Port-Royal, Recluses of, occupy a most impor- tant position in the ecclesiastical and literary history of France, especially in the 17th century, and are largely identified with the Jansenistic controversy.
Port-I!oyal (Pomgium, Portus Regis, Porreal) lay in the vicinity of the hamlet of Chevreuse, three leagues from Versailles, and six from Paris. Here occurred a memorable reproduction of the austerities of the Thebaid and the ascetic labors of Lerins. The monastery of Port- Royal des Champs, an abbey of the Order of Citeaux. was founded in 1204 by Matilda, wife of Matthew I of Montmorency-Marly, during her husband's absence in the fourth crusade. It lay on the left of the high-road from Kambouillet to Chartres, in a damp, low spot, which had once been called, from its natural features, Porrois (from Porra or Bona, dog-Latin for a woody valley with stagnant water: earns dumetis plenus ubi slagnat aqua). Abandoned for a long time to the far niente existence of ordinary convents, it fell at length, in the beginning of the 17th century (1608), under the direc- tion of the family of Arnauld. Angelique Arnauld was, through family interest, appointed abbess when only seventeen and a half years old (some declared that she was only eleven, and that her relatives falsely stated her age). Touched by grace as she grew to woman- hood, she undertook the reform of the convent. Her
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mother, five of hei Bisters, and six nieces became her spiritual children. Mere Angelique's change to such pioue devotion is said to have been occasioned by a BennoD on the death of Christ which was preached by a wandering Capuchin friar, lather Basil, who had learned the truth of the Gospel of Christ, and had re- solved formally to quit the communion of Borne, and, in
passing the convent of Port-Royal while on hisj ney
to the Protestant countries of the North, had secured permission to address the nuns. With love and kind- ness, but with unyielding firmness and great wisdom, the converted young woman restored the rule of the or- der in all its severity— as the strict observance of relig- ious poverty, abstinence from meat, complete seclusion, ami the most severe ascetic exercises. The abbey of Port-Royal des I Ibamps had been erected for but a small number of nuns: in consequence, however, of the celeb- rity which it attained through the reforms and guid- ance of Mere Angelique, the number increased greatly, so that, instead of twelve, there were more than eighty ; and thus the buildings of the abbey became overcrowd- ed and unhealthy. In 1626 il was found necessary to make additional provisions. A house was purchased in Paris in the Faubourg St. Jacques (in great ]>art at the expense of the Arnauld family I, to \\ hicb the nuns re- moved. This their new abode was called Port-Royal >/■ Paris. In 1633 more spacious quarters were secured in the Rue de Boulai, near the Rue Coquilliere, where they also owned a church, which was dedicated with greal solemnity by the archbishop of Paris.
In 1223 the nope bad conferred on the convent the right of affording an asylum to such lay personages as. being disgusted with the world, and being their own masters, should wish to live in monastic seclusion with- out binding themselves by permanent monastic vows. This privilege bad not .availed the Port-Royalists much until now. Bui the gradual transformation of Merc Angelique, under the influence of St. Francis de Sales. with w horn .-he hail been brought in contact, and who led
her to accept the doctri I perfection in the form of
the possibility of a complete transformation of the human hearl cm u befort death, had become so manifest in her influence over her nuns and the severity they reached. that, inspired by this example, a number of learned and pious men. de-irons of living in religious retirement, sought in L638 the privilege of occupying the desert- ed establishment ofPort-Roj al des I Ibamps. The lead- er of this new movement was the inflexible St. Cyran, who bail been lirst an examiner and later the spiritual director of the nuns of Port-RoyaL See Duvergieb de II \i i: \nni:. lie was a Jansenist, and a most intimate friend ol the founder of these doctrines, and as the head of this new lay community instituted the new opinions and made Port-Royal des Champs the home of Jansen- ism in France. A whole colony of illustrious penitents joined him: the three brother.- of La .Al ere Angelique; her nephew, the celebrated advocate l.a Maitrc and his brothers Sericourl and He Sacy; Pierre Nicole; Claude Lancelot, tin- grammarian; Tillemont, the historian; Pascal, the philosopher; Racine, the poet, and Antoine Arnauld (q. v.), the "great Arnauld," the youngest brother of the abbess, the learned and impetuous Doctor of t lie Sorbonne, whose condemnation by that bodj oc- casioned Pascal's Provencals.
I religious movement of the 17th century in France i- :1~ remarkable as the philosophical for which thai Era i- noted. Jansenists and Jesuits undertook tblishment of that spiritual power which had Buffered from the attacks of philosophy ; but between these two panic- there was bitter strife. Port-Royal had now become the headquarters of Jansenism, which
ha- 1- ■ u called "Cal vim-tic Catholicism." The attempt
of tin- Port-Royalists at reconstruction embraced exactly those parts of mediaeval religion which the Jesuits had neglected. Wholly abandoning what the .h suits bad taken bold of the social and political side of Catholi- cism they clung to its personal, mystical, and ascetic