or against that which the major-

26 The source of the controversy was the discussion in Molina's 1588 Concordia liberi
arbitrii cum gratice donis, divina prcescientia, providentia, pracdestinatione, et reprobatione,
ad nonnullos prime partis D. Thomce articulos.
27 Memoires du P Rene Rapin sur I'Eglise et la societe, la cour, la ville, et le jansenisme,
1644-1669 (Paris, 1865), III, 506.
28 This label is cited in D. Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from
France, 1757-1765 (New Haven, 1975), 31.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 45

ity of men would judge is the common sentiment of the theological schools."29
The importance of this point is reflected in the fact that Rapin referred repeat-
edly in his polemical history of Jansenism to "the new morality," "the new
sentiments," and "the new philosophy" of the supporters of Port-Royal and the
followers of Jansen.30
Cartesianism was not defined from the start in terms of propositions that
the Church explicitly proclaimed to be heretical. For this reason Descartes's
followers never felt the need to speak of a "pretended Cartesianism." Yet
Descartes's system did come to be widely known as the "the new philosophy,"
despite his own claim in the Principles that since he has "not employed any
principle that is not accepted by Aristotle and all other philosophers of every
age," his philosophy "is not new, but the oldest and the most common of all."31
Descartes came to be viewed as introducing a mechanistic physics that dis-
places the Aristotelian philosophy of nature then predominant in the schools on
the Continent.32 It would have been natural to see Cartesianism as the philo-
sophical counterpart to Jansenism given the perception that the later movement
involved the radical rejection of the scholastic tradition in theology.
However, not all Cartesians accepted the fundamental difference between
the philosophies of Aristotle and Descartes. French Cartesians such as Jacques
Rohault (in his Entretiens sur la philosophie of 1671) and Rene Le Bossu
(author of the Parallele des principes de la physique d'Aristotle & de celle de
Rene Des Cartes of 1674) followed the lead of the suggestion in the Principles
by arguing that there is under the scholastic veneer a purer, more Cartesian
Aristotle. This line of argument points to a general difficulty in defining
Cartesianism that is analogous to the difficulty that we confronted earlier with
respect to Jansenism. The difficulty I have in mind is broached by the recent
comment that "there was hardly a doctrine, view, or argument that was ad-
vanced by everyone thought, and rightly thought, to be a Cartesian."33 This
comment is true enough even if we screen out national and temporal differ-
ences by focusing on Cartesians in early modem France. There was disagree-
ment among Descartes's French successors even with respect to the basic "meta-
physical core" of his system, namely, the doctrine that the essence of body
consists in extension and that the essence of mind consists in thought. For
Descartes the doctrine concerning the essence of body has the implication that
atoms and the void are impossible: atoms, because extension is divisible with-

29 Cited in C. de Rochemonteix, Un College de Jesuits aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles: le

College Henri IV de la Fleche (Le Mans, 1889), IV, 4n-6n.
30 Rapin, Memoires, I, 246, 283, and 290, respectively.
31 AT, VIII-1, 323.
32 This view has a basis in Descartes himself; see AT, III, 298.
33 Thomas Lennon and Patricia Ann Easton, The Cartesian Empiricism of Franfois Bayle
(New York, 1992), 1.

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46 Tad M. Schmaltz

out end (or "indefinitely," as Descartes put it), and the void, because space does
not really differ from the extension of a particular body. Yet in the Discernement
du corps et de 'dime of 1666, which defends Descartes's substance dualism,
Geraud de Cordemoy urged that Cartesians need to accept the existence of
atoms. His argument is that an appeal to atoms is required to avoid the circular-
ity that results when Descartes's definition of motion as the transference of one
body from the vicinity of others is combined with his definition of a single
body as that which is transferred at one time from the vicinity of other bodies.
Descartes's definition of motion assumes that bodies can be distinguished from
each other, but in order to distinguish the bodies he appeals to features of their
transference or motion.

