Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques et les Lumières (année 1750)

Abstract

This article analyses the importance of Enlightenment themes in the Jansenists' clandestine journal, taking 1750 as a test. The Nouvelles ecclésiastiques only dealt with religion, recounting persecutions or reviewing theological works. On the occasion of the condemnation of Colonia's Bibliothèque janséniste, the paper drew up a list of good books, often from the 17th Century, written by the 'friends of truth'. But despite this fascination with Port-Royal, current events intruded ; the journal reviewed works, all described as irreligious, by Molinists or by Philosophes such as Montesquieu or Buffon, discussed at length. The journalists refused any bridge between good and bad books, and the Philosophes were clearly the authors of the latter ; but the persecuted Appelants described by the journal are readers of forbidden works and examples of resistance to authority, seen as blind and arbitrary. Thus, while the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques violently opposed the ideas of the Enlightenment in its book reviews, these ideas reappear in the biographies of exemplary Jansenists, seen as champions of individual conscience against oppression.