The History of the Church through 100 Masterpieces

The Mystery of Grace

The History of the Church 204 The Mystery of Grace Rome’s response, and in particular, the Jesuits’ response, to the Calvinist doctrine claiming that God dispenses his grace only upon a small number of predestined elect, was that the sacrifice of Christ has given grace to all people, leaving to each individual the free will to accept it or not. Nonetheless, basing himself on Saint Augustine, the Catholic bishop of Ypres in France, Cornelius Jansen, developed a doctrine of predestination close to Calvinism. One of his followers, the Abbot of Saint-Cyran, confessor of the Cistercian nuns of Port Royal, converted them to this doctrine. As a Jansenist, the community’s superior, Mother Angélique Arnaud, came to exert an influence that extended beyond the walls of the convent, attracting to its environs the solitaires, men of the gentry who founded schools and centers of intellectual formation in competition with the Jesuit schools—the Petites Écoles. Jansenism was resolutely condemned by Rome. However, its fame endured because of the renown of some of its adepts; first among these was Blaise Pascal, mathematician and a writer of genius, then the painter Philippe de Champaigne; and finally, Jean Racine, formed at the Petites Écoles, who returned to Jansenism after a long period of worldly pursuits. The Jesuits referred to Jansenists as “the Hellenists’ sect,” an epithet perhaps not so far from the mark: in his testament, Racine asked to be buried at the foot of Monsieur Hamon, his professor of Greek. Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) Catherine Arnaud and Catherine de Sainte-Suzanne at Port-Royal Musée du Louvre, Paris ...