Desgabets was sent a copy of the Discernement by Descartes's literary

executor, Claude Clerselier, who also was a friend of Cordemoy. Without re-
sponding to the particular argument in this text against Descartes, Desgabets
wrote to Clerselier to protest the fact that

Cordemoy thoughtlessly causes a schism that is all the more serious

since it all of a sudden removes from the true philosophy one of its
strongest columns and notably strengthens the camp of Gassendi, which
already seems only too likely to support itself and overcome that of
Descartes.34

Even so, there were other followers of Descartes, such as the Oratorian
Fromentier at Angers and the Toulousean Minim Maignan, who defended an
atomistic version of Cartesian physics without seeing themselves as Gassendists.
Despite the orthodoxy of his rejection to Cordemoy's atomism, Desgabets
challenged the Cartesian doctrine, on which Cordemoy's Discernement insisted,
that the nature of our mind consists in thought alone. Reacting to the endorse-
ment of this doctrine in the work of Malebranche, Desgabets wrote to the au-
thor in 1674 that "I consider the angel to be of a nature much more contrary to
that of the soul than simply distinguished." While the nature of an angel, or of
any other "pure mind," consists in pure thought, according to Desgabets, our
own soul must be understood to be "a thinking substance, but thinking in a
certain manner, that is with the thoughts that are its modes naturally demand-
ing to be united with corporeal movements."35 Desgabets went so far as to deny
that we have any thoughts that do not depend on the body. One of the most
prominent popularizers of Cartesianism in France, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, adopted
this position, and like Desgabets he argued explicitly against the assertion in
Malebranche that we have a "pure" or non-sensory intellect.36 This argument in
34 J. Prost, Essai sur 'atomisme et 'occasionalisme dans la philosophie cartsienne (Paris,
1907), 158.
3 Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, ed. A. Robinet (Paris, 1958-69), XVIII, 84ff.
36 Regis, Cours entier dephilosophie ou systeme general selon lesprincipes de M. Descartes
(1691; New York, 1970), I, 123; L'Usage de la raison et de lafoy (Paris, 1704), 16.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 47

Desgabets and Regis seems to distinguish them from Descartes as well, who
appealed in the "Second Meditation" to an examination of the extension of a
piece of wax "by the mind alone," apart from the senses and the imagination.37
In any case, it is clear enough that Descartes's French successors disagreed
among themselves on fundamental issues. As with Jansenism, the question
here is why critics viewed this motley crew as forming a formidable opposi-
tion. The most obvious answer is that post-Descartes Cartesianism was in-
volved in theological controversies regarding the Eucharist, as indicated by the
placement of Descartes's writings on the Index librorumprohibitorum in 1663.38
This condemnation was preceded by a report on Descartes from the theologian
of the Sacred Penitentiary in Rome (who was responsible for indulgences, not
prisoners), the Jesuit Honore Fabri. That report focuses on the implication of
Descartes's views in natural philosophy that the matter of the eucharistic bread
is united to the soul of Christ. Such an implication is found not in Descartes's
published writings but rather in his 1645 correspondence on the Eucharist with
the Jesuit Mesland. Though Clerselier had prudently decided not to publish
this correspondence in his post-1650 editions of Descartes, he perhaps impru-
dently sent a copy to a Jesuit who had promised to use it in good faith to bring
about support for Descartes in his order. Evidently that Jesuit passed along the
correspondence to Fabri, who took it in turn to indicate that Descartes's phys-
ics conflicts with the determination by the Council of Trent that the body of
Christ is "really and substantially" present in the Eucharist.39 Thus it was ini-
tially the implications of Cartesianism for the doctrine of the Eucharist that
made this system seem so dangerous to its critics.
The Fabri report and the Index condemnation that resulted from it prepared
the way for the "Eucharist affair" that marks the start of the attempt on Louis's
part systematically to suppress the teaching of Cartesianism in the French uni-
versities. Once again the eucharistic account in the Mesland correspondence
landed the Cartesians in difficulties. It is this account that provided the basis
for Desgabets's tract on the Eucharist, the Considerations sur 1'etatpresent de
la controverse, which was published anonymously and without his authoriza-
tion in 1671.40 For French Jesuits this tract smacked of the Calvinist position
that Christ is only spiritually present in the Eucharist, and there is no doubt that
it was this insinuation that Louis's Jesuit confessor, Jean Ferrier, had in mind

