CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

CAMEO CCLXXVII.

1694-1712.

THE SETTING SUN OF FRANCE.

THE brilliant sun of Louis XIV. was going down in heavy clouds. He bore his troubles with magnanimity and resignation; but, unfortunately, as he became more religious, his conscientiousness made him the more inclined to persecution.

Père Pasquier Quesnel had published a book of Reflexions Morales, short, practical notes on the Gospels, which had been formally approved by Cardinal de Noailles, when Bishop of Châlons. After the death of Antoine Arnauld in 1694, Quesnel, who had been with him in his last moments, was regarded as the Elisha of the Jansenists as he had been the Elijah. This brought Quesnel under suspicion, and when a new edition, enlarged, was to appear in 1698, and the sanction of De Noailles, as Archbishop of Paris, was required, he wished it to be previously submitted to Bossuet, who drew up a long Avertissement in defence of the Reflexions, and also marked various passages which he wished should be expunged.

The friends of Quesnel would not give up the passages, and Noailles only published parts of the Avertissement as letters, nor would he sanction the book as Archbishop of Paris, though his former approval as Bishop of Châlons was still appended to the new edition.

From that time he was regarded as a Jansenist, and distrusted accordingly. Le Tellier, Archbishop of Rheims, was far from being a Jansenist, but also a strong opponent of the Jesuits; and in an Assembly of the Clergy, held in 1700, under his presidency, formally condemned those dangerous maxims of easy dealing with penitents which had been exposed by Pascal. Also, it condemned the tolerance of the Jesuit missionaries for some of the old heathenish rites practised by their converts in China-and their endeavour to win the Empire -by representing that Christianity was a development of the religion of Confucius, and that there was an identity of worship. There was a great controversy as to whether the Jesuits were justified in their compromise with the 'sublime religion,' and Clement XI. forbade the honours paid to Confucius, and censured the over liberal tone of their

teaching, sending out Cardinal Tournon as his legate, to enforce his command. The Jesuit Fathers, who had great influence with the Emperor, in consequence of having cured him of a dangerous disease, stirred up an absolute persecution against the legate, and imprisoned him in their house at Macao, where, after much suffering and privation, he died. The mission, which had begun by being very prosperous, fell into decay, probably in consequence of these unhappy divisions.

The Jansenists, finding the Jesuits out of favour with Pope and King, prepared a scheme for their own rehabilitation.

A case of conscience was constructed and sent, as from a country priest, to be considered by the Doctors of the Sorbonne, the special Professors of Divinity in the University of Paris. The penitent was supposed to be an ecclesiastic who condemned the five Jansenist points, but would not commit himself on their authorship, and did not believe the Pope infallible on matters of fact. On predestination, attrition, efficacious grace, the Immaculate Conception, and the cult of the saints, he likewise held his own views; he used Arnauld's book on Frequent Communion, St. Cyran's Spiritual Lectures, and De Sacy's translation of the New Testament. Was such a person in a fit state to receive priestly absolution?

Most of the theologians did not perceive that this was a trap, and only one observed that he should like to see this same ecclesiastic, when he would be sure to answer the questions. Forty of the Doctors of Divinity signed their decision that the person holding such views might be accepted as worthy of Absolution and Communion, and this judgment was made public.

It had the effect of bringing general attention on the Jansenists, and stirring up the spirit of persecution. Bossuet, though now very old and suffering much in health, was as vigorous as ever, and set himself to study the whole controversy. He came to the conclusion that the works of Jansen did certainly contain the five propositions, but that the Jansenists could not properly be termed heretics, as they professed formally to renounce the errors condemned by the Church, but that they acted in a manner tending to promote schism and heresy. The last days of the Eagle of Meaux were rapidly approaching. He had a long illness, much harassed by his vulgar, grasping nephews, clerical and secular. The former worried him into going to Versailles to request that this same Abbé should be appointed his coadjutor and successor; but Louis would only say that he would consider of it, and the Bishop was harassed by the consequent ill-temper and pertinacity of these men, who visited their disappointment upon him, and tormented him without ceasing. At last he became seriously worse, and lay repeating, 'Adveniat Regnum Tuum-Fiat Voluntas Tua.' Indeed, these were his last conscious words, before his death, April 12th, 1704, in his seventy-seventh year. That there had been no attempt at reconciliation with Fénélon was probably owing to that

mischievous person, the Abbé Bossuet. Fénélon, however, mourned heartily for him as the great light of the Gallican Church.

