Document de Recherche du Laboratoire d’Écon omie d’Orléans Working Paper Series, Economic Research Department of the University of Orléans (LEO), France DR LEO 2020 - 2 1

The Relationship Between Theology and Economics: The Contributions of the Early Jansenism

Maxime MENUET

Mise en ligne / Online : 2 5 / 10 / 2020

Laboratoire d’Économie d’Orléans Collegium DEG Rue de Blois - BP 26739 45067 Orléans Cedex 2 Tél. : (33) (0)2 38 41 70 37 e - mail : leo@univ - orleans.fr www.leo - univ - orleans.fr/ The Relationship Between Theology and Economics: The Contributions of the Early Jansenism*

Maxime Menuet LEO, CNRS, University of Orleans, France

Abstract This article reassesses the links between the origins of political economy and Christian theology during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries by focusing on the beginnings of the Jansenist movement—a powerful and intellectually rich Christian movement of the time in France, Italy, Austria, and Holland. This paper examines how the pessimistic view of human nature, the concept of human self-love, and the natural inclination of human beings to seek pleasure were pivotal in the emergence of ideas in political economy. Based on these theological findings, the present article aims to reveal the different ways in which early Jansenism affected economics through (i) the original vision of labour that contrasted with both the Protestant approach and Catholic doctrine, creating a distinctive vision of poverty; and (ii) the idea that self-interest can produce a social optimum, associated with Pascal’s theory of “itus and reditus”.

Keywords: Jansenism, theology, social optimum, self-love, labour, political economy

* Correspondence may be addressed to [email protected]. I owe special thanks to Arnaud Orain for his encouragement and very helpful comments. I thank Annie L. Cot, Muriel Dal Pont-Legrand, Patrick Villieu and participants at the Charles Gide Workshops 2019 (Montreal) for comments. The usual disclaimer applies. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

!1 Introduction

Two views have long persisted in the history of economic ideas regarding the origins of political economy: its development throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was depicted as (i) the progressive emergence of a new science eschewing religious concerns; and (ii) this time was a secular age associated with a “triumphant philosophical spirit”. Currently two strands of literature challenge these views. On the one hand, following the research agenda initiated by Faccarello ([1986] 1999, 2008, 2014), many studies describe the “secularisation” of economic science as originating in reaction to the theological revival of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.1 On the other hand, some historical works (e.g. Van Kley, 1986, 2006; Cottret, 1998; and Maire, 1998) emphasise that the political and social debates of the pre-Revolutionary period were deeply influenced by Christian beliefs and that religious movements themselves were active contributors to those debates. Against this background, following the pioneering work of Max Weber ([1905] 2002) characterising a “Protestant ethic”, the history of economic ideas is confronted with the challenge of reassessing the connections between the origin of political economy and Christian theology.

The present paper addresses this challenge by focusing on Jansenism, the most powerful and intellectually richest of the controversial Christian movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, Italy, Austria, and Holland, and which arose out of the familiar theological problem of reconciling divine grace and human freedom. Intellectually Jansenism played a crucial role in theology and contributed to the emergence of political economic thought in the second half of the eighteenth century. For example, the pioneering works of Perrot ([1984] 1992) and Faccarello ([1986] 1999) highlight how the early Jansenists subscribed to the proto-“invisible hand” theory, as is particularly evident from the works of Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert (1746–1714). In an influential paper, Orain demonstrates that “in taking a step away from theodicy, millenarianism, and divine interventions, … Jansenism promoted a new method and new ideas that had an impact on the future economists they taught, and even beyond that, on the Enlightenment” (Orain 2014: 484-485).

Historically Jansenism began as a theological and societal project initiated by Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), Bishop of Ypres and known as Jansenisus, and Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (1581– 1643), Abbé de Saint-Cyran. Theologically Jansen developed a pessimistic application of

1 See Faccarello (2017) for more on “secularisation”. !2 Augustinian thought in his thesis Augustinius (1641): only grâce efficace [efficacious grace], which God distributed sparingly to believers, could save the soul.2 The book immediately sparked controversy. The Jesuits criticised Jansen for repeating Calvin’s mistakes. In this context, the term “Jansenism” was first used as a pejorative expression by Jansen’s opponents from 1643, after which it served as a generic term for a large and diverse circle of scholars who agreed with Jansen’s reading of Augustine. From the societal perspective, Jansen and Saint-Cyran’s project took the form of the Port-Royal experiment involving three communities: (i) the nuns of the Cistercian convent of Port-Royal des Champs in Paris and the Chevreuse valley for whom Saint-Cyran was the spiritual director; (ii) the group of “Solitaires” [“hermits”], including the theologians Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694) and Pierre Nicole (1625–1695), who lived in the countryside near Port-Royal abbey. Undoubtedly the best known of the Solitaires were the philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) and the dramatist Jean Racine (1639–1699); (iii) the new seminaries known as the Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal during the period 1637–1660, whose members included Boisguilbert. From the outset, the movement was regarded with suspicion by royal and papal authorities alike. Jansenists were politically in conflict with the structure of Louis XIV’s monarchy and religiously they were virulently opposed to the Jesuits. Consequently they were persecuted as heretics and forced into exile (notably in Holland and the Utrecht region) in the late seventeenth century. As an example, one of the movement’s main leaders—the theologian Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719)—was exiled to Amsterdam. Although the movement almost died out in the early eighteenth century, its survival was ensured by the opposition of Louis XIV himself. Shortly before his death, the Sun King secured the famous papal bull Unigenitus (1713), which sought to censure Quesnel’s theses, and launched fresh persecutions against the Jansenists which made this theological movement an unrelenting opponent of monarchical authority until the Revolution.

