Morales en conflit: Théologie et polémique au Grand Siècle (1640–1700) (review)

In this major study of one of the most notorious of intra-Catholic disputes in early-modern France, Jean-Pascal Gay provides a tripartite survey of the Jansenist-Jesuit controversy. He begins, persuasively but surprisingly, at the end, with the censure of laxism by the Assemblée du Clergé in 1700, before retracing both the growing critique of casuistry and the attendant evolution of rigorism from the earlier years of the century. Among the many complex and overlapping considerations that arise are the question of Gallicanism (the degree, in other words, to which this conflict was aggravated by its origins in the French Church or, conversely, by the suspicion within France of an ultra-montane agenda, focused on the Roman center and its links with the Society of Jesus); the relationship among casuistry, stricto sensu, and the various penitential hypotheses to which it gave rise (tutiorism [the safer], probabiliorism [the more probable] and, most controversial of all, probabilism [that which is simply probable]); the internal differences within both warring factions and, more controversially again, the perceived proximity between Jansenism and Calvinism; the local variations within the French jurisdiction; the accessibility (or not) of casuistic publications (in French and Latin), and the uses to which they were put; and the prehistory of the tradition and the appeal to precedent. The three parts are broadly diachronic (narrating the evolution of the controversy), ideological (examining the core issues at stake), and generic (examining the respective arenas of theology and polemic). There are four dominant texts (alongside an immense corpus of more technical treatises, from all of which extensive quotation is provided): the hostile Théologie morale des Jésuites, attributed to Antoine Arnauld (1643); the Lettres provinciales of Blaise Pascal (1656–57), constituting a turning point in the popularization of the debate and the trigger for a great deal of what was to follow, both in writing and in practice; the response, in the form of the Apologie des casuistes by the Jesuit Père Georges Pirot (Paris, 1657); and the rigorist Théologie morale de Grenoble (Paris, 1676), whose influence was to continue well into the eighteenth century (and the broader scope of reference of the study extends both backward into the sixteenth century and forward to the 1730s). As is characteristic of a published thesis, Gay’s book is relentlessly exhaustive in its exemplification and annotation, but since much of the material is both little known and difficult of access, it is hard to see how this approach could have been modified in the interests of readability (and French translations are helpfully provided of all the Latin texts). There is also a degree of repetitiveness, not in the manner of treatment of the issues debated, but simply by virtue of the nature of the raw material and indeed of the modes of argument deployed. On the other hand, the gradual elucidation of the deeper theological questions at stake is made substantially clearer by the provision of partial conclusions to each chapter. Gay finally supplies a series of textual appendices, including a particularly enjoyable one that provides an anthology of satirical and parodic material. It will probably only be those scholars who are centrally concerned with the disciplines of early-modern European Catholic history who will read this detailed and technical account from beginning to end; but many others will consult it, and there is no doubt that it will serve as a seminal point of reference for any future work in the area.