Bossuet was, indeed, a great loss. He was the only theologian capable of holding the true balance between the Jesuits and Jansenists, who could guide the feeble and impetuous Cardinal de Noailles, and also who was thoroughly trusted and respected by the King, as well as one who had a feeling for the independence of the Gallican Church. Louis was entirely left to Jesuit influence, and he applied to Rome for a more crushing Bull against the Jansenists. Clement XI. actually sent him the draft of the Bull entitled Vineam Dommi Sabaoth, which condemned as a subterfuge the sort of submission hitherto made by the Jansenists by what they call respectful silence, and to force them to more categorical renunciation.

De Noailles and the Gallican Bishops hesitated over the acceptance of this Bull, as a matter of independence, and minds became influenced. Quesnel's book was most harshly and violently condemned at Rome, and sentenced to be burnt; but De Noailles still defended it, and, on Bossuet's authority, bringing out the entire Avertissement instead of only portions. However, he found himself no longer able to protect Port Royal. He had permitted the reception of pensioners, postulants, and novices, which had been forbidden under his predecessor, Harlay, and his Episcopate had been a time of peace; but when the King sent commands that the Papal Bull should be signed in the convents, he durst not object. The Abbess and her nuns of Port Royal aux Champs, appended the clause, without prejudice to what was done in our favour at the Peace of the Church under Clement IX.'

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This had been accepted forty years before, and they had full right to appeal to it; but they had no such defenders left as they had then possessed, and, indeed, their ruin had been determined.

First came a prohibition to admit novices. Then the House in Paris appealed against the division of property that had been made long ago, and it was given against Port Royal aux Champs so as almost to starve out the Sisters, though the pleadings on their side were most eloquent, and justice was with them. Then Cardinal de Noailles published a decree, condemning the Sisters as contumacious and disobedient to the Holy See, depriving them of the Sacraments, and forbidding the election of an Abbess. Then followed a Bull suppressing the Abbey of Port Royal aux Champs, and by-and-by the Abbey of Port Royal at Paris came out and took possession. Nor was this enough to satisfy the Jesuit Michel le Tellier, nor the King's Confessor. In 1709, the Marquis d'Argenson, Lieutenant of Police, was sent out with a train of carriages to carry off all the nuns, and separate them in different convents, where they were to be kept in strict seclusion and denied the Sacraments till they should repent. The buildings were pulled down, and even the dead disinterred and taken-not respectfully-to neighbouring cemeteries.

And why? Not for any crime-not for laxity-not for heresy— but because they presumed to refuse to affirm on the authority of a Pope, himself coerced by Louis XIV., that five heretical propositions would be deduced from a huge theological book which they had never read! Such had been their original offence. That of these last victims was the appeal to a former compromise in their favour made by a former Pope.

No one was more grieved than the Cardinal Archbishop himself, who had been driven on, step by step, out of weakness and the habit of yielding to the King. He went out to the ruins of the Abbey with only his secretary, as an act of penance-weeping bitterly over them, wringing his hands, and crying, 'These stones will rise up against me in the Day of Judgment! How shall I ever endure this vast, this heavy load!' The secretary could hardly replace him in his carriage, and he continued, for the rest of his life, to grieve over the work to which he had been driven.