Intellectually the main interest of the Jansenist movement lies in its influential role in theology, politics, philosophy and economics (Taveneaux 1965, 1977). For example, in France, the Jansenist

2 In domestic politics Jansen and Saint-Cyran vigorously opposed Cardinal Richelieu’s alliance policies (see Jansen’s pamphlet, Mars Gallicus, 1635), which aimed to draw France diplomatically closer to the Protestant states. Saint-Cyran was imprisoned from 1638 to 1643 on Richelieu’s orders. In Church politics Jansen openly attacked the Jesuits, interfering with many seminaries at Louvain and in the United Provinces. Jansen and Saint-Cyran corresponded extensively. For example, during a meeting in the summer of 1621, the two theologians prepared “the plan of the Augustinius” (Taveneaux 1968: 30) and “decided to devote their lives exclusively to making [Augustinian theses] triumphant” (Orcibal in Richardt 2011: 40). Jansen developed the theological arguments while Saint-Cyran attempted to “obtain temporal support” (Ibid). In the genesis of the movement, R. Taveneaux distinguishes between a theoretical form in the drafting of Augustinius and an applied form in the Port-Royal experiment. !3 periodical Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques was decisive “in the construction of public opinion in the Enlightenment” (Cottret and Guittienne-Mürger 2016) [biblio], was close to the Journal Œconomique and the works of J. Child and T. Culpeper, and was contributed to the empowerment of philosophical thought (notably via the disputes over Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, 1748, see Menuet 2018 [biblio]). Regarding the movement’s influence on issues of political economy, the literature has focused almost exclusively on the post-Unigenitus period (the “second Jansenism” in the terms of Dedieu 1928: 162). Some recent papers3 show that the theologian Jacques-Joseph Duguet (1649–1733), the historian Charles Rollin (1661–1741) and the doctor Étienne Mignot (1698–1771), in many respects paved the way for the economic ideas of Melon, Montesquieu, and the Gournay circle, notably over the issue of interest-bearing loans, and may have prepared the advent of the “science of commerce” in France in the 1750s. Orain (2014) demonstrates that several members of Gournay’s circle were influenced by Jansenism and reveals that “at the beginning of the 1780s, a ‘feedback’ and convergence-of-interests effect resulted in getting Jansenist priests and one of those leading authors (Turgot) to collaborate, with a view to advocating the legalisation of the loan at interest”. In the same vein, Orain and Menuet (2017) highlight that a part of the “second Jansenism”—a “liberal” current—actively participated in the French economic Enlightenment through the entry for “usury” in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the articles on interest-bearing loans by other scholars in the 1760s, or the books by Turgot and his Jansenist friends in the following decades. The main value of this “second Jansenism” was the Traité des prêts de commerce (1738) by the theologians P. Boidot and B. Aubert, who established a subjective theory of value several years before Turgot (see Faccarello 2016). The main idea was to establish “usury” as a simple profit, which relies on the use of money.4

However, based on the existing literature, little is known regarding the implications of the pre- Unigenitus Jansenism (the “first Jansenism”) for economic ideas. Previous studies (Perrot [1984] 1992, Faccarello [1986] 1999) focused exclusively on the works of Jean Domat (1625–1696) or Nicole and were confined to the main Jansenist idea that self-interest could produce a social optimum. Our paper demonstrates that other concepts and categories of seventeenth-century

3 See, e.g., Van Hoorne (1996), Cottret (2002), Faccarello and Steiner (2008), Van Kley (2006), and Orain (2014).

4 This Treatise had a considerable impact, as the numerous reviews by the major journals of the time show (e.g. the Journal de Trévous, Année Littéraire, Mercure de France, etc). !4 theological reflection were carried over into the eighteenth century by moral philosophers and theologians turned economic theorists.

After briefly describing the theological basis of Jansenism (section 1), this article aims to reveal, through two case studies, the different ways in which the movement affected economics. In the first case (section 2), we reveal the original Jansenist vision of work in contrast to traditional Catholic doctrine and the Protestant approach. Jansenists viewed labour as a free, selfless and voluntary action, contrasting with the Calvinist theory of predestination. Early Jansenists promoted a particular vision of spiritual work—the internal conversion—resulting in the formation of the Solitaire group of Port-Royal following Saint-Cyran’s renouvellement method. As a result, the concepts of labour and poverty were closely related: poverty caused by voluntary unemployment was morally wrong from the early Jansenists’ perspective. Against this background, we find evidence of the influence of Jansenism on the works of Nicolas Baudeau, for example. The second case study focuses on theological reflections on human nature (section 3). On the one hand, we focus on Pascal’s and Nicoles’s concept of self-love and show that two mains authors (Boisguilbert and d’Aguesseau) developed Nicole’s idea that the interaction of individual self-love can lead to a social optimum. On the other hand, we present Pascal’s theory of “itus and reditus” [“ebb and flow”], and its impact on Clément Juglar’s (1819–1905) concept of business cycles.

Consequently, following Rothkrug (1965), Keohane (1980) and Faccarello (2014), the message of this paper is that “modern moral utilitarianism and economic liberalism originated in port-royalist Augustinianism. … From this perspective, Jansenism opened the door, in France and in the Catholic environment, to the development of ‘the spirit of capitalism’ ” (Weber 2007).

1. The Foundation of Jansenist Doctrine: Human Self-Love

Jansenism was a new theological movement, primarily in France, within the Catholic post- Tridentine Counter-Reformation. The basis of the doctrine was a pessimistic view of human nature following St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430). We can summarise Jansenist theology in two points.

Firstly, contrary to Catholic tradition, Jansen developed the Augustinian concept of “grâce efficace” [“irresistible grace”], following the theologian Michel de Bay (1513–1589). This concept holds that men are utterly fallen because of original sin and they naturally tend towards evil. Thus only the gift

!5 of God—grace—can save corrupted man; hence the powerlessness of human will. This view contrasted with the Jesuits’ “liberal” approach of “grâce suffisante” [“sufficient grace”].5 For the Salamanca school, free will could substitute for God’s grace, while for the Port-Royal school, men are fully dependent on the will of God. This opposition resulted in the tensions between the Jesuits and the Jansenists throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Secondly, and more interestingly, Jansenists considered the natural inclination of human beings was to seek pleasure. This view explained Jansenist theology’s influence on the main developments of political economy as we will see. In order to define the notion of “pleasure”, the theologians used the concept of delectation:

Our soul, henceforth obedient to no motive save that of pleasure, is at the mercy of the delectation, earthly or heavenly, which for the time being attracts it with the greatest strength. At once inevitable and irresistible, this delectation, if it come from heaven or from grace, leads man to virtue; if it come from nature or concupiscence, it determines him to sin. (Forget 1910)

It follows that all decisions and actions are driven by the pursuit of delectation: man commits good or evil deeds depending on whether or not he has received grâce nécessaire. Delectation associated with God’s grace is called celestial delectation, while delectation for the purposes of concupiscence is earthly delectation. These two delectations were for Jansen “like the two arms of a set of scales” and formed the “the heart of Jansenist doctrine” (Taveneaux, 1968: 29). Such a view entailed two implications: (i) all men are self-loving and self-interested agents, and (ii) such motivations have adverse effects, as men can never pursue charitable behaviour (because of humanity’s irreparable depravity).

