Jansenism
- LAST REVIEWED: 22 April 2020
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0446
- LAST REVIEWED: 22 April 2020
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0446
Introduction
One of a number of theological tendencies within early modern Catholicism, Jansenism derives its name from Cornelius Jansen (b. 1585–d. 1638), bishop of Ypres. The term, coined by Jansen’s Jesuit critics, came into general use only in the 1640s, when his Augustinus (1640) was posthumously published in Leuven. Its appearance marked a fresh outbreak of an ancient dispute within Western Christianity concerning the nature of divine grace and its operation in both the individual believer and the Christian community. Jansen’s supporters intended the book as a rebuttal of a doctrine of grace, which was traced to the 5th-century heretic Pelagius, and which they ascribed to the Jesuits and their sympathizers. The Augustinus, and the reaction to it, crystalized a range of theological positions that, over the following decades, garnered support among clerical and lay Catholic groups in Flanders, France, Rome, and further afield. It is impossible to reduce those either accused of or professing Jansenism to a common set of doctrines, but they did share certain attitudes. The doctrinal authority of the Church Fathers, particularly Augustine, was supreme; their religious anthropology was pessimistic; their moral views were rigorist; and they were sensitive to issues of authority and conscience. Over the following two centuries, the efforts by theologians, pastors, and spiritual directors to define the role of individual conscience under the influence of divine grace involved Jansenists in successive contestations of papal, episcopal, regal, and civil authority. Although Jansenism’s cradle was Flanders, it is more usually associated with France, where it influenced religious and political life until the Revolution. Rome was another Jansenist theater, where pressure groups alternately supported and anathematized it, leading to a number of ill-conceived, politically motivated, and highly publicized papal condemnations of Jansenist texts. The movement found sympathizers all over Catholic Europe, especially in zones of religious tension like England, Holland, and Ireland. Later, versions of Jansenism became popular with reforming Catholic administrations in the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Portugal. In the late 18th century, French clerics and laity with Jansenist sympathies contributed to the suppression of the Jesuits. They also supported religious reforms intended to undermine both royal and papal authority. The failure of these schemes, together with the success of Napoleon’s 1801 Concordat, ended Jansenist-inspired political activities. Jansenist sympathies, however, survived; the 19th century saw the literary retrieval of the movement, especially in its Port-Royal version. From the mid-20th century, the study of Jansenism shed some of its denominational and romantic baggage to become a useful if not always well-used category for the study of early modern Catholicism.
General Overviews
Jansenism is both historically and historiographically complex, defying simple description. However, a number of excellent introductions and overviews, mostly in French and English, manage to combine empathy, insight, and balance. Abercrombie 1936 has aged well, still providing the best overview in English of Jansen’s theology; Sedgwick 1977 concentrates on 17th-century France; McManners 1998 is an engaging and thoughtful account on 18th-century French Jansenism. Doyle 2000 gives a comprehensive view and places Jansenism in a longer historical perspective. Recent, accessible treatments in English include O’Connor 2012 and Radner 2016. In French, Cognet 1961 still reigns supreme; Cognet’s work is an intellectual tour de force that repays careful reading. Adam 1968 concentrates on French Jansenism to 1715. Chantin 1996 is also useful, especially for the 19th-century “afterlife” of Jansenism. Ceyssens 1993 gives an account of what the author calls the “invention” of Jansenism by its adversaries. Marie 1966 takes the Port-Royal Jansenists as its main focus.
Abercrombie, Nigel. The Origins of Jansenism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.
The summary of the contents of Jansen’s Augustinus on pp. 126–153 is probably the best available in English and an excellent starting point.
Adam, Antoine. Du mysticism à la revolte: Les Jansénistes du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1968.
A look at French Jansenism to 1715 that sometimes overlooks its significance as a phenomenon of international Catholicism.
Ceyssens, Lucien. “Que penser finalement de l’histoire du jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme?” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 88 (1993): 108–130.
