JANIZARIES

JANIZARIES, or JANISSARIES. See Ottoman Army, under ARMY. JANSEN or JANSENIUS, CORNELIUS, bishop of Ypres, and the author of the celebrated Augustinus, was born in 1585 at Acqui, near Leerdam, in Holland. He studied theology at Utrecht and Louvain, where he became acquainted with De Hauranne, afterwards Abbé of St. Cyran. After completing his studies with this friend at Paris, he went with him to Bayonne, and there became the head of a newly founded college. Returning in 1617 to Louvain, he was made principal of the college of St. Pulcheria. Two years later, he graduated as doctor in theology. In 1630 he was made professor of the Holy Scriptures; and in 1635, bishop of Ypres. He only enjoyed his bishopric, however, for about three years, being cut off by the plague, May 6, 1638. The works of Jansen published during his life were chiefly polemical in their character, and did not attract much notice. The most important of them, and that to which he owed his mitre, was his Mars Gallicus. France was at that time endeavouring to break the power of Spain by alliances with Protestant states. The Spaniards, in their turn, alarmed by the success of the French diplomacy, raised the cry of heresy against the French, and Jansen, at the request of the Spanish court, wrote the work in question with the view of holding up to Catholic Europe the dangers that threatened the true faith were France allowed to pursue her policy unchecked. Jansen died in the bosom of the Romish Church, and was one of her most devoted champions; but he left behind him in MS. a work which was the means of damaging the cause of that church very nearly as much as the Reformation itself. This was the Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii, published two years after his death by his literary executors Fromond and Calen. The last twenty years of his life had been spent on this self-imposed task. "Ten times," says Sir James Stephen, "he read over every word of the works of St. Augustine; thirty times he studied all those passages of them which relate to the Pelagian controversy. All the fathers of the church were elaborately collated for passages illustrative of the opinions of the bishop of Hippo. With St. Austin as his text and guide, Jansen proceeded to establish, on the authority of that illustrious father, those doctrines which in our times and country have been usually distinguished by the terms Calvinistic or Evangelical. Heirs of guilt and corruption, he considered the human race, and each successive member of it, as lying in a state of condemnation, and as advancing towards a state of punishment, until an internal impulse from on high awakens one and another to a sense of this awful truth, and infuses into them a will to fly from impending vengeance. But this impulse is imparted only to the few; and on them it is bestowed in pursuance of a decree existing in the divine intelligence before the creation of our species. Of the motives of their preference, not even a conjecture can be formed. So far as human knowledge extends, it is referable simply to the divine volition, and is not dependent on any inherent moral difference between the objects of it and those from whom such mercy is withheld. This impulse, however, is not irresistible. Within the limits of his powers, original or imparted, man is a free agent—free to admit and free to reject the proffered aid. If rejected, it enhances his responsibility; if admitted, it leads him, by continual accessions of the same supernatural assistance, to an acquiescence in those opinions, to the exercise of those affections, and to the practice of those virtues which collectively form the substance of the Christian system." The appearance of a work putting forward such views as these threw the city of Louvain into a ferment; but the harsh measures taken to suppress the heresy only caused it to take deeper root and spread its branches more widely. From Louvain it passed into France. Fiercely opposed, especially by the Jesuits, it was as keenly defended by Jansen's old friend St. Cyran, the young Arnauld, and with him the whole Port-Royal. The theological faculty of Paris then took up the case, and Cornet, the syndic of that body, named a commission to select and report upon the offensive views in Jansen's book, and end the dispute by referring the whole affair to the pope. The five following points were fixed upon—1. That there are some of God's commandments beyond the power of even the best of men to obey, however anxious they may be to do so, inasmuch as they have not yet received the measure of grace necessary to an acceptable obedience. 2. That even in an unregenerate state man is incapable of resisting inward grace. 3. That in the fallen state of nature, merit and demerit do not depend on a liberty which excludes necessity, but on a liberty which excludes constraint. 4. That the semi-Pelagians, while they admitted the necessity of an inward preventing grace for the performance of each particular act, were yet heretical in maintaining that this grace was of such a nature that the will of man was able either to resist or obey it. 5. That it is semi-Pelagianism to say that Christ by his death atoned for the sins of all mankind. After much intriguing and delay, the whole affair was laid for judgment before the reigning pope, Innocent X. In his bull of May 31, 1653, entitled Cum Occasione, that pontiff pronounced the first four points heretical, and the fifth rash, impious, and blasphemous. This bull was accepted and promulgated in France and the Netherlands with the royal consent. But it was far from giving universal satisfaction, and the Jansenists, who now counted in their ranks Pascal and Nicole with the whole Port-Royal, began to oppose and expose the intrigues of the Jesuits with all their might. Acknowledging that the five propositions in question were rightly condemned by the pope, they denied that they were to be found in the Augustinus in the sense in which they were condemned. Again the Jesuits appealed to the sovereign pontiff, and Alexander VII., in his bull of Oct. 16, 1656, entitled Ad sacram, declared that the five propositions were contained in Jansen's book, and had been condemned by his predecessor in the sense intended by their author. Not content with this settlement of the question, Alexander sent into France a formula embodying the substance of this bull, which all the ecclesiastics of that country were called upon to sign, on pain of suspension, and even excommunication. The whole body of the French clergy, except four bishops, refused to comply, and their obstinate resistance holds a conspicuous place in the church annals of that era. It was proposed to bring them to trial; but they had powerful friends at court and in the parliament, and the idea fell to the ground. Meanwhile the Port-Royalists, not content with a passive resistance, carried the war into the enemy's country. Besides exposing the wide-spread corruption of the whole Romish Church, they singled out the Jesuits as winking at, and even openly promoting it, for their private ends. To counteract the evil influence of this false priesthood, they wrote admirable text-books on various branches of education, disseminated biblical knowledge, and by their own lives set the example of a high and pure morality. The appearance of the Provincial Letters embittered the controversy which raged with unabated fury till the "Peace of Clement IX." restored quiet to the church for a time. This pontiff declared himself satisfied if the bishops would subscribe themselves, and make others subscribe, purely and simply, though they expressly declared that they did not desire the same submission for the fact but for the right. The liberal policy of Innocent XI. went far to restore general harmony. In 1698, however, the smouldering fire again broke out into a fierce and open flame. In that year appeared the Moral Observations on the New Testament of Father Quesnel, then re- JanuariusJanssens. garded as the head of the Jansenist party. Louis XIV., now a mere tool in the hands of the priests, showed at once his orthodoxy and his piety by banishing Quesnel. A few years later, he suppressed and destroyed the monastery of the Port-Royal, and offered the most revolting indignities to the ashes of its illustrious dead. The famous bull of Clement XI., issued in 1713, and entitled "Unigenitus," which condemned the 101 propositions of Quesnel's work, may be considered as having put an end to the controversy. After this date, at least, it became mixed up with many other questions, in which the original ground of dispute was lost sight of and finally merged. (See Reuchlin's Geschichte von Port Royal; Dumas' Histoire des Cinq Propositions; Sir James Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biographies, &c., &c.)