37 AT, VII, 31.

38 This condemnation was preceded by the 1662 condemnation by the Faculty of Theol-
ogy in Louvain of five propositions from Descartes, three of which directly concern the issue
of the Eucharist.
39 See G. Sortais, "Le Cart6sianisme chez les jesuites francais au xviie et au xviiie siecle,"
Archives de philosophie, 6 (1929), 51 n.2.
40 Considerations sur 'etat present de la controverse touchant le Tres Saint-Sacrement de
I'autel, oiu il est traite en peu de mots de l'opinion qui enseigne que la matiere du pain est
change en celle du corps de Jesus-Christ par son union substantielle ac son ime et a sapersonne
divine (Hollande, 1671).

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48 Tad M. Schmaltz

when he told the king that Desgabets's tract was "heretical and very perni-
cious."4' Worried as much by the power of the French Huguenots as by the
continuing influence of the Jansenists, Louis immediately issued an edict call-
ing on the University of Paris to prohibit certain teachings that are contrary to
"the rules and statutes of the University" and that "bring some confusion in the
explanation of our mysteries." The statutes referred to here are the 1624 con-
demnation of the atomist critiques ofAristotle in the work of certain thinkers at
the university. One of the original reasons given for this condemnation was in
fact that anti-Aristotelianism is prejudicial to the Catholic doctrine of the Eu-
charist. Though both the Faculty ofArts at the University and the Paris Parlement
initially resisted the attempt to suppress Cartesianism on the basis of the 1624
condemnation, later in the 1670s Louis was successful in using the issue of the
Eucharist to bring about a ban on Cartesian teachings and the banishment of
Cartesian professors at universities in Caen and Angers.42
Even though the perception that Descartes's physics threaten the doctrine
of the Eucharist contributed to the official harassment of Cartesianism, it can-
not provide the complete explanation. After all, Pierre Gassendi and his fol-
lowers also offered a mechanistic alternative to Aristotelian natural philoso-
phy; yet, as Arauld observed bitterly, their works were not placed on the In-
dex, and they themselves not subject to harassment in France. This disparity in
treatment is perhaps even more surprising since the 1624 condemnation would
seem to have applied more directly to Gassendi, who offered a revamped ver-
sion of Epicurean atomism, than it would have to Descartes, who explicitly
rejected atoms and the void. Even so, it is a fact that there was no royal effort to
uproot Gassendists in French universities during the 1670s.
Desgabets's prediction to Clerselier of a Gassendist victory notwithstand-
ing, the success of the Gassendists in avoiding harassment is a sign of their
failure to package and promote Gassendi's system. Whereas Descartes's fol-
lowers provided French editions of his accessible writings and elegant summa-
ries of his system in the late 1650s and early 1660s, Francois Berier got around
to producing a cumbersome French summary of the views in Gassendi's virtu-
ally unreadable Latin tomes only in the mid-1670s, after his return from a visit
to the Mogul empire. Moreover, the Gassendists followed their master in bor-
rowing from a wide variety of sources (different sources in the case of different
Gassendists) and in emphasizing the merely probable and provisional nature of
their (widely scattered) conclusions. This non-dogmatic eclecticism makes
Gassendism an even more elusive target than Cartesianism.

41 Cited in Trevor McClaughlin, "Censorship and the Defenders of the Cartesian Faith in
Mid-Seventeenth Century France," JHI, 40 (1979), 572.
42 For a discussion of the 1671 royal decree and its relation to the 1624 statutes, see Roger
Ariew, "Damned If You Do: Cartesians and Censorship, 1663^1706," Perspectives on Science,
2 (1994), 257-66.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 49

