Lettres provinciales

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Lettres provinciales

The Lettres provinciales (Provincial letters) are a series of eighteen letters written by French

Sorbonne in Paris for views that were claimed to be heretical. The first letter is dated January 23, 1656 and the eighteenth March 24, 1657.[1] A fragmentary nineteenth letter
is frequently included with the other eighteen.

In these letters, Pascal humorously attacked casuistry, a rhetorical method often used by Jesuit theologians, and accused Jesuits of moral laxity. Being quickly forced underground while writing the Provincial Letters, Pascal pretended they were reports from a Parisian to a friend in the provinces, on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. In the letters, Pascal's tone combines the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world. Their style meant that, quite apart from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Adding to that popularity was Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and satire in his arguments. The letters also influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Brilliantly written by Pascal, the Provincial Letters would not have been possible without the work of theologians from Port-Royal; indeed, most of the arguments Pascal deployed were already to be found in Arnauld's Théologie morale des Jésuites,[2] something which led the Jesuit Nicolas Caussin to reply to Pascal's perceived libel. Pascal's main source on Jesuit casuistry was Antonio Escobar's Summula casuum conscientiae (1627), several propositions of which would be later condemned by Pope Innocent XI.

Paradoxically, the Provincial Letters were both a success and a defeat: a defeat, on the political and theological level, and a success on the moral level.[2] The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that did not stop most of educated France from reading them. Moreover, even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. Just a few years later (1665–66, and then 1679),[2] Alexander condemned "laxity" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistic texts.

Content of the letters

Structurally, the first three letters ridicule the dispute between the

Augustinism). Pascal thus highlighted, in the Second Letter
, that neo-Thomists and Jesuits were using the same term, "sufficient grace", with two different senses, for political reasons.

Fourth Letter

The Fourth Letter deals with the question of "

actual grace", the Jesuits claiming that sin could only be committed if people had knowledge of the evil inherent to the planned action. The Jesuit priest with whom Pascal was speaking quoted Le Moyne, a professor to the Sorbonne from 1642 to 1654. Le Moyne's definition had already been used by Arnauld in the Apologie pour les saints Pères:[3]

1. On the one hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some measure of love, which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded; and on the other, a rebellious concupiscence

solicits it in the opposite direction. 2. God inspires the soul with a knowledge of its own weakness. 3. God reveals the knowledge of the physician who can heal it. 4. God inspires it with a desire to be healed. 5. God inspires a desire to pray and solicit his assistance.

"And unless all these things occur and pass through the soul," added the Jesuit, "the action is not properly a sin, and cannot be imputed, as M. le Moine shows in the same place and in what follows."

Pascal replied, that this meant that all those whose "vices have got the better of their reason" and who indulge in "a perpetual round of all sorts of pleasures", so long as they are ignorant of the immorality of their actions, were excused by this doctrine. While he argued, citing the Bible,[4] that those who did believe in God but were deprived of knowledge of their evil actions (and thus deprived, for a moment, of the Jesuits' "actual grace") were still sinners.

Furthermore, Pascal ridiculed the attempt of

Etienne Bauny, author of a Somme des péchés qui se commettent en tous états (Paris, 1634),[5] to use Aristotle to justify this doctrine of sin (which could, according to Bauny, only be effective if man possessed the knowledge of the action). Bauny thus quoted the Nicomachean Ethics, III, 1, alleging that a voluntary action needed knowledge of what was good or evil in it. Pascal replied, also quoting Aristotle (he seemingly was the only one to use this argument in this debate),[6]
that Aristotle spoke only of knowledge of the actual circumstances of the act, but not at all of the capacity to discriminate between good and evil – since Aristotle stated that one who was devoid of that capacity was not excused at all, but rather considered a vicious man.

Casuistry

The rest of the letters are mainly an attack on Jesuit

Valerius Reginaldus, Bernard Lamy (censored on 8 October 1649 by the Faculty of Leuven
for his defense of homicide), etc.

In the Fifth Letter, he evoked in passing the Chinese Rites controversy which ended with the Jesuits' condemnation and the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide's decision to prohibit idolatry under any pretexts.[9] He also alluded to the problem of the relations between Christian virtues and natural virtues, debated in particular during the first half of the 17th century, after Jean-Pierre Camus and Arnauld, Pascal attacked the Jesuit Antoine Sirmond, who had practically admitted the identity between natural virtues and Christian virtues.[10]

Starting at Letter VI , dated 10 April 1656, Pascal gives a number of examples of Jesuit casuistry and of its "relaxed morality", citing abundant sources (many of which came from Escobar). He illustrated casuistry by citing mostly Jesuitical texts allowing excuses to abstain from

Innocent XI
.

In the Ninth Letter , the Jesuit explains to the narrator easy ways to enter

Jansenius.[12]

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Letters criticize the Jesuits' legitimation of homicide. In the latter, Pascal abstains himself from discussing the most scandalous Jesuit propositions, legitimizing tyrannicides and abortions. He quotes, among others, the Church's policies of penance for sinners guilty of willful murder officialized during the Synod of Ancyra (341).

In the Seventeenth Letter , Pascal took up again the problem of

St Athanasius and St Basil concerning the interpretation of Dionysus of Alexandria, who was accused by Basil of Arianism and therefore convoked before the Pope Dionysius in 262; or the various contradictory papal interpretations given to the Scythian monks; as well as another debate concerning Pope Honorius I, who had been later anathematized by the Third Council of Constantinople
, although Cardinal Bellarmine defended Honorius' orthodoxy, claiming that the condemned propositions were not to be found in Honorius.

