Henri Arnauld

Henri Arnauld (1597–1692) was a French Catholic bishop.

Arnauld was born in

Father Joseph, confirmed the choice. He was obliged to wait three years for his Bulls, which were delayed by the difficulties between the court and the Holy See. He is close to some of the most famous writer of the time (Sébastien Guez de Balzac, François Maynard, etc.) and write poems^[1]

At the time of the quarrel between

Barberini, Arnauld was sent to Rome as chargé d'affaires

of France. He acquitted himself of this mission with adroitness. The pope could not deny him the return of the cardinals, who were reinstated in their possessions and dignities. He returned with the reputation of being one of the most politic prelates in the kingdom.

Being offered the

Jansenists and of his family. Having once entered on this path, he concentrated all his energies to keep from yielding, and thus to save his own honour and that of his brother Antoine Arnauld

. This involved him in many difficulties, and caused many dissensions in his diocese.

His entrance into the quarrel aroused by Jansenism was most exciting. When

Archbishop of Paris, to forestall the tempest which the obligation of signing the Formulary would arouse at Port-Royal

. At the same time he encouraged the religious to resist or take refuge in subtleties.

Arnauld was one of the four prelates who in 1665 loftily refused to sign the Formulary of Alexander VII, and issued a mandate against it. He was about to be cited before an ecclesiastical tribunal when the pope died.

Clementine peace

to this party, and they took advantage of it.

The bishop preserved his Jansenism to the end. He pursued with disfavour the partisans of orthodoxy. One should read the "Mémoires" of Joseph Grandet, third superior of the Seminary of Angers, to know to what a degree Jansenism had imbued the bishop. He was energetic, austere, devoted to his duty, and filled with zeal.

In 1652, when the queen mother was approaching to inflict punishment on the city of Angers, which was in revolt, the bishop appeased her with a word. On giving her Holy Communion, he said: "Receive, Madame, your God, Who pardoned His enemies when dying on the Cross." There is still quoted a saying of his illustrating his love of work. One day, on being requested to take a day each week for relaxation, he replied: "I shall willingly do so, if you give me a day on which I am not bishop." He remains one of the most enigmatical figures of the seventeenth-century episcopate.

The negotiations carried on by him at the Court of Rome and various Italian courts have been published in five volumes (Paris, 1745).

References

^ Rémi Mathis, « Un Arnauld à l'hôtel de Rambouillet. Note sur un poème inconnu d'Henri Arnauld, évêque janséniste d'Angers » dans XVIIe siècle, 2008, n°4, p. 725-731.

External links

Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Arnauld § Henri Arnauld" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

[1] Rémi Mathis, « Un Arnauld à l'hôtel de Rambouillet. Note sur un poème inconnu d'Henri Arnauld, évêque janséniste d'Angers » dans XVIIe siècle, 2008, n°4, p. 725-731.

[1]

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