Adoration and Annihilation: The Convent Philosophy of Port-Royal (review)

Those familiar with the history of the conflict between the members and supporters of the Cistercian monastery of Port-Royal and the Society of Jesus over St. Augustine’s theology of grace as propounded in the Augustinus by Cornelius Jansen will find this study written by a Jesuit, which features the nuns of Port-Royal as philosophers and theologians, delicately ironic. John J. Conley, Henry J. Knott Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Loyola College in Maryland, has the expertise necessary to discern the theological and philosophical ideas in the diverse writings of the three Arnauld abbesses of Port-Royal. Mère Angélique Arnauld, reformer of the monastery; Mère Agnés Arnauld, her sister; and Mère Angélique de Saint Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, her niece, continued the virtual hegemony of the Arnauld family over Port-Royal.

The introduction provides an excellent brief history of the convent from its foundation in 1204 up to and including the “century of the reformed Port-Royal (1609–1709).” Conley’s term for the reform of Mère Angélique, “the Angelican reform,” can be a bit confusing to those conversant with the term Anglican, referring to the Church of England. Conley’s presentation of the Jansenist controversy, relying on recent scholarship, is even handed.

Turning to his thesis that the Arnauld nuns produced a literary corpus of serious philosophical significance, Conley begins with an analysis of the autobiographical Relation écrit par Mère Angélique Arnauld sur Port-Royal, massive correspondence, and conferences of Mère Angélique Arnauld. It is noted that one characteristic of her reform was its enhancement of the spiritual authority of women, illustrated by the convent chapter’s election of the abbess; the right of the abbess to appoint chaplains, confessors, and preachers; and the right of the nuns to pursue biblical and patristic study, to receive spiritual direction, and to be educated. These rights are, of course, simply the application of the Rule of St. Benedict, which was always followed by Cistercian monasteries, and the strict adherance to which was basic to the reform of Mère Angélique.

The major elements of the philosophy gleaned from the writings of Mère Angélique are emphasis on the divine incomprehensibility of God—the central theological thesis of our complete dependence on God’s grace for the capacity to perform a single virtuous act, as well as for our salvation—and a moral philosophy of blunt rigorism

Mère Agnès Arnauld authored a devotional treatise that became very controversial, Le chapelet secret du Saint Sacrement (1626). Each of the sixteen paragraphs celebrates an attribute of Christ in the Eucharist. Her apophatic philosophy is illustrated in the closing six attributes: inaccessibility, incomprehensibility, independence, incommunicability, illimitability, and inapplicability. In the analysis of Mère Agnès a negative connotation is given even to the positive attributes: holiness, truth, existence, liberty, existence, self-sufficiency, satiety, plenitude, eminence, possession, and rulership.

Her account of the virtues proper to a nun, L’image d’une religieuse parfaite et d’une imparfaite (Paris, 1665), bears the stamp of her apophatic theology. The submission of the nun to God is central in her treatment of the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The heart of adoration lies in a mutual annihilation between Christ and the soul of the nun contemplating the sacrament. The gift of the Eucharist, in which she sees the continual immolation of Christ to his eternal Father, excites her to self-immolation.

Besides her works of devotion, Mère Agnès developed an ethics of resistance in her Avis donnés par la Mère Catherine Agnès de Saint-Paul sur la conduit que les réligieuses doivent garder en cas qu’il arrivait du changement dans le gouvernement de sa maison (Paris, 1663). Mère Agnès frames the strategy of resistance within...