These historical and philosophical differences between Gassendists and

Cartesians have been noted in the literature and do in fact go far toward ex-
plaining the differences in the treatments of their writings by the French au-
thorities.43 Yet there is one more difference that is obviously relevant in the
context of early modem French thought: the widespread association of Jansenism
with Cartesianism and the lack of corresponding association of it with
Gassendism. There is nothing in the case of the Gassendists, for instance, to
match the causal comment of the French socialite, Mme. de Sevigne, in a 1676
letter that a certain thinker (Le Bossu) is "Jansenist, that is to say, Cartesian."44
Moreover, there is no Gassendist counterpart to the Jesuit Gabriel Daniel's
claim in his 1690 Voyage du Monde de M. Descartes that "there are very few
Jansenists who are not Cartesians."45 Given Louis's animosity toward the
Jansenists, this difference would help to explain why he pursued the Cartesians
more vigorously than the Gassendists. Indeed, it is significant that official in-
junctions against Cartesianism increasingly broached the issue of Jansenism,
as for instance in the 1678 ban in the Congregation of the Oratory of the teach-
ing of Jansen and Baius in theology and Descartes in philosophy. This is also
the case in the order that same year by the General of Genofevins barring "all
theology professors from teaching any doctrine which might be suspected of
Jansenism ... and all philosophy professors from teaching the opinions of
Descartes."46

Descartes's critics had refrained from linking him to the budding Jansenist
movement in the decade of his life that followed the publication of the
Augustinus. It was only during the 1670s that his views came to be widely
associated with those of the French Jansenists. One reason for the connection
would obviously be the work of Arauld, who took his own Jansenist/Augus-
tinian views in theology to complement Descartes's spiritualistic emphasis on
the existence of God and on the immortality of the soul. Certainly, Amauld is
the source for the 1681 comment of the Huguenot Pierre Jurieu that "the theo-
logians of Port-Royal are as devoted to Cartesianism as they are to Christian-
ity."47 As scholars have noted, however, the dominant attitude towards
Cartesianism among those most closely associated Port-Royal solitaires is bet-
ter reflected by Pascal's slogan, "Descartes, useless and uncertain," than it is by

43 See, e.g., Thomas Lennon, Battle of the Gods and Giants: The Legacies of Descartes
and Gassendi, 1655-1715 (Princeton, 1993), ch. 1; and L.W. B. Brockliss, "Descartes, Gassendi,
and the Reception of the Mechanical Philosophy in the French Colleges de Plein Exercice,
1640-1730," Perspectives on Science, 3 (1995), 450-75.
44 Correspondance de Mme de Sevigne, ed. R. Duchene (Paris, 1972), II, 398.
45 Voyage du Monde de M. Descartes (Paris, 1690), 285.
46 Collectiojudiciorum de novis erroribus, ed. C. Duplessis d'Argentre (Paris, 1728-36),
III-2, 344ff.
47 La politique du clerge de France (Cologne, 1681), 107.

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50 Tad M. Schmaltz

anything in Arauld.48 This fact raises the question of whether the popular
association of Jansenism with Cartesianism could be due simply to Arauld.
Here it is relevant that in his unpublished "Observations sur la philosophie de
Descartes" (1681) the Port-Royalist Louis-Paul Du Vaucel criticized any asso-
ciation to Cartesianism by drawing attention to the problematic nature of the
eucharistic theology of"Dom Robert des Gabets celebre Religieux de la con-
gregation de Saint Vanne."49 I take this comment to indicate that the connection
between Jansenism and Cartesianism did not in fact rest on the case ofArnauld
alone. Indeed, I think that the case of Desgabets shows that it is a mistake to
identify Jansenist-Cartesianism with the views of Arauld. Here I attempt to
extend our view beyond Arnauld and Port-Royal by considering this particular
case.

What Has Desgabets To Do with Jansenist-Cartesianism?

In order to highlight Desgabets's role in the popular association of

with Cartesianism, I want to start by considering an odd feature o
of the official sanctioning of these movements in France. This is
while Cartesianism flourished there during the campaign against
the 1660s, the two movements switched fortunes in the following
French Cartesianism coming under attack and French Jansenism
protection of church and state. Thus it was during the "dark da
Royal, the period between 1664 and 1668 when the convent was
those who refused to sign the formulary refused the sacraments,
sian conferences of the physicist Jacques Rohault won converts to
Moreover, the dissemination of Descartes's views continued apac
cations of editions of his writings in 1664, 1666, and 1667 (afte
condemnation!). It is true that the Chancellor of the University of
Lallemont, was prohibited by royal order from delivering the funera
the 1667 reburial of Descartes's remains at the Church of Sainte-Genevieve du
Mont. Yet the reburial itself and the other festivities connected with the event
were allowed to proceed without further interference. Surely there is a striking
contrast here with the intimidation of Port-Royal by the Archbishop of Paris
Perefixe, who felt it necessary to have two hundred archers accompany him to
the convent in order to remove intransigent nuns.