For a hundred years the Jansenists had been an example of stern, strict holiness of life, and of an uncompromising standard of morality. It is not fair towards their enemies to say that this was what excited such enmity. The clergy who opposed them were men of strict life themselves, and the King himself respected holiness. The truth was that what worked their ruin was their opposition to the infallibility of the Papacy in matters of fact, and their protests against that lax standard by which the Jesuits endeavoured to keep sinners in outward communion with the Church. The Five Propositions, though deducible from the strong arguments of St. Augustine in his struggle with Pelagianism, were perilous in their consequences, but they were in themselves deductions, and never stated in so many words in Jansen's writings, and the whole struggle had come to be that the Pope's affirmation that they were there was not confirmed by persons who were quite willing to abjure the Propositions themselves. It was this so-called contumacy that was the engine used for the overthrow of those who lived the most saintly lives, and it was all the harder since it was well known that the Pope was really only doing the will of Louis XIV., not acting on his own conviction.

Louis had from the first a dread and hatred of all independence of thought, and made it his business to crush it wherever it appeared, and thus was the persecutor, not only of the Huguenots, but even of Madame Guyon and Fénélon, as well as of the Jansenists, absolutely forcing the hand of the Supreme Pontiff to condemn them. He was far from understanding the impossibility of crushing thought and speculation, and that he was driving intellect into far more dangerous channels, as well as hindering the revival of saintly enthusiasm and morality that might yet have purified his country, and saved it from its degradation and corruption.

He had become the instrument of the Jesuits, and of a far more unscrupulous one in Le Tellier than Père la Chaise had ever been.

A silent Jansenism survived till the Revolution, and, indeed, a certain severity of opinion and gravity of manners, and love of reading the Fathers, was apt to be branded with the title, although many of the most devout and excellent persons in France were entirely alien to these peculiar doctrines. When the Duke of Orleans asked his uncle for a favour for a friend, the answer was, 'Is not he a Jansenist ?' No, sire, he is only an Atheist.' And Louis held this to be the less dangerous alternative. The harassing and depressing of Cardinal de Noailles was still carried on, and Madame de Maintenon had long been induced heartily to repent of the influence she had used in obtaining the appointment for him.

In 1710, Louis endeavoured to make terms with the Allies. The French were exhausted. A conference was held at Gertruydenberg to consider of the terms. Louis even offered to give up the cause of Philip if some small compensation was made to him. But Philip, by this time secure of the affections of the Spaniards, showed that he would not be thus dethroned at the old man's will. This overthrew the negotiations, to the almost equal regret of the English, the French, and General Marlborough, who could not bear to see the misery of the poor French peasantry.

The Court of France was full of melancholy and dreariness.

'I must do something extraordinary by way of rejoicing, when the peace is signed,' said the Duchess of Burgundy, and bitter was the disappointment.

At our age one is no longer fortunate,' said the King, with exquisite courtesy, to one of his old beaten generals.

Madame de Maintenon was fast ageing. Deaf, and with failing sight, she had an armchair with a kind of cradle roof over it, to keep off the draughts, and there she sat in what she called her nest, through many a weary hour, the universal confidante and counsellor, never left to herself from morning till night, for if the King did not require her, his children, grandchildren, and their wives bestowed themselves on her, and really seemed to think-as she once wrote that their presence was the beatific vision, compensating for all the discomforts that restraint entailed on a body not yet glorified.

The bright spot in the Court was Marie Adelaide of Savoy, the young Duchess of Burgundy, a lively, quick-tempered creature, full of sweetness and affection, but eager, excitable, and craving for amusement, and often getting into scrapes. The King was exceedingly fond of her, with all an old man's affection for a charming young woman, and much preferred her to her husband, whose gravity, earnestness, and conscientiousness were distasteful to him, and, in fact, neither was ever at ease in the presence of the other.

The Dauphin did not give the same causes for dislike, but he was dulness personified, so indolent in mind and body that he was perfectly ignorant, and generally sitting in a corner of the saloon, whistling low, tapping his snuff-box, and staring at all who came in