The concept of self-love [amour-propre] lay at the core of the theology of the early Jansenists like Saint-Cyran, Nicole, Quesnel and especially Pascal, who stated:

5 The most important proponent of the Jesuit tradition was Louis de Molina (1535–1600). In his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis (1588), the theologian attempted to reconcile human freedom with the foreknowledge of God. Unsurprisingly, this Jesuit/Jansenist controversy echoed the famous Pelagius/St. Augustine opposition in Christian theology about the nature of the God’s grace. For Pelagius, men can obtain their salvation by their own individual merit, whereas for St. Augustine, grace is a necessary and sufficient condition. Although Jansenism was a social movement from the late-seventeenth century, it is important to note that Jansenism “was first, like the Protestant Reformation, a theological debate. It was seeded in the decrees and silences of the Council of Trent” (Delumeau in Richardt 2011: 48). !6 The nature of self-love and of this human Ego is to love oneself only and consider oneself only. … He wants to be great, and he sees himself as small. He wants to be happy, and he sees himself as miserable. He wants to be perfect, and he sees himself as full of imperfections. He wants to be the object of love and esteem among men, and he sees that his faults merit only their hatred and contempt. (Pascal [1670] 1958: 42)

This view gave birth to the philosophical concept of self-deception (man deceives and deludes himself). As the moralist-theologian Nicole argued:

the corrupted man not only loves himself but … loves himself in an unrestricted way … he turns his attention to himself. He desires any kind of goods, honours, and pleasures for his own purposes. He makes himself the centre of everything: he wants to dominate everything, and all men are busy only to content him, to praise him, to admire him. (Nicole 1671: 121)

Consequently all economic activities that serve to satisfy earthly delectation originated from original sin and the pursuit of self-love. Two kinds of influence from this theological outlook can be applied in economics: in the vision of labour and in the pursuit of an optimal social order. We detail these two points in the following sections, respectively.

2. Labour and Poverty

Since Max Weber ([1905] 2002) propounded his celebrated analysis of the Protestant work ethic, the conception of labour has played a crucial role in studies of the relationship between religion and economic theory. This section aims to characterise the Jansenist vision of labour and its consequences for the concept of poverty.

An Original View of Labour

According to Jansen, Saint-Cyran and Quesnel, labour is a free, selfless, and voluntary action: “we must work without expecting the grace of God, and we must rely on his grace by not expecting to obtain anything from our work” (Saint-Cyran, in Orcibal 1962: 86). Men decide whether or not to

!7 work based on their expected individual “pleasures” — Quesnel frequently used the “love of work” to describe such a decision.6

This is an important point because such a view contrasted sharply with both the Protestant approach and traditional Catholic doctrine. On the one hand, according to Calvinist predestination, men work to “reveal” divine providence and God’s continuous generosity. Calvin defined work as actions that implement the creative and redistributive process necessary for a harmonious society (Bauer 2017). Consequently a commitment to work as hard as possible and to the pursuit of economic success are purposes that seem to reflect leaps of faith. On the other hand, following the Council of Trent, the Catholic doctrine that was defended by the Jesuit movement considered work to be an “ascetic activity”. The sermon of Bourdaloue (1632–1704) was a prime example: “God’s justice repairs the sin of man by labour, and work is the way that God’s justice maintains all the states of the world. The idleness that directly contrasts with this justice is disorder” (Bourdaloue 1750: 277). In this way, work was “punishment for disobedience and rebellion” (Da Silva 1995) and led to a life of drudgery.

These two different interpretations derived from the understanding of original sin. All of the theological currents shared the finding that original sin considerably increased the distance between God and men, but they differed in their beliefs about its implications for work. For Calvin, at the time of the creation of the world, work was a part of human nature, it was “joyful and pleasant” and harmony was ensured. However, after humanity was deformed by sin, men sought to restore this lost harmony, while God continued to be creative through man’s work. Consequently, “the fruits of labour are the result of this continued creation” (Bauer 2017), so that labour became the way for man to comply with God’s plan and to reach a new state of harmony. In the traditional Catholic view, as the Council of Trent reappraised matters, work was an effort that needed to be exacting and corresponded to an act of penitence, opening the way for man to atone for original sin.

In contrast, Jansen, Saint-Cyran and the subsequent Jansenist theologians considered that the decision to work was driven by delectation alone and that the consequences of work had little impact on society. As Quesnel stated: “anyone who works for God does not work in vain, even if this work is useless to others” (Quesnel 1842: 76). However, the Jansenists distinguished between

6 See, for example, the letters to (unknown) priests in 1689 (see Quesnel 1842, 145:155). !8 labour driven by celestial delectation—which aimed to make the “pleasures” generated by divine grace increase through spiritual work—from labour driven by earthly delectation.