Taking up Arnauld’s assertion that Jansenism was a figment of its opponents’ (largely Jesuit) imagination, Ceyssens concludes that “anti-Jansenism,” in fact, preceded “Jansenism.” He explains why the debates over divine grace and free will gradually extended into moral theology, pastoral practices, and ecclesiology, and how they became politicized.
Chantin, Jean-Pierre. Le Jansénisme. Paris: Cerf, 1996.
Considering Jansenism as something of a historical enigma, Chantin begins with short chapters on theological and political Jansenism. There follows a treatment of Jansenism’s influence on more mundane aspects of Christian living and worship, with a particular focus on the role and activities of the curé.
Cognet, Louis. Le Jansénisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961.
This elegant and penetrating classic is both a rigorous presentation and a reasoned assessment of Jansenism. It concentrates on what the author calls the “first” Jansenism, with a masterful overview of the theological focus of the movement. Sensitive to the great variety of positions espoused by Jansenists, he isolates two of the most distinctive: a demanding Christianity and a conviction of the inalienable role of individual conscience in the interiorization of religious authority.
Doyle, William. Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution. London: Macmillan, 2000.
This is the best English language overview available. Unlike Cognet, Doyle gives equal attention to the 17th- and 18th-century versions of Jansenism. He provides a fascinating set of remarks on the significance of Jansenism for modern Catholicism, arguing that, Molinism apart, the post–Vatican II Catholic Church embraced many Jansenist desiderata, including the vernacular liturgy.
Marie, Catherine. “Port-Royal: The Jansenist Schism.” In Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions. Edited by Pierre Nora, 301–351. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
Original and authoritative, this work was a prelude to many invaluable contributions to the field by this scholar.
McManners, John. Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Chapter 5 of this book provides the best description of both the varieties and machinations of 18th-century French Jansenism.
O’Connor, Thomas. “Jansenism.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime. Edited by William Doyle, 318–336. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
An overview that attempts to give equal weight to the Flemish origins and French flowering of Jansenism.
Radner, Ephraim. “Early Modern Jansenism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600–1800. Edited by Ulrich L. Lehner, Richard A. Muller, and A. G. Roeber, 436–450. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
A fresh piece on the continuities and differences between Jansenism’s many avatars.
Sedgwick, A. Jansenism in Seventeenth-Century France: Voices in the Wilderness. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977.
A solid account and perhaps the best in English for the earlier controversies. On p. 68 one finds an English translation of the Five Articles derived from Jansen’s Augustinus.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Academies
- Aemilia Lanyer
- Agrippa d’Aubigné
- Alberti, Leon Battista
- Alexander VI, Pope
- Amsterdam
- Andrea del Verrocchio
- Andrea Mantegna
- Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt
- Anne Boleyn
- Antwerp
- Aretino, Pietro
- Ariosto, Ludovico
- Art and Science
- Art, German
- Art in Renaissance England
- Art in Renaissance Florence
- Art in Renaissance Siena
- Art in Renaissance Venice
- Art Literature and Theory of Art
- Art Market
- Art of Poetry
- Art, Spanish
- Art, 16th- and 17th-Century Flemish
- Art, 17th-Century Dutch
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Artisans
- Ascham, Roger
- Askew, Anne
- Astell, Mary
- Astrology, Alchemy, Magic
- Augsburg
- Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought
- Austria
- Autobiography and Life Writing
- Avignon Papacy
- Bacon, Francis
- Banking and Money
- Barbaro, Ermolao, the Younger
- Barbaro, Francesco
- Baron, Hans
- Baroque
- Baroque Art and Architecture in Italy