48 See G. [Rodis-]Lewis, "Augustinisme et cart6sianisme a Port-Royal," Descartes et le

cartesianisme hollandais, eds. E. J. Dijksterhuis et al. (Paris, 1950), 131-82, especially her
conclusion there that "excepting perhaps Pontchateau, Arauld thus appeared totally isolated
in his attachment to Cartesianism as such" (ibid., 148). Cf. Steven Nadler, "Cartesianism and
Port-Royal," Monist, 71 (1988), 573-84.
49 "Observations," Descartes et le cartesianisme hollandais, 1 16. Cf. Du Vaucel's critique
of Desgabets's views on the "indefectibilit6 des creatures" in ibid., 122ff, 125ff.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 51

The official harassment of Cartesianism began in earnest only after 1671,

two years after Clement IX had secured, and Louis had endorsed, the cessation
of hostilities over the Augustinus. During this time of the Paix de I'Eglise, the
nuns of Port-Royal were allowed to reassemble and receive the sacraments,
and Arnauld was able to come out of hiding for the first time since 1656. By
contrast Desgabets was interrogated by his Benedictine superiors and ultimately
was barred from commenting publicly on theological matters.50 As I have noted,
Cartesian professors at the provincial universities also suffered rebuke. While
the Jesuits were vocal in their opposition to Cartesianism during this period,
however, their General had ordered in 1669 that

without the permission of His Holiness, [our Fathers and Brothers]

neither write nor speak in any manner of the disciples of Jansen nor of
any subject that concerns them.... The silence on such a subject must
be inviolable to remove all pretext from those who differ in their char-
acter.5'

Thus we have the silencing of Jesuit anti-Jansenist polemics at about the same
time that the Jesuit Ferrier was condemning Desgabets's Cartesian tract on the
Eucharist as "heretical and very pernicious."
Nonetheless, Oliva's reference to the "pretext" of "those who differ in
their character" indicates that Jesuit animosity towards the Jansenists did not
abate during the Clementine peace. Further, Rapin's Memoires report that a
delegation of anti-Jansenists from the Sorbonne, including the dean of the Fac-
ulty of Theology, Claude Morel, urged Louis to break the peace and to carry on
"a good war against the Jansenists."52 Louis's purported response that he is
obliged to preserve the peace "in the present state"-in particular, while he was
preoccupied with his campaigns in the Spanish Netherlands and with his prepa-
ration for the ensuing war against the Dutch-reveals the temporary nature of
his commitment to this peace. There is reason to think that Jesuit critics of
Jansen would have been inclined to take measures against the Jansenists that
were technically in compliance with the terms of the Clementine peace.
Indeed, there is some evidence that the sanctioning of Cartesianism during
the 1670s constituted just this sort of"secret war" against Jansenism. The royal
edict ordering the University of Paris to prohibit deviations fromAristotelianism
was overtly directed against Cartesianism, as indicated both by its connections
to the publication of Desgabets's eucharistic tract and by the fact that Morel

50 He was allowed, however, to publish the 1675 Critique de la critique, a response to

Simon Foucher's Critique of Malebranche's Recherche de la verite.
51 Cited in G. Guitton, Le pere de la Chaize, confesseur de Louis XIV (Paris, 1959), I, 42.
52 Memoires, III, 486.