While all Jansenists showed profound contempt for the latter kind of work they promoted spiritual and ascetic labour. This type of work aims to pursue the “pleasures” generated by divine grace through “difficult and long” efforts (Jacquemot in Chantin, 1998: 89): “Saint-Cyran considered divine grace to require a total conversion: a victory of the ‘new man’ over the ‘old man’ at the price of heroic efforts and great moral austerity” (Pernot 2012: 64). This explains Saint-Cyran’s concept of renouvellement. The grace that the Christian receives leads to an initial delight (delectation); through spiritual work (an internal conversion) he can obtain other graces and thus other delights:

As the initial divine grace is a free gift, it is not only to our prayers but to our work that God promised the increase of graces, provided we consider that in working we always need the same grace. (Saint-Cyran in Orcibal 1962: 86)

From a pastoral perspective this method of renouvellement had a practical and operational dimension that led to the foundation of the group of Solitaires of Port-Royal:7

Christians must adopt a behaviour of reluctance, namely a ‘retreat’ from the world, which does not mean that they must give up God-desired occupations, but that they must make retreat their ideal … Hence the austere rules imposed by Saint-Cyran on his followers. (Cognet 1965: 392)

For Saint-Cyran, the labour associated with the renouvellement method was necessarily a solitary activity: “God works in solitude alone: the loneliness of religion must be as great as that of the ancient hermits … solitude makes your soul like God’s” (Saint-Cyran in Orcibal 1962: 435). Against this background, time for prayer and spiritual activities comes from individual work-related acts, as claimed by Quesnel: “We must consider that the Christian life, the religious life, and the priestly

7 Historically the Solitaires or Messieurs de Port‑Royal were a group of men from the bourgeoisie or the Noblesse de Robe who, from 1637, divided their time between manual activities (agriculture, gardening, land drainage, etc.) and intellectual work. They settled near Port-Royal abbey (at the Ferme des Granges from 1648), and founded the Petites Ecoles. Some of the main solitaires included the grammarian Claude Lancelot, the philosophers Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, the theologian Louis-Isaac Le Maître de Sacy, and the physician Jean Hamon. The historiography evaluating the number of Solitaires is inconclusive although Cognet (1965) identified 25 members at the movement’s peak. !9 life, are appropriately called toilsome labour, which needs to be compared to the work of the plough” (Quesnel 1757: 141). In his biography of Saint-Cyran, Orcibal associated the concept of “Labour” with the activity of “Prayer” (see Orcibal 1962: 85-86). The historian showed that Saint- Cyran gave a pecuniary value to “prayer time”.8 In the same vein, Quesnel introduced the concept of Evangelical Worker [Ouvrier Evangélique] that characterizes workers who “seek only God in their work” (Quesnel 1757: 90). For the theologian this kind of work was useful for society whereas poverty was supposedly related to the pursuit of profit alone.

This concept was also developed by Guillaume Le Roy (1610–1684). As the abbot of Haute- Fontaine (a well-known Jansenist stronghold), Le Roy was one of the main actors in the dissemination of extremist inner-worldly Jansenism in the seventeenth century, particularly in the Lorraine region of France, as shown by Taveneaux (1960). Le Roy welcomed the first Solitaires and Messieurs of Port-Royal (Arnauld and Nicole stayed at Haute-Fontaine) and developed a rigorist Jansenist thesis9 through doctrinal and polemical manuscripts, some of which were printed during his lifetime as La Solitude Chrétienne (1659–1660).10 A new aspect in Le Roy’s writing was the distinction between travail des mains [manual work], such as artisanal or agricultural work, and travail spirituel [spiritual work]. Unsurprisingly Le Roy claimed that men must work on spiritual elevation (by following an “evangelical spirit”) through an individual and solitary activity. Corresponding to Saint-Cyran’s renouvellement method, Le Roy considered spiritual activity as a form of work. In a chapter entitled “Against Idleness”, the theologian claimed:

Let us now speak of spiritual occupations. ... Since it is well-known that idleness is an enemy of the soul, and that the apostle says that the man who does not work is unworthy to eat, God must always find you busy with some spiritual exercise. … It is necessary that in

8 A large, stimulating and unexplored source of information on the daily and spiritual lives of the Solitaires was the Psalms and the religious texts. Donetzkoff (2005) showed that some Psalms, and the correspondence between Saint-Cyran and François le Charron de Saint-Ange contain descriptions of the renouvellement method.

9 Namer (1964) and Delumeau and Cottret (2010) called Le Roy one of the main “extremist” Jansenists.

10 In addition, Le Roy belonged to a bourgeois family ennobled in the early seventeenth century (his father acquired an office as the king’s secretary). Thanks to this herditary position, Le Roy became extremely wealthy (Namer 1964: 132). In various letters, Arnauld worried about Le Roy’s fortune: “I have no doubt, gentlemen, that we agree with the same principles … These principles are: (1) that it is not permissible to have several benefits, when one is enough for an honest sustenance; (2) that even in the light of a single profit, we do not take anything if we have enough to live on our inheritance; because the goods of the Church are devoted only to meeting the needs of its ministers or the poor” (Letter from A. Arnauld to G. Le Roy, in Arnauld 1775: 533). !10 winter you are busy with the spiritual exercises all the morning until the hour of Terce. And in summer until time of Prime. I call the spiritual exercises the oration, the reading of holy books, the meditation of holy things, and the psalmody. (Le Roy [1659] 1699: 440-441)

Therefore, the Solitaires must devote time to both spiritual and material occupations. Regarding the latter, Le Roy recommended that the “Solitaires should work every day with their hands” (Ibid: 253) for two reasons. Firstly, the work of the hands allows the worker to be more productive in spiritual activities: “bodily exercises must not be prioritised over spiritual ones. … We must prefer the spiritual to the corporeal, and go to the latter only to more excellently fulfil the other” (Ibid: 443). This view matched both Nicole’s and Quesnel’s thinking. In his Essais de Moral (1671),11 Nicole viewed non-spiritual activity as a form of leisure, which was needed to increase the effectiveness of spiritual works, namely to “make souls more able to work” (Nicole 1671: 241). For Quesnel, the pleasures generated by “outdoor occupations” are lower than the pleasures linked to “the inner occupation of the soul” (Quesnel, 1842: 151), so that men, if elected by God, prefer spiritual work in a natural way.