Reactions and legacy

Further information: Formulary controversy

The reaction to the Lettres provinciales was substantial. Pascal's use of wit, humor, and mockery in attacking existing institutions made his work extremely popular. However, its publication was primarily via the

Louis XIV banned the book and ordered it shredded and burned.[citation needed] The Church banned it by placing on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.[a] Pascal himself had to enter clandestinity, living in cheap hostels. Nevertheless, the letters survived and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The extract of the Seventh Letter concerning the "direction of intention" influenced Molière's Tartuffe
(Act IV, scene V, 1489–1493).

They were first translated into Latin by Antoine Arnauld, and then into many other languages, including English in 1657 (Les Provinciales, or the Mystery of Jesuitisme, discovered in certain letters written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne between the jansenists and the molinists, London, Royston, 1657) by the Anglican theologian Henry Hammond, while in 1684 a polyglot translation (in French, Latin, Spanish and Italian) was published by Balthasar Winfelt.[13]

Quotes

On probabilism

On Antonino Diana's justification of duels

  • "If a gentleman," says he, in a passage cited by Diana, "who is challenged to fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted are such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the fear of God, but by cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he was a hen, and not a man, gallina, et non vir; in that case he may, to save his honour, appear at the appointed spot – not, indeed, with the express intention of fighting a duel, but merely with that of defending himself, should the person who challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. His action in this case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly indifferent; for what moral evil is there in one stepping into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a person, and defending one's self in the event of being attacked? And thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for in fact it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention being directed to other circumstances, and the acceptance of a challenge consisting in an express intention to fight, which we are supposing the gentleman never had."
  • "You have not kept your word with me, sir," said I. "This is not, properly speaking, to permit duelling; on the contrary, the casuist is so persuaded that this practice is forbidden that, in licensing the action in question, he carefully avoids calling it a duel." (Letter VII)
  • "A most pious assassination!" said I. "Still, however, pious though it be, it is assassination, if a man is permitted to kill his enemy in a treacherous manner." (Letter VII)

On usury and witchcraft

  • "Usury, according to our fathers, consists in little more than the intention of taking the interest as usurious. Escobar, accordingly, shows you how you may avoid usury by a simple shift of the intention." (Letter VIII)
  • "Distinguo, as Sanchez says, here. If the magician be ignorant of the diabolic art – si sit artis diabolicae ignarus – he is bound to restore: but if he is an expert sorcerer, and has done all in his power to arrive at the truth, the obligation ceases; for the industry of such a magician may be estimated at a certain sum of money."
  • "There is some sense in that," I said; "for this is an excellent plan to induce sorcerers to aim at proficiency in their art, in the hope of making an honest livelihood, as you would say, by faithfully serving the public." (Letter VIII)

Other

  • "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." (Letter XVI)

Quotes about the Provincial Letters

  • Said Voltaire concerning the greatness of the letters, "All types of eloquence are contained in these letters." He also called them "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France."[14]
  • When Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal.[15]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Beacon for Freedom of Expression search for Pascal

References

  1. ^ Les Provinciales, ou les Lettres escrites par Louis de Montalte a un provincial de ses amis & aux RR. PP. Iesuites: sur le sujet de la Morale & de la Politique de ces Peres (1 ed.). Cologne: Pierre de la Vallee. 1667. Retrieved 16 May 2016 – via Gallica.
  2. ^ a b c Vincent Carraud (author of Pascal et la philosophie, PUF, 1992), Le jansénisme, Société des Amis de Port-Royal, on-line since June 2007 (in French)
  3. ^ See note p. 314 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition, Pochotèque, Classiques Garnier, 1999–2004
  4. ^ Pascal alluded to the Parable of the Faithful Servant in the Gospel of Luke, XII, 47–48, to Ecclesiastes, IX, 1, and to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, IV, 4 : Nihil enim mihi conscius sum, sed non in hoc justificatus sum
  5. ^ See note p. 312 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition, Pochotèque, Classiques Garnier, 1999–2004
  6. ^ See note p. 324 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition
  7. ISBN 0-8018-6569-7
    .
  8. ^ See note p.335 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition, Pochotèque, Classiques Garnier, 1999–2004. See also Karl Weiss, P. Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza als Moraltheologe in Pascals Beleuchtung und im Lichte der Wahrheit, who adopted a pro-Escobar point of view, to which replied Augustin Gazier, Blaise Pascal et Antoine Escobar, étude historique et critique.., Paris, H. et E. Champion, 1912, 76 p.
  9. ^ 9 July 1645 decree signed by Cardinal Luigi Capponi. This is allegedly the first reference in French theological debate of Chinese rites. See Classiques Garnier edition by Gérard Ferreyroles and Philippe Sellier, 1999
  10. ^ Note p. 334 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition
  11. ^ pp. 350–351 of Ferreyrolles and Sellier's edition
  12. ^ Gospel of Matthew, 22:36 and 40, John 3:16, First Epistle to the Corinthians 16:22, First Epistle of John 3:14, John 14:24
  13. ^ On these translations, see Louis Cognet, 1965, notice re-published in Ph. Sellier's edition of Pascal (Classiques Garnier)
  14. ^ Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 424, 358.
  15. ^ Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV 359.

Bibliography

  • Les Provinciales – Pensées et Opuscules divers, Lgf/Le Livre de poche, La Pochothèque, 2004, edited by Philippe Sellier & Gérard Ferreyrolles (Les Provinciales are edited here after Louis Cognet's edition) (in French)

External links

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