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52 Tad M. Schmaltz

took the king to command that one "sent away from the schools the new opin-
ions of Descartes" (de amandandis a schola novis Cartesii opinionibus).53 Yet
in an anonymous pamphlet written to persuade the Parlement of Paris to refrain
from endorsing the royal edict, the author-almost surely Arnauld-charged
that the effort to condemn Descartes derives from those who "are scarcely fond
of the conservation of the peace that the late pope [Clement IX, d. 1669] and
the king have so happily established." This author also pointed out that "the
General of the Jesuits has written a circular to all the houses of the Order to

oblige the Jesuits to write everywhere against the philosophy of M Descartes;

this reveals the plot." Morel is singled out explicitly as one who is participating
in the plot to undermine the peace by undertaking "all sorts of proceedings to
obtain something, either from the Faculty of Theology, or from the University,
or from Parlement to condemn all philosophy other than that of Aristotle."54 In
this view Jansen's position, more than that of Descartes, is at issue in the cam-
paign against Cartesianism.
This admittedly is only one author's opinion, but the charge of a plot against
Jansenism makes sense given that Morel was among those who, according to
on Rapin's report, demanded that Louis take up arms against Jansenism. More-
over, Desgabets's tract would have given the Jesuits grounds for linking
Cartesianism to Port-Royal Jansenism. After all, its author appealed repeatedly
there to the Port-Royalist Art de penser in support of his account of the Eucha-
rist. Further, I have indicated that one important criticism of this account is that
it supports the Calvinist denial of the real presence of Christ's body in the
Eucharist. Indeed, Amauld himself had worried that the Calvinists would use
Desgabets's remarks on the Eucharist "only for very great advantages against
the Church" since these remarks "appear to depart from one of the principle
points of its doctrine, which is transubstantiation."55 In this light Desgabets's
brand of Cartesianism would seem to complement Jansenism, at least on the
Jesuits' conception of the latter. By 1671 it was already established among
them that the followers of Jansen were simply Calvinists in disguise, a view
reflected in the Jesuit litany of 1643 that "Paul begat Augustine, Augustine
Calvin, Calvin Jansen, Jansen Saint-Cyran, Saint-Cyran Amauld and his breth-
ren" (Paulus genuit Augustinum, Augustinus Calvinum, Calvinus Jansenium,
Jansenius Sancyranum, Sancyranus Arnaldum etfratres ejus).56 A critique of
the Cartesian account of the Eucharist that emphasizes the incompatibility of
Catholicism with Calvinist doctrine would have served, in the minds of the
Jesuits and other anti-Jansenists in France, at least, to undermine the Jansenism
of the supporters of Port-Royal.

53 Victor Cousin, Fragments philosophiques pour servir a I'histoire de la philosophie

(Paris, 1866), III, 301.
54 Ibid., III, 303ff.
55 OA, I, 671.
56 Cited in F. Bluche, Louis XIV, tr. M. Greengrass (New York, 1990), 208.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 53

It is unlikely that Louis himself was interested in the technical details of

eucharistic theology. Moreover, when told of the 1678 condemnation of
Cartesianism by the Oratory, he noted that he approved not because "I wished
to prevent it being taught to the Monseigneur, but [because] I do not wish it to
be made the basis for a doctrine."57 Cartesianism certainly differs in this respect
from Jansenism; Louis did not tolerate the private teaching of the latter during
the persecutions of Port-Royal. Yet the fact that he was worried that the public
promulgation of Cartesianism would encourage the Jansenists is indicated by
the fact that the Oratorian condemnation of 1678, which was drawn to his
specifications, linked the teachings of Descartes in philosophy to those of Baius
and Jansen in theology. This connection carries over to the belated 1691 con-
demnation of Cartesianism by the University of Paris, which combines certain
propositions that concern radical Cartesian doubt with others that express
Jansenist views on sin and free will.58
It is at least in part to prevent this sort of backlash against Jansenism that
Arauld denounced Desgabets's account of the Eucharist before the Archbishop
of Paris, now Harlay de Champvallon, at the start of 1672.59 Yet there are more
than practical or political considerations behind the denunciation. Arauld in-
sisted on a strict division between philosophy and theology, citing repeatedly
the words of Augustine that "what we know, we owe to reason; what we be-
lieve, to authority" (quod scimus, debemus ratione; quod credimus, auctoritati).6
He preferred the sort of "positive theology" in his own De lafrequente com-
munion as well as in his and Nicole's second Perpetuite de la foi (1669-74),
works which attempt not to establish Cartesian foundations for an account of
the Eucharist but merely to describe the theological implications of revealed
truths concerning this doctrine as set out in the writings of the early Church
Fathers. Amauld's rejection of Desgabets's explication of the Eucharist there-
fore had a theoretical basis.