- Barzizza, Gasparino
- Bathsua Makin
- Beaufort, Margaret
- Bellarmine, Cardinal
- Bembo, Pietro
- Benito Arias Montano
- Bernardino of Siena, San
- Beroaldo, Filippo, the Elder
- Bessarion, Cardinal
- Bible, The
- Biography
- Biondo, Flavio
- Bishops, 1550–1700
- Bishops, 1400-1550
- Black Death and Plague: The Disease and Medical Thought
- Boccaccio, Giovanni
- Bohemia and Bohemian Crown Lands
- Borgia, Cesare
- Borgia, Lucrezia
- Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo
- Bosch, Hieronymous
- Bracciolini, Poggio
- Bradstreet, Anne
- Brahe, Tycho
- Bruegel, Pieter the Elder
- Bruni, Leonardo
- Bruno, Giordano
- Bucer, Martin
- Budé, Guillaume
- Buonarroti, Michelangelo
- Burgundy and the Netherlands
- Calvin, John
- Calvinism
- Camões, Luís de
- Caravaggio
- Cardano, Girolamo
- Cardinal Richelieu
- Cardinals
- Carvajal y Mendoza, Luisa De
- Cary, Elizabeth
- Casas, Bartolome de las
- Castiglione, Baldassarre
- Catherine of Siena
- Catholic/Counter-Reformation
- Catholicism, Early Modern
- Cavendish, Margaret
- Cecilia del Nacimiento
- Cellini, Benvenuto
- Cervantes, Miguel de
- Charles V, Emperor
- China and Europe, 1550-1800
- Christian-Muslim Exchange
- Christine de Pizan
- Church Fathers in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, The
- Ciceronianism
- Cities and Urban Patriciates
- Civic Humanism
- Civic Ritual
- Classical Tradition, The
- Clifford, Anne
- Colet, John
- Colonna, Vittoria
- Columbus, Christopher
- Comenius, Jan Amos
- Commedia dell'arte
- Concepts of the Renaissance, c. 1780–c. 1920
- Confraternities
- Constantinople, Fall of
- Contarini, Gasparo, Cardinal
- Convent Culture
- Conversion
- Conversos and Crypto-Judaism
- Copernicus, Nicolaus
- Cornaro, Caterina
- Cosimo I de’ Medici
- Cosimo il Vecchio de' Medici
- Costume
- Council of Trent
- Crime and Punishment
- Croatia
- Cromwell, Oliver
- Cruz, Juana de la, Mother
- Cruz, Juana Inés de la, Sor
- Dance
- d'Aragona, Tullia
- Datini, Margherita
- Davies, Eleanor
- de Commynes, Philippe
- de Sales, Saint Francis
- de Valdés, Juan
- Death and Dying
- Decembrio, Pier Candido
- Dentière, Marie
- Des Roches, Madeleine and Catherine
- d’Este, Isabella
- di Toledo, Eleonora
- Dialogue
- Diplomacy
- Dolce, Ludovico
- Donatello
- Donne, John
- Drama, English Renaissance
- Dürer, Albrecht
- du Bellay, Joachim
- Du Guillet, Pernette
- Dutch Overseas Empire
- Early Modern Period, Racialization in the
- Ebreo, Leone
- Edinburgh
- Edmund Campion
- Edward IV, King of England
- El Greco
- Elizabeth I, the Great, Queen of England
- Emperor, Maximilian I
- England, 1485-1642
- English Overseas Empire
- English Puritans, Quakers, Dissenters, and Recusants
- Environment and the Natural World
- Epic and Romance
- Erasmus
- Europe and the Globe, 1350–1700
- European Tapestries
- Family and Childhood
- Fedele, Cassandra
- Federico Barocci
- Female Lay Piety
- Ferrara and the Este
- Ficino, Marsilio
- Filelfo, Francesco
- Florence
- Fonte, Moderata
- Foscari, Francesco
- France in the 17th Century
- France in the 16th Century
- Francis Xavier, St
- Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros
- French Law and Justice
- French Renaissance Drama
- Fugger Family
- Galilei, Galileo
- Gallicanism
- Gambara, Veronica
- Gardens
- Garin, Eugenio
- General Church Councils, Pre-Trent
- Geneva (1400-1600)
- Genoa 1450–1700
- George Buchanan
- George of Trebizond
- Georges de La Tour
- Ghetto
- Giambologna
- Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan
- Giustiniani, Bernardo
- Góngora, Luis de
- Gonzaga, Giulia
- Gournay, Marie de
- Greek Visitors
- Guarino da Verona
- Guicciardini, Francesco
- Guilds and Manufacturing
- Hamburg, 1350–1815
- Hanseatic League
- Henry VII
- Henry VIII, King of England
- Herbalism/Botany
- Herbert, George
- Hispanic Mysticism
- Historiography
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Holy Roman Empire 1300–1650
- Homes, Foundling
- Huguenots
- Humanism
- Humanism, The Origins of
- Hundred Years War, The
- Hungary, The Kingdom of
- Hus, Jan
- Hutchinson, Lucy
- Iconology and Iconography
- Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
- Infanticide
- Inquisition, Roman
- Ireland
- Isaac Casaubon
- Isabel I, Queen of Castile
