Jansenism and the Scots College books in Paris

Abstract

Not the least interesting aspect of Maurice Caillet's catalogue of Scottish books in the collection of the Irish College in Paris1 is its confirmation of the close connection which existed between the Scots Codege and French Jansenism. Among the books which belonged to the Scots Codege itself, items 51 and 52 are of particular interest. The former, La Bible traduite en franqots avec 1'explication du sens littiral et du sens spirituel was the famous translation of the Vulgate carried out by Isaac Le Maistre de Sacy, in codaboration with Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot. Le Maistre de Sacy, brother of Antoine Le Maistre, the celebrated lawyer who renounced the world for a life of seclusion and prayer to become the first solitaire of Port-Royal, was himself a famous solitaire and teacher at the Little Schools of PortRoyal, as wed as confessor to the nuns. A penitential rigorist, he was arrested in 1666 and imprisoned in the Bastide for three years along with Nicolas Fontaine. The first edition of his Bible was published in 1667. The volumes of Le Maistre de Sacy would have been a particularly precious item for Thomas Innes, who was steeped in the PortRoyal tradition, and who, as Prefect of Studies in the Codege in the first part of the eighteenth century, modeded his own teaching on the precepts and practices to be found at Port-Royal. Item 52, Causa Quesnelliana, would also have been wed thumbed by Thomas Innes. Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719) was much admired by Innes as the embodiment of the Oratorian spiritual tradition and the author of the Reflexions Morales (1692 and subsequent editions), the most controversial Jansenist works since the Augustinus. Quesnel became the effective head of the Jansenist movement after the death of Antoine Arnauld in 1694. Since 1684 he had lived in exde in Belgium to escape persecution in France but in 1703, while France was allied to Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession, he was arrested on the orders of the King of Spain and imprisoned in the jad of the Archbishop of Malines. He escaped after a few months, fleeing to Amsterdam, but seizure of his papers led Louis XIV to believe that he was the mastermind behind a far-flung conspiracy against him. Jesuit theologians and others, such as Fenelon, conducted a violent campaign against Quesnel, calling for his condemnation by Rome, while his admirers put the case