For Arauld, at least, this basis derives directly from Jansen. Most relevant
here are Jansen's remarks in the introductory book "on reason and faith in
theological matters" that prefaces the second volume of his Augustinus. In this
introduction Jansen urged that the corrupting influences of scholastic philoso-
phy account for the theological conflicts within the Church. His solution is a

57 Ibid., 394.
58 In contrast to earlier condemnations of Cartesianism, there is no emphasis in the 1691
condemnation on Descartes's denial of real qualities that persist without a subject in the Eu-
charist (though it does condemn the Cartesian thesis that "the matter of bodies is nothing other
than their extension, and the one cannot be without the other"). For a reprint of the 1691
condemnation, see Roger Ariew, "Quelques condamnations du cartesianisme: 1662-1706,"
Bulletin cartesien XXII, Archives de Philosophie, 57 (1994), 4ff.
59 See J.-R. Armogathe, Theologia cartesiana: I'explication physique de I'Eucharistie
chez Descartes et dom Desgabets (The Hague, 1977), 105.
60 See for instance OA, XXXVIII, 94.

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54 Tad M. Schmaltz

return to the authority of the Church Fathers, especially that of Augustine.6'

Arnauld's acceptance of this solution is an important source of his wariness of
philosophical intrusions into theological matters, including the sort of incur-
sion that he saw in Desgabets's eucharistic tract.
It is important that one not distinguish Arnauld from Desgabets too much.
Arnauld himself allowed that one can use reason to show that Cartesian prin-
ciples are consistent with the doctrine of the Eucharist. When the dean of the
chapter ofVitre, Le Moine, protested that the Cartesian identification of matter
with extension conflicts with the teaching of the Church-that Christ's body is
present in the Eucharist without being contained in the place of the Host-
Arnauld responded that Cartesianism allows for the position of Christ's body
having extension but lacks the property of impenetrability that is required for a
body to have an enclosed surface.62 What Arauld refrained from doing, how-
ever, was providing a philosophical explication of how God makes Christ's
body to be present with its extension but without its impenetrability.
By contrast, Desgabets appealed in his Considerations to Descartes's view
in the Mesland correspondence that the human body depends on its union with
the soul precisely in order to explain how God creates Christ's body in the
place of the Host. The position in Desgabet's tract is that God brings about this
presence not by somehow creating an extension that lacks impenetrability, but
rather by uniting Christ's soul to the matter of the Host.63 Arnauld believed this
account to be incompatible with the complete transformation of the matter of
the Host into the body of Christ; such a belief undoubtedly was the proximate
cause of his denunciation of Desgabets before the Archbishop of Paris. But just
as Jansen took errors in theology to derive from a misuse of scholastic philoso-
phy, so too it seems that Arnauld would have taken Desgabets's specific theo-
logical difficulties to derive from his appeal to philosophical principles in order
to explain what the Church has declared to be incomprehensible.64 In light of
Arnauld's repeated insistence on the tenet in the Augustinus that philosophy
and theology have different sources, it would appear to be such an appeal that
for him ultimately places Desgabets outside of the Jansenist camp.

61 There is a summary of this book in Abercrombie, Origins, 134-36. Abercrombie ob-

jects that Jansen's critique of philosophy is in some tension with his own use of philosophy to
refute the Molinists, an objection which assumes an Arauldian reading of this critique.
62 See Arnauld, Examen d'un ecrit qui a pour titre: Traite de l'essence du Corps, & de
l'union de l'Ame avec le Corps, contre la Philosophie de M. Descartes (1680), in OA XXXVIII,
100-124. For discussion of his position, see E. J. Kremer, "Arnauld's Interpretation of Descartes
as a Christian Philosopher," Interpreting Arnauld, ed. E. J. Kremer (Toronto, 1996), 77-83.
The only access we have to the views to which Amauld is reacting is by way of his summary
of them, since Le Moine's Traite is lost.
63 For Desgabets's development of this account, see Armogathe, Theologia cartesiana,
?2.1I.
64 For the emphasis on the incomprehensibility of revealed truths, see Arnauld's remarks
at OA, XXXVIII, 121-24.