- Italian Wars, 1494–1559
- Ivan IV the Terrible, Tsar of Russia
- Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples
- Jansenism
- Japan and Europe: the Christian Century, 1549-1650
- Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre
- Jesuits
- Jewish Women in Renaissance and Reformation Europe
- Jews
- Jews and Christians in Venice
- Jews and the Reformation
- Jews in Amsterdam
- Jews in Florence
- Jews in Rome
- Joan of Arc
- Jonson, Ben
- Joseph Justus Scaliger
- Juan de Torquemada
- Juana the Mad/Juana, Queen of Castile
- Julius II
- Kepler, Johannes
- King of France, Francis I
- King of France, Henri IV
- Knox, John
- Kristeller, Paul Oskar
- Labé, Louise
- Landino, Cristoforo
- Landscape
- Last Wills and Testaments
- Laura Cereta
- Law
- Lay Piety
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
- Leo X
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Leoni, Leone and Pompeo
- Leto, Giulio Pomponio
- Letter Writing and Epistolary Culture
- Libraries
- Literary Criticism
- Literature, French
- Literature, Italian
- Literature, Late Medieval German
- Literature, Penitential
- Literature, Spanish
- Locke, John
- London
- Lorenzo de' Medici
- Lorenzo Ghiberti
- Louis XI, King of France
- Louis XIII, King of France
- Louis XIV, King of France
- Lucas Cranach the Elder
- Lucretius in Renaissance Thought
- Luther, Martin
- Lyric Poetry
- Machiavelli, Niccolo
- Macinghi Strozzi, Alessandra
- Malatesta, Sigismondo
- Manetti, Giannozzo
- Mannerism
- Mantovano (Battista Spagnoli), Battista
- Manuel Chrysoloras
- Manuzio, Aldo
- Margaret Clitherow
- Margaret Fell Fox
- Margery Kempe
- Marinella, Lucrezia
- Marino Sanudo
- Marlowe, Christopher
- Marriage and Dowry
- Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots)
- Mary Tudor, Queen of England
- Masculinity
- Medici Bank
- Medici, Catherine de'
- Medici Family, The
- Medicine
- Mediterranean
- Memling, Hans
- Merchant Adventurers
- Merici, Angela
- Midwifery
- Milan, 1535–1706
- Milan to 1535
- Milton, John
- Mining and Metallurgy
- Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della
- Mission
- Monarchy in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, Female
- Montaigne, Michel de
- More, Thomas
- Morone, Cardinal Giovanni
- Music
- Naples, 1300–1700
- Navarre, Marguerite de
- Netherlandish Art, Early
- Netherlands (Dutch Revolt/ Dutch Republic), The
- Netherlands, Spanish, 1598-1700, the
- Nettesheim, Agrippa von
- Newton, Isaac
- Niccoli, Niccolò
- Nicholas of Cusa
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Nobility
- Opera
- Ottoman Empire
- Ovid in Renaissance Thought
- Panofsky, Erwin
- Paolo Veronese
- Papacy
- Papal Rome
- Paracelsus
- Paris
- Parr, Katherine
- Patronage of the Arts
- Perotti, Niccolò
- Persecution and Martyrdom
- Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia
- Petrarch
- Petrus Ramus and Ramism
- Philip Melanchthon
- Philips, Katherine
- Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius
- Piero della Francesca
- Pierre Bayle
- Pilgrimage in Early Modern Catholicism
- Plague and its Consequences
- Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Hermetic Tradition
- Poetry, English
- Pole, Cardinal Reginald
- Polish Literature: Baroque
- Polish Literature: Renaissance
- Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, The
- Political Thought
- Poliziano, Angelo
- Polydore Vergil
- Pontano, Giovanni Giovano
- Pope Innocent VIII
- Pope Nicholas V
- Pope Paul II
- Portraiture
- Portugal
- Poulain de la Barre, Francois
- Poverty and Poor Relief
- Prince Henry the Navigator
- Printing and the Book
- Printmaking
- Prophecy
- Pulter, Hester
- Purgatory
- Purity of Blood
- Quirini, Lauro
- Rabelais, François
- Raphael
- Reformation and Hussite Revolution, Czech
- Reformation and Wars of Religion in France, The
- Reformation, English
- Reformation, German
- Reformation, Italian, The
- Reformation, The
- Reformations and Revolt in the Netherlands, 1500–1621
- Rembrandt
- Renaissance Poland-Lithuania, Art of
- Renaissance, The
- Reuchlin, Johann
- Revolutionary England, 1642-1702
- Rhetoric
- Ricci, Matteo
- Richard III
- Rienzo, Cola Di
- Roman and Iberian Inquisitions, Censorship and the Index i...