Secondly, man constantly needs to be busy: “Now observe that it is better to vary the exercises and to resort to the work of the hands than to fall asleep while reading, and to become bored with too much reading” (Ibid: 442). All the early Jansenists strongly condemned idleness [l’oisiveté]: “When we stop going to prayer or reading, we must use the work of the hands, in order to be always busy, since according to the rule of Saint Benedict, idleness is the enemy of the soul” (Ibid). We detail such a view in the following section in de Barcos’ writings.

In summary, two points deserve particular attention. First, the Jansenist vision of labour corresponded to traditional Catholic doctrine that considered work as an exacting activity requiring “heroic efforts”. However, the main difference with Catholic doctrine is that the harshness of labour was not due to penance originating in original sin but to the pursuit of some pleasure. Second, the renouvellement method can be related to Calvinist thought, since work seemed to be a “creative”

11 Nicole’s Essais had a significant influence on political economy debates of the time (John Locke translated some of them for Lady Shaftesbury), notably with regard to the relationship between self-love, charity and commerce. !11 process desired by God that changes the “old man” into a “new man”.12 An important difference relates to the fruits of labour. For Calvin, economic success was a testimony to divine action; hence the incentive to become rich. In Jansenist thought, such success was suspicious; for Quesnel, “it is no a small consolation for those who work a lot and who do not see the fruit of this work to be assured that they will not lose anything of their reward” (Quesnel 1699: 141), since “life is too negligible to put in mind to change condition” (Quesnel in Préclin, 1935: 381).

The Vision of Poverty

During the seventeenth century another important concept related to the activity of work was poverty. Economists and theologians discussed unemployment—oisiveté—in terms of poverty (Clément 2008) and debated the need for the unemployed to receive alms and charity. For the historian Jean Delumeau, the terms related to “idleness” or “laziness” in Christian writings were due to the development of trade and the emergence of the merchant/bourgeois class in the late seventeenth–early eighteenth centuries: “undoubtedly, it is thanks to the trading environment and under the impetus of economic and social changes that the Latin Christian discovered the cardinal sin of sloth” (Delumeau 1983). This sin of “sloth” was a major topic for the early Jansenists. For example, Quesnel devoted a large part of his Nouveau Testament to strongly condemning any form of idle behaviour: “Idleness… is the first barrier to salvation” (Quesnel 1702: 458); “Everything commits man to a hard and busy life, and idleness is a source of damnation” (Quesnel 1705: 273); “idleness attracts dism” (Ibid: 166), etc. Against this background, from the early Jansenists’ perspective, poverty based on voluntary unemployment was morally wrong.

An illuminating text was produced by Saint-Cyran’s nephew, Martin de Barcos (1600–1678), who had a decisive influence on Arnauld and Pascal.13 The theologian developed the concept of

12 Mardellat (2011) highlighted Max Weber’s perception of the Protestant view of labour as based on spiritual activities. The Reformation viewed work as an “inner-worldly asceticism”, hence professional work came directly from monastic work: “the Reformation brought out from the convents the Christian asceticism and method of rational life to transpose them into secular professional life” (Weber, in Mardellat, 2011: 171). On this point, Jansenist thought, at least from the perspective of the movement’s first theologians, seems to follow the same logic.

13 Martin de Barcos was one of the most famous Jansenists of the seventeenth century. Jansen was his professor of theology at Louvain, and he was tutor to Antoine Arnauld at Port-Royal. His work had a great influence on Pascal and on the Port-Royal Jansenists, as shown by the theologian’s rich correspondence (Goldmann, 1956). De Barcos was particularly well-connected in the political sphere, as shown by the letters addressed to the Duchesse de Longueville (Goldmann 1956: 388) or the Prince de Condé (Ibid: 461). !12 “voluntary unemployment” in a pastoral book, De la Foi, de l’Espérance et de la Charité (1688), in a clear reference to St. Augustine’s famous Traité de la foi, de l’espérance et de la Charité. This treatise was reprinted in 1648, 1661 and 1675 and translated by Port-Royal theologians like Arnauld in 1648. To the question “May men who have nothing take the goods of others to live?” de Barcos’ answer was clear:

No; and those who do so are punishable before God, and before men. They are forced to work to earn a living. Because the goods and the wealth of men who have nothing are their arms, their health, and their industry alone. Since it is forbidden for the rich to take the goods of others, it is forbidden for the poor who do not want to work, when they can, to appropriate the goods of the rich. We are not even required to give alms to men who are in this state, because alms … are only for the true poor … instead of for men who we call the voluntary poor. (de Barcos [1688] 1691: 351/352)

Martin de Barcos made a clear distinction between the “true poor” and the “voluntary poor”. The latter were people who do not work voluntarily and who should not receive charity and alms for three reasons:

Thus giving alms to [the voluntary poor] is subject to several disadvantages: [i] because we keep them in idleness, [ii] we prevent them from exercising charity by helping themselves, and others by their work, [iii] and we give to non-poor people the goods that need to be given over to the true poor. (Ibid)

De Marcos’ main message was that assisting (in the form of charity and alms) people who are deliberately unemployed is both inefficient and inequitable as it encourages them to remain in the state of idleness while such help should be allocated to the “true poor”. At this stage, de Marcos’ perspective raised two questions: (i) Why is the state of idleness undesirable? (ii) What is “true poverty”?

The first question was addressed by Quesnel and some Solitaires, including the son of the abbess Catherine Arnauld, the Bible scholar Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy (1613–1684). The theologian was intellectually very close to de Marcos—their period of residence at Port-Royal was identical. In his Lettres Chrétiennes et Spirituelles, published posthumously by his friend Pierre Thomas du !13 Fossé (1634–1698), de Sacy glorified intellectual work and strongly opposed oisiveté along the same lines as de Marcos: “oisiveté [idleness] is much to be feared, because it leads to all evils … produces aversion to work” (de Sacy, 1690: 167). De Sacy followed Saint-Cyran’s renouvellement method, in which “old men” must become “new men” through a heroic effort of “conversion”. Thus the theologian defined work as being in the “spirit of prayer” (Ibid: 47), whereas idleness discourages men from following the path in life required by God. Pastorally Quesnel gave the following advice: “[Jesus Christ] teaches us to save the poor from idleness, giving alms to help them work, not to keep them lazy” (Quesnel 1699: 463).

