THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
defense of Jansenism in his Lettres provinciates (see Pascal, Blaise) and by the miracle of the holy thorn, four days after the retirement, which was the alleged cure of an ulcer in the eye of Marguerite Perier, Pascal's niece, effected by touching the holy thorn, and which was exalted by Port- Royalists as a confirmation of their faith and by the wonder-struck Jesuits as a new divine respite for the Jansenists. The following years formed a period of peace; but upon his accession in 1660, Louis XIV determined to annihilate both Jansenism and Protestantism in France, and in April of the following year both monasteries were compelled to dismiss their pensioners, postulants, and novices. Antoine Singlin, superior of the nuns, barely escaped the Bastile and again sought hiding with Arnauld in Paris. On June 8, 1661, the first pastoral letter that by equivocations was to make subscription possible appeared; which, not without severe inner struggles, the nuns signed. On Aug. 6 Angelique died at Paris. Port-Royal was obliged to accept the Molinist Louis Bail as superior, and neither Arnauld, Pascal, nor Singlin dared to return. Bail's rigid examination of the nuns one after another in both convents from July 11 to Sept. 2, 1661, resulted in finding no support for the allegations against them. Nevertheless, on Nov. 28, 1661, they were forced to sign the formula unreservedly. The controversies of Louis XIV. with the Curia now gave a brief respite to Port-Royal, but an attempt to reach a peaceable understanding was thwarted by the stubbornness of Arnauld. With the enthronement of H. de Perefixe as archbishop of Paris in 1664, the persecutions were reopened, and on Aug. 21 he denied the nuns the reception of the Eucharist. Twelve of the nuns were then scattered in other nunneries and nuns were brought from these convents to Port- Royal in Paris. On Nov. 29 more nuns were removed; and a few days after the archbishop excommunicated the entire monastery of Port-Royal des Champs. Sacraments were denied; no novices could be received; the sound of bells and common worship ceased; and there was forced seclusion from outside friends, until, early in 1669, Pope Clement IX., by permitting an apparent ambiguity in the subscription, enabled most of the Jansenist party, including Arnauld, De Sacy, and Pierre Nicole (q.v.), to sign the formula. The nuns were finally persuaded to sign a petition of surrender repudiating the five theses, to the archbishop of Paris, and, Mar. 3, 1669, the interdict was formally raised. Thus ended the long controversy in the humiliation of Port-Royal, and its financial ruin soon followed. Port-Royal de Paris and Port- Royal des Champs were separated, the former securing two-thirds of the properties.
Until 1679 Port^Royal enjoyed tolerable peace, and the polemics of the leaders of the party were now directed against Protestantism. Arnauld and Nicole published their La Perpetuity de la foi de
I'eglise catholique touchant VEuchar- Decline. istie (Paris, 1669), and Arnauld also
thoroughly approved the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. During this period of peace the nunnery again increased in numbers; the
hermits returned; Pascal wrote his Pensees, and Nicole his Essais de Morale (25 vols., Paris, 1741 1755). When, however, in 1677 Nicole implored Innocent XI. to condemn the lax teachings of the casuists, the king regarded his act as a violation of the truce; and in the bitter controversy over the regalia he was offended that the Jansenists sided with the pope. Arnauld and Nicole were forced again to flee from France, and on June 17, 1679, Archbishop Harlay brought the royal mandate to dismiss the pupils and the hermits and to admit no more nuns until the number had fallen to fiftv. When this took place, the privilege was, however, denied; the monastery began to die out; and in 1706 the last abbess of Port-Royal des Champs, Elisabeth de Ste. Anne Boulard, died. The bull Vineam Domini of Clement XL (July 15, 1705), with its summary condemnation of Jansenism, hastened the catastrophe. The nuns signed it only with a reservation. They were forbidden to receive novices or to elect a new abbess. On Nov. 22, 1707, the convent was again excommunicated, and the king secured the issuance of a papal bull on Mar. 27, 1708, which permitted the dispersion of the nuns. On July 11 of the following year a decree of the archbishop of Paris declared the convent of Port-Royal des Champs suppressed and gave its estates to Port-Royal de Paris. On Oct. 29 the remaining twenty-two nuns, ranging in age from fifty to upward of eighty, were expelled by military force; and, being thus dispersed, all subscribed to the bull except two. The royal disapproval extended even to the buildings of Port- Royal; and by a mandate of Jan. 22, 1710, the convent and church were destroyed and even the dead were removed and interred in a neighboring cemetery. (Eugen Lachenmann.)
Bibliography: C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, 5 vols., Paris, 1840-59, new ed., 7 vols., 1908 (the best work, though unsympathetic); Fontaine, Memoires . de Port Royal, 2 vols., Utrecht, 1736; Du Fosse, Memoires de Port-Royal, Utrecht, 1739; P. LeClerc, Vies interessantes . . des religieuses de Port Royal, 4 vols., Utrecht, 1750; idem, Vies interessantes . . des amis de Port-Royal, ib. 1751; J. Besoigne, Hist, de Vabbaye de Port-Royal, 6 vols., Cologne, 1754-53; P. Guilbert, Memoires historiques . . sur Vabbaye de Port-Royal, voh. i., iii., Utrecht, 1752-59; H. Gregoire, Les Ruines de Port- Royal, Paris, 1809; H. Reuchlin, Geschichte von Port- Royal, 2 vols., Hamburg, 1839-44; J. M. Neale, Hist, of the so-called Jansenist Church of Holland, Oxford, 1S5S; Mrs. M. A. Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs of Port Royal, 5th ed., London, 1858; J. Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, pp. 279-336, 4th ed., London, 1860; C. Beard, Port Royal, 2 vols., London, 1861; C. Clemencet, Hist, litteraire de Port-Royal, vol. i., Paris. 1867; A. Ricard, Les Premiers Jansenistes et Port-Royal, Paris, 1883; E. Fenot, Port-Royal et Magny, Paris, 1SSS; L. Seche, Les Derniers Jansenistes (,1710-1820), 3 vols., Paris, 1891; R. Allier, La Cabale des devots 1627-1666, pp. 159-192, Paris, 1902; W. R. Clark, Pascal and the Port-Royalists, London, 1902; A. Malvault, Repertoire alphabUique des personnes et choses de Port-Royal, Paris, 1902; Ethel Romanes, The Story of Port Royal, London, 1907; A. Gazier, Abrege de Vhistoire de Port Royal d'aprte un manuscrit prepare pour V impression par Jean-Baptiste Racine, Paris, 1908; M. E. Lowndes, The Nuns of Port Royal as seen in their own Narratives, New York, 1909; the literature under Pascal, Blaise.
PORTANOVA, GENNARO: Cardinal; b. at Naples Oct. 11, 1845; d. at Rome Apr. 25, 190S. He was educated at the Jesuit College in his native