Suffering Saints: Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France, 1640–1799 (review)

Very few people have ever tried to address the whole history of Jansenism. Whereas works have abounded on its history down to 1709, when it was the affair of a handful of outstanding people, only relatively recently have serious scholars turned their attention to the century after that, when it became almost a mass movement. The sheer variety and complexity of the "Second Jansenism" almost defies coherent analysis. But Brian E. Strayer has attempted it and given both phases of Jansenism equal weight in the most extensive general survey since Augustin Gazier's highly partisan two volumes (Paris, 1923). It is based on massive reading in both primary and secondary sources, and is written throughout in an uncomplicated, easygoing style. Strayer seeks to introduce readers in an untheological age to a notoriously austere and inaccessible subject. He does so by placing all the emphasis he can on the "human interest" of the story. He highlights the great figures of the heroic age with sections that read almost like entries in a biographical dictionary, while in the eighteenth century he lingers on the spectacular and grisly antics of the convulsionaries who did so much to discredit Jansenism in the eyes of more rational observers. In the manner of the late Jack McManners, no good story is knowingly left out. Nor is this simply a vast synthesis of other scholarship. The author has, for instance, drawn on his previous researches on the lettres de cachetto provide an exhaustive statistical analysis of Jansenist prisoners in the Bastille under Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV. He has also worked on a wide range of manuscripts in the libraries of Paris.

These do not, however, include the Bibliothèque de Port Royal, a baffling omission for such an ambitious book. The text is also eccentrically planned, with wild jumps in explanation and chronology that sometimes appear to leave even the author confused. Thus on page 6 we hear of Saint-Cyran pronouncing on a formulary (unexplained at this point) that did not even exist until thirteen years after his death. There are also a number of straightforward factual errors, from the relatively trivial (the Marquis d'Argenson was not a minister of state in 1752, as he is said to be on p. 207) to the really serious (Clement XI attempting in 1718 to excommunicate 3000 French bishops, almost 30 times the total number [pp. 10, 167]). After the fall of the Jesuits, which is very summarily treated, Strayer's interest visibly flags. The reign of King Louis XVI and the French Revolution are wrapped up in a handful of pages that owe nothing to growing recent scholarship on this period of church history and are not fully redeemed by the splendid description of Auctorem Fidei(1794) as "a kind of smorgasbord Unigenitus."

Nobody who knows the field is likely to close this book without having learned something fresh about a complex and often impenetrable subject. It will never be a contribution to be brushed aside. But many will close it irritated by its repetitions, illogical arrangement, omissions, and petty errors. They will warn their students to be very careful in the use they make of it it, but acknowledge that those who cannot read French will find no fuller treatment of the subject.