Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

The mission of Port-Royal seems to have been preparation of souls for the struggles of life, teaching how to resist oppression or to bear it with courage, and how, for a righteous cause, to brave everything, not only the persecutions of power—violence, prison, exile,—but the ruses of hypocrisy and the calumny of opposing opinion. The Port-Royalist nun combated and taught how to combat; she lacked humility, but possessed an abundance of courage which often bordered upon passion.

One of the most pathetic and striking illustrations of the fervent devotion which was a characteristic product of Port-Royal, is supplied by Jacqueline Pascal, sister of the great Blaise Pascal. Young, spirituelle, very much sought after and the idol of brilliant companions, at the age of twenty-six she abandoned the world to devote herself to God. At thirty-six years of age she died of sorrow and remorse for having signed an equivocal formulary of Pope Alexander VI., "through pure deference to the authority of her superiors." The papal decision concerning Jansenius's book, already mentioned, was drawn up in a formula "turned with some skill, and in such a way that subscription did not bind the conscience; however, the nuns of Port-Royal refused to sign." Jacqueline Pascal wrote:

"That which hinders us, what hinders all the ecclesiastics who recognize the truth from replying when the formulary is presented to them to subscribe is: I know the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience does not permit me to subscribe that a thing is in a book in which I have not seen it—and after that, wait for what will happen. What have we to fear? Banishment and dispersion for the nuns, seizure of temporalities, imprisonment, and death if you will; but is not that our glory and should it not be our joy? Let us either renounce the Gospel or faithfully follow the maxims of that Gospel and deem ourselves happy to suffer somewhat for righteousness' sake. I know that it is not for daughters to defend the truth, though, unfortunately, one might say that since the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth and to suffer everything rather than abandon it."

She subscribed, "divided between her instinctive repugnance and her desire to show herself an humble daughter of the Catholic Church." She said: "It is all we can concede; for the rest, come what may,—poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death,—all those seem to me nothing in comparison with the anguish in which I should pass the remainder of my life, if I had been wretch enough to make a covenant with death on the occasion of so excellent an opportunity for proving to God the sincerity of the vows of fidelity which our lips have pronounced." According to Mme. Périer, the health of the writer of the above epistle was so undermined by the shock which all that commotion had caused her, that she became dangerously ill, dying soon after. Thus was sacrificed the first victim of the formulary.

Cousin says that few women of the seventeenth century were as brilliantly endowed as Jacqueline Pascal; possessing the finesse, energy, and sobriety of her brother, she was capable of the most serious work, and yet knew perfectly how to lead in a social circle. Also, she was most happily gifted with a talent for poetry, in relation to which her reputation was everywhere recognized; at the convent, she consulted her superiors as to the advisability of continuing her verse making; and upon being told that such occupation was not a means of winning the grace of Jesus Christ, she abandoned it.

Cousin maintained that the avowed principle of the Port-Royalists was the withdrawal from all worldly pleasure and attachment. "'Marriage is a homicide; absolute renunciation is the true régime of a Christian.' Jacqueline Pascal is an exaggeration of Port-Royal, and Port-Royal is an exaggeration of the religious spirit of the seventeenth century. Man is too little considered; all movement of the physical world comes from God; all our acts and thoughts, except those of crime and error, come from and belong to Him. Nothing is our own; there is no free will; will and reason have no power. The theory of grace is the source of all truth, virtue, and merit—and for this doctrine Jacqueline Pascal gives up her life."

Among the great spirits of Port-Royal, the women especially were strong in their convictions and high in their ideals. They naturally followed the ideas of man and naturally fell into religious errors; but their firmness, constancy, and heroism were striking indeed. Their aspiration was the imitation of Christ, and they approached their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. M. du Bled says:

"Port-Royal was the enterprise of the middle-class aristocracy of France; you can see here an anticipated attempt of a sort of superior third estate to govern for itself in the Church and to establish a religion not Roman, not aristocratic and of the court, not devout in the manner of the simple people, but freer from vain images and ceremonies, and freer, also, as to the temporal in the face of worldly authority—a sober, austere, independent religion which would have truly founded a Gallican reform. The illusion was in thinking that they could continue to exist in Rome—that Richelieu and Louis XIV. would tolerate the boldness of this attempt."

A celebrated woman of the seventeenth century, one who really belongs to the circle of Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de La Fayette, but who early in life, like Mme. de Longueville, devoted herself to religion and retired to live at Port-Royal, and is therefore more intimately associated with the religious movement, was Mme. de Sablé, a type of the social-religious woman.