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Cartesianism and Jansenism 55

It is admittedly tempting to give Arauld the final word on the nature of

Jansenism. After all, his standing was such that the prince de Conti (Armand de
Bourbon-Conde) took to calling the French JansenistsArnaudistes.65 However,
Desgabets himself had impressive Jansenist credentials. Here we have some-
one who refused to sign the anti-Jansenist formulary and who was deeply com-
mitted to theological views on contrition and divine grace quite similar to those
that emanated from Port-Royal.66 Moreover, Desgabets's "jansenized" Car-
tesianism attracted a greater following among the Lorraine Benedictines than
Arnauld's Cartesio-Jansenism did among the solitaires of Port-Royal.67 We there-
fore are not warranted in rejecting out of hand the importance of interpretations
of Jansenist theology that differ from the one that Arauld offered. What we
meet in Desgabets is a Jansen who, in contrast to the Jansen of Arnauld, rules
out the theological use only of the corrosive philosophy of Aristotle, not of
philosophy tout court. In Desgabets's view, the Augustinus allows for the ap-
plication in theology of philosophical principles found in the work of Au-
gustine. Yet Desgabets, like French Cartesians as varied as Clerselier, Cally,
Malebranche, and Arauld, emphasized the anticipations of Cartesianism in
Augustine's philosophical reflections.68 While Arauld's reading of Jansen led
him to attempt to restrict these connections to the realm of philosophy, Desgabets
and his circle took the project of providing a Cartesian alternative to the scho-
lastic account of the Eucharist to follow the call in Jansen for a return to Augus-
tine. Thus just as the case of Desgabets previously revealed the diversity of the
Cartesian movement, so now it brings to light fundamental differences among
the Jansenists.
These differences only reinforce the notion of a plurality of Jansenisms in
the early modern period. I hope to have shown, however, that the speculative
theology of Desgabets was the visible target in the French wars against
Cartesianism in the 1670s, overshadowing the positive theology ofArnauld. In
this respect it can be said that Desgabets's brand of Jansenism was more promi-
nent during this time than the Jansenism ofArnauld. For that matter, Desgabets's
brand of Cartesianism played a more overt role in the harassment of the French
Cartesians toward the end of the seventeenth century than did the Cartesianism
of Arnauld. Furthermore, if we are looking for an example from this period of

65 Cited in Abercrombie, Origins, 214. The prominence of Arauld is confirmed by the

Jesuit litany cited above.
66 See R. Taveneaux, Le jansenisme en Lorraine, 1640-1789 (Paris, 1960), 118-31. Cf.
Armogathe, Theologia cartesiana, ?2.II.
67 Compare the stress in the articles cited in note 48 on the wariness of Arauld's
Cartesianism in Port-Royal with the emphasis in Taveneaux (Le jansenisme, 118-31) on
Desgabets's successes in Lorraine.
68 See G. Rodis-Lewis, "Augustinisme et cart6sianisme," L'Anthropologie cartesienne
(Paris, 1990), 101-25, and H. Gouhier, Cartesianisme et augustinisme au xviie siecle (Paris,
1978).

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56 Tad M. Schmaltz

a real blending of Cartesian philosophy with Jansenist theology, as opposed to

a mere juxtaposition of the two, it would seem better to turn to one who (to
borrow from Arnauld's letter) "takes M Descartes for a man strongly enlight-
ened in matters of religion" than it would be to turn to one who says that with
respect to theology (to borrow from this letter again) "all that one can say for
[Descartes] is that he always appeared to submit himself to the Church." Many
have turned instead to le grand Arnauld, somewhat understandably since he is
still read while the disgraced Desgabets has long since been forgotten. Yet my
argument here has been that we must take Desgabets into account if we are
fully to appreciate what Cartesianism and Jansenism had to do with each other,
from both a historical and a philosophical standpoint, in the context of early
moder France.69

Duke University.

69 I would like to thank Steven Nadler and Roger Ariew for helpful comments, and to
acknowledge that work on this article was made possible by a fellowship sponsored by the
Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina and by the support of the National Humani-
ties Center.

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