Regarding the second question, Saint-Cyran himself provided a definition of the “perfect poor” whereby three conditions had to be met:

1. Having no external goods; 2. Having no desire to obtain any; and in contrast, finding joy in having none; 3. Having no attachment to necessary things. Without the spirit of poverty, religions are vain shows of piety. The man who has no goods, and who takes as much pleasure in having none … is truly poor in spirit. (Saint-Cyran in Orcibal, 1962: 445)

Overall, and unsurprisingly, Saint-Cyran glorified “poverty” as a state in which men are deprived of material goods, following the standard position of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the theologian paid attention to the willingness to detach oneself from “necessary goods”, hence the advice to form the Solitaires group. However, poverty does not require idleness: the poor must be industrious since they are working on their internal conversion.14

The notion of pauvreté volontaire [voluntary poverty] that de Marcos developed merged with the pauvreté calculée [calculated poverty] of the abbot Nicolas Baudeau (1730–1792) and Turgot (1727–1781) a century later (see, e.g., Clément 2010; Chopelin-Blanc and Clémence, 2008). These two kinds of poverty depended on rational economic behaviour through a cost/benefit analysis: “The establishment of free relief for some men would immediately create poor people, that is to say,

14“Saint-Cyran [did] not consider the renouvellement practice as a necessity, but in his opinion, as the simplest way to this regenerated state in which the Christian lives in the world as if not living there” (Cognet, 1965: 393). !14 give so many men an interest in becoming [poor], by abandoning their occupation” (Turgot in Daire 1844: 301). Although Turgot promoted charity workshops, he condemned unconditional social assistance (Clément 2005), as he claimed in his article “Foundation” in the Encyclopédie:

to enable a large number of men live without charge is to fund idleness and all the disorders that follow; it is to make the condition of the idler better than that of the worker; in consequence, it is for the State to decrease the sum of labour and the productions of the land, of which a part becomes necessarily uncultivated: hence it results in frequent scarcity, increased poverty, and depopulation. The race of the industrious is replaced by a vile population, composed of vagrant beggars and given to all manner of crimes. (Turgot in Daire 1844: 301)

Baudeau developed a similar idea. In the Idées d’un citoyen sur les besoins, les droits et les devoirs des vrais pauvres (1765) the theologian devoted the third chapter to “alleged poverty”. He claimed that the government needs to take action to remove “false poverty” in order to increase the efficiency of the social assistance that needed to be allocated to the “true poor”:

the kingdom is currently inundated with false poor who live from crime … it is still necessary for [the government] to repress imposture, to prevent it at best, to punish it with justice and intelligence. (Baudeau 1765: 97-98)15

For Baudeau, charitable behaviour increased the numbers of the false poor and encouraged idleness: “the desire to perform in the art of begarliness, combined with avarice … must have made the true needy imagine a thousand artifices to increase their evils and the appearance of their poverty. These wiles gave them a more glorious, but very idle and very convenient life” (Ibid: 98-99). This view echoed de Barcos’ advice: “That is why the Fathers and Councils so expressly forbid to assist them [the false poor] … experience argues that this serves only to maintain them in idleness, in vice, and in debauchery” (de Barcos, [1688] 1691, II: 352).

15 Baudeau also developed a typology of the “true poor” who needed to be helped by the government—“the true poor have a real right to demand their true necessities” (Baudeau 1765: 102)—including poor “invalids”, such as abandoned children and elderly people, and the “casual poor”, whose condition was linked to random risk (Clément 2010). !15 Is there a link between Baudeau and the early Jansenists? As is the case in the historiography of the Jansenist movement, we refer to the place of study of the theologians in order to prove their intellectual and spiritual proximity to the movement. In the case of Baudeau, his period of training for the priesthood and his first professorship of theology in the 1750s (as regular canon) took place at the Chancelade Abbey in the Périgord region. It is known that Chancelade had been a Jansenist- friendly fief since the seventeenth century.16 In 1614 one of the leading early Jansenists, Alain de Solminihac (1593–1659), became the regular canon of Chancelade Abbey.17 It is now clear that Baudeau must have studied Solminihac’s works at some time during his time there. For example, regarding Baudeau’s main theological work, l’Analyse de l’ouvrage du pape Benoit XIV, “The author [Baudeau] wrote the commentary [the l’Analyse] as part of his work on Alain de Solminihac (1593–1659)—Abbot of Chancelade and then Bishop of Cahors, one of the main representatives of the pastoral reform of the seventeenth century” (Chopelin-Blanc 2008: 50). Focusing on the theological works of Baudeau, Chopelin-Blanc concluded that

the author [Baudeau] develops [in the Analyse] the theory of private interest that underlies all the thought of eighteenth-century political economy, from Boisguilbert to Smith. ... This theory is rooted in seventeenth-century French moral theology. It appeared more carefully under the pen of the Jansenist moralists. (Ibid: 54)

Consequently, according to some authors,18 the Jansenist view of labour that we have described played a leading role in forming the “conception of work in the bourgeoisie and the middle class” (Schussler Fiorenza 1980: 110) during the seventeenth century and could “explain why Jansenism found natural ground for growth in the families of the Parisian Robe [bourgeoisie class]” (Taveneaux 1968: 7). By considering work as just an individual activity, “Jansenism converged with the bourgeois mentality … [because] the bourgeois is the ideal free man, kept out of seigniorial hierarchies, escaping dependencies that governed relationships between men and goods

16 The abbey members had to abide by St. Augustine’s rule, as at Port-Royal: “regular canons [such as Baudeau] follow the rule of St. Augustine, vowing obedience, chastity and poverty” (Dauchez 2008: 24). In addition, “[Baudeau’s] reflexions are nourished by his personal experience. He entered the Abbey of Chancelade on October 16, 1750 where the regular canons spent most of their time in contemplation, and where he held a position as a teacher for a few years” (Chopelin-Blanc 2008: 52).