- Ronsard, Pierre de
- Roper, Margeret More
- Royal Regencies in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, 140...
- Rubens, Peter Paul
- Russell, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby
- Russia and Muscovy
- Ruzante Angelo Beolco
- Saint John of the Cross
- Saints and Mystics: After Trent
- Saints and Mystics: Before Trent
- Salutati, Coluccio
- Sandro Botticelli
- Sarpi, Fra Paolo
- Savonarola, Girolamo
- Scandinavia
- Scholasticism and Aristotelianism: Fourteenth to Seventeen...
- Schooling and Literacy
- Scientific Revolution
- Scotland
- Scève, Maurice
- Sephardic Diaspora
- Sforza, Caterina
- Sforza, Francesco
- Shakespeare, William
- Ships/Shipbuilding
- Sidney Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
- Sidney, Philip
- Siena
- Simon of Trent
- Sir Robert Cecil
- Sixtus IV, Pope
- Skepticism in Renaissance Thought
- Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1350–1650
- Southern Italy, 1500–1700
- Southern Italy, 1300–1500
- Spain
- Spanish Inquisition
- Spanish Islam, 1350-1614
- Spenser, Edmund
- Sperone Speroni
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Stampa, Gaspara
- Stuart, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
- Switzerland
- Tarabotti, Arcangela
- Tasso Torquato
- Tell, William
- Teresa of Avila
- Textiles: 1400 to 1700
- The Casa of San Giorgio, Genoa
- The Radical Reformation
- The Sack of Rome (1527)
- Thirty Years War, The
- Thomas Wyatt
- Titian
- Toleration
- Tornabuoni, Lucrezia
- Trade Networks
- Tragedy, English
- Translation
- Transylvania, The Principality of
- Traversari, Ambrogio
- Universities
- Urbanism
- Ursulines
- Valeriano, Pierio
- Valla, Lorenzo
- van Eyck, Jan
- van Schurman, Anna Maria
- Vasari, Giorgio
- Vega, Lope de
- Vegio, Maffeo
- Velázquez
- Venice
- Venice, Maritime
- Vergerio, Pier Paolo, The Elder
- Vermeer, Johannes
- Vernacular Languages and Dialects
- Vida, Marco Girolamo
- Virgil in Renaissance Thought
- Visitors, Italian
- Vives, Juan Luis
- Walter Ralegh
- War and Economy, 1300-1600
- Ward, Mary
- Warfare and Military Organizations
- Weyden, Rogier van der
- Widowhood
- Witch Hunt
- Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal
- Women and Learning
- Women and Medicine
- Women and Science
- Women and the Book Trade
- Women and the Reformation
- Women and the Visual Arts
- Women and Warfare
- Women and Work: Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
- Women Writers in Ireland
- Women Writers of the Iberian Empire
- Women Writing in Early Modern Spain
- Women Writing in English
- Women Writing in French
- Women Writing in Italy
- Wroth, Mary