17 “All the disciples of Port-Royal claimed Alain de Solminihac as one of their own and adopted his moral theology as the expression of the authentic Catholic tradition” (Taveneaux 1968: 217).

18 Such as Groethuysen (1929), Taveneaux (1968), Schussler Fiorenza (1980), Da Silva (1995), and Lavialle and Menuet (2017). !16 in the Middle Ages” (Da Silva 1995: 100). This intuition was developed by the philosopher Bernard Groethuysen, who suggested that “the bourgeoisie managed to find solid forms of life and principles in Jansenism. By adopting them, the bourgeoisie supposedly acquired a moral praise that served in its dispute with the great [the politicians]” (Groethuysen 1927: 198). Therefore, as the process of building the bourgeoisie appeared as an “individualisation process”, early Jansenism could have contributed to the “fertile ground” (in Taveneaux’s terms) with the intentions of the bourgeoisie suggesting a particular form of the “spirit of capitalism”,19 and may have influenced economists like Nicolas Baudeau.

In examining the concept of labour, we have focused on the rigorist Jansenist tradition represented primarily by Saint-Cyran, Jansen and de Barcos. During the Port-Royal period, a more moderate current (termed “centrist” by Taveneaux) emerged from the teachings of Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) and Jean Domat (1625–1696). This current notably studied the question of human nature, self-love, and social harmony, that influenced Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert (1646–1714) and Henri François d’Aguesseau (1668–1751).

3. Human Nature: Self-Love, Social Order, and Itus and Reditus

The idea that self-interest could produce a social optimum was one of the major contributions of Jansenism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Facarello [1986] 1999).20 The theological foundation of Jansenism was based on the concept of amour-propre [self-love] that formed the cornerstone of Pascal’s and Nicole’s writing.

Self-Love and Social Harmony: The “Centrist” Movement

Following the Augustinian tradition, Pascal introduced the concept of “moi”. The term has no English equivalent but refers to “the self”, “myself”, “the ego”, or personal identity generally. In a

19 Taveneaux (1968) argued that the bourgeois represented the ideal “free and independent individual” under the Ancien Régime. He also revealed evidence of “deep affinities” between Jansenism and the bourgeoisie’s empowerment. For example, the composition of bourgeois libraries is very interesting. Many catalogues include Jansenist authors: St. Augustin, Saint-Cyran, Nicole, Arnauld, and later Duguet and Quesnel; see Deyon (1967: 287) for such a study in Picardy. However, the current historiography lacks systematic studies.

20 See also, concerning the early Jansenism of the seventeenth century, the discussions around Bernard de Mandeville’s intellectual background by Kaye (1988), Dickey (1990), and, more recently, Seigel (2005). !17 long fragment entitled amour-propre [self-love], Pascal argued that “the nature of amour-propre and of this human self is to love only oneself and consider only oneself” (Pascal [1670] 1958: 42). Thus, Pascal defined amour-propre as the love of self in the eyes of others, and claimed that men act hypocritically in order to satisfy their self-love (self-deception):

Thus, human life is nothing but a perpetual illusion; there is nothing but mutual deception and flattery. No one talks about us in our presence as he would in our absence. Human relations are only based on this mutual deception; and few friendships would survive if everyone knew what his friend said about him behind his back, even though he spoke sincerely and dispassionately. (Ibid: 44)

For Pascal, the origin of the human nature of self-love came from original sin, in accordance with the theses of Saint-Cyran and Jansen, and self-love alone drove human action:

God has created man with two loves, the one for God, the other for himself; but with this law, that the love for God shall be infinite, that is without any other limits than God himself; and that the love for oneself shall be finite and relating to God. Man in this state not only loves himself without sin but could not do otherwise than love himself without sin. Since, sin being present, man has lost the first of these loves; and the love for himself, being left alone in this great soul capable of an infinite love, this self-love has extended and overflowed in the empty space which the love of God has quitted; and thus he loves himself alone, and all things for himself, that is, infinitely. This is the origin of self-love. (Pascal 1859: 428)

Consequently all social relationships are driven by deceit and vanity. Thus, at first sight, a contradiction seems to emerge: Nicole asked “[if] men are born in a state and condition of war, and each man is naturally an enemy to all other men” (Nicole 1671: 123), how can social harmony be ensured?21

Following Pascal, Nicole addressed this question in his essay, De la charité et de l’amour propre. The theologian offered a solution by introducing the concept of amour-propre éclairé [enlightened self-love]. For Nicole, the human tendency to self-love has two purposes: (i) the satisfaction of vanity (the desire to dominate all men), and (ii) the desire to preserve material properties (the “acquisitive passions”). Following the terms of Christian Lazzeri (1993), the former (“conceited self-love” [self-love inspired by vanity]) is the prime expression of self-love and depends on natural

21 See Hengstmengel (2019: 143). !18 human traits, while the latter (“convenance self-love” [self-love inspired by propriety]) is driven by reason. Nicole’s key innovation is to reverse the initial prevalence of “conceited self-love” over “convenance self-love”. Men “like to subjugate everyone, but like life and commodities even more”, so that “the fear of death” is “the first link of civil society, and the first obstacle of conceited self-love” (Nicole 1671: 124). This view has two implications.

Firstly, using reason-based arguments, passions are achieved only through the protection of political order. Without political order, “all men are enemies, and there will be general war … Political order is, therefore, an admirable human invention to provide in each individual all necessary commodities” (Ibid: 123). Secondly, the interaction between the “conceited” and “convenance” forms of self-love can force every man to adopt “honest” behaviour consistent with society’s interests. Indeed, “in order to be increasingly appreciated by everyone, man will seemingly behave with great civility. By this game of pretence, human corruption takes on all the appearances of honesty, benevolence and love” (Weber 2007). This is the definition of “enlightened self-love”.

Nicole’s conclusion was that the self-love tendency is a source of social welfare: “there is nothing from which we derive greater services than from the very greed of men”. Finally, the optimum Nicole described was not market-based and seemed to emerge from (i) the interaction of all individual self-love and (ii) the strong political organisation of society (the political order).

Two main Jansenist authors developed a liberal interpretation of Nicole’s writing in the early eighteenth century. The first was the jurist, Henri François d’Aguesseau (1668–1751), Advocate General to the Parlement (the high court of justice) of Paris from 1690 until 1700. As Attorney General, in 1713, he supported the Gallican Church against the promulgation of the bull Unigenitus. During the regency period, he was appointed Chancellor and Minister of Finances in 1717 and objected to Law’s system (see Orain 2018). Intellectually, he was influenced in two ways: by Nicole and Domat in theology and by Descartes and Malebranche in philosophy, as demonstrated in his book, Méditations Métaphysiques sur les Vraies et les Fausses Idées de la Justice, published posthumously in 1759. For the historian David Selby, “the works of d’Aguesseau help to demonstrate why the legal profession continued to be a fertile terrain of encounter between Jansenism and republicanism in France, even well into the 19th century” (Selby 2015: 66).22 In the Méditations, d’Aguesseau took great interest in exploring the interaction between the nature of man

22 In the Cours de littérature française, Abel François Villemain (1790–1879) covered five eighteenth century Jansenists, including d’Aguesseau. Villemain argued that d’Aguesseau was from the school of “Arnauld and Nicole” and was “as Jansenist as a minister can be” (Villemain 1840: 82). !19 and social harmony. Compared to Nicole’s self-love-based theory, he developed two new points: (i) the love of others, and (ii) l’amour de la patrie [love of country] as a result of self-love. We detail these two points in what follows.

(i) Along the same lines as Nicole, d’Aguesseau addressed the issue of social harmony as a problem linked to human nature—“Is it natural for man to love his fellows?” (d’Aguesseau 1819: 372)—and considered that men act according to their own self-love:

Interest, vanity, the love of pleasure, the fear of pure and sincere friendship. Deceived several times by vain appearances, we imperceptibly fall into a universal distrust, which finally leads us to think that all that seems to be mutual love between men could well be only a specious name … Hence, the famous problem, which consists in knowing whether it is natural for man to love or hate his peers. (Ibid: 375)

To address this question, d’Aguesseau distinguished between the “nature” of man and the “object” of human love.

Firstly, the nature of man is self-love. However, d’Aguesseau’s interpretation differed greatly from Nicole’s concept as described above. Following Descartes, d’Aguesseau defined the nature of man as his reason: “living according to reason is to live according to the general spirit of nature” (d’Aguesseau 1819: 596). Such a definition was inconsistent with Nicole, who considered the nature of man as fallen after original sin. In contrast d’Aguesseau thought that “nature is not entirely fallen, and, for sure, it becomes lost when reason is misused” (Jaume 2009: 47).

Secondly, the object of human love is complex and depends on relationships with others: “It is therefore only in the human beings … [and] in men that I find the object, clean and specific, of my relative love” (d’Aguesseau 1819: 379). Therefore, d’Aguesseau suggested that men find their self- love by loving others. The intuition is the following:

I note that every day I am attached to people to whom I have done good, often even more so than to people from whom I have received good … The reason is not difficult to discover. I feel, in some way, below my benefactors, as they force me by their favours to recognise that I did not have what they gave me … hence an implicit admission of my weakness … On the contrary, when I do good to my fellows, I believe for the same reason in exerting a kind of superiority over them by giving them what they did not have. We only indulge ourselves in these feelings … but I had the proof that they seem to offer me the strength and my perfection … so that men become the object of my love, by the good that I do to them. (d’Aguesseau 1819: 381)

!20 Thus, by loving other men, one will receive love from them in return and one will enjoy a feeling of superiority that will satisfy one’s self-love. At the end of this process social harmony will be ensured. Nicole and d’Aguesseau shared an understanding of the origin of actions (self-love) and the consequences (social harmony) but differed in their understanding of the process. The fact that men love each other was a means of deception for Nicole, whereas it was a natural and voluntary act for d’Aguesseau: “Consequently the social link appears as the result of good self-love, because it integrates others instead of using them by a cheating calculation” (Jaume 2009: 47).

(ii) The main originality in d’Aguesseau’s writing was the analogy of amour-propre [self-love] and amour de la patrie [love of country]. The Mercuriales—a set of speeches made in the Parlement of Paris between 1698 and 1715 and published posthumously in 1759—began with a dedication to self-love and ended with a dedication to “love of country”. These Mercuriales were universally admired in the eighteenth century (pocket editions were published and were considered to be the moral code of the magistracy of France; see Bulter 1830: 37). According to d’Aguesseau’s perception of one’s love of country:

each citizen … regards the fortune of the state as his own … [and develops] a fraternal civility … which unites citizens in a similar way as a family … The love of country has become a type of self-love, and citizens come to love each other through love of the republic, even to love it more than themselves. (d’Aguesseau 1787: 208)

From a normative perspective he claimed that prudent rulers must implement policies that are associated with the charms and delights of participation in political institutions: “attaching the state of the government by its charms, this is the great work of sagesse” (Ibid: 213). Love of the patrie meant love of the common good, not love of the monarch: he noticed that France was “a great kingdom, but not a patrie; a numerous people, but hardly any citizens” (Ibid: 211).

Such concepts seemed to influence many eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, including Tocqueville (Selby 2015) and Montesquieu (Brancourt 2014). However, the impact d’Aguesseau’s writings had on French political economy is more difficult to assess. Intuitively d’Aguesseau’s concept of patrie was similar to the patriot political economy that was developed in the eighteenth century by Gournay and the physiocratic current (Shovlin 2006). In addition, a consistent body of evidence suggests d’Aguesseau was close to prominent members of Gournay’s group. On the one hand, Simon Clicquot de Blervache (1723–1796), in the chapter, “Des inconvéninents des trop grandes exploitations” in Mémoire sur les moyens d’améliorer en France, referred to d’Aguesseau’s policy as reducing farm size: “M. d’Aguesseau has implemented the … operation

!21 [consisting of dividing the land into small parcels] on his lands in Fresnes and Compans” (Clicquot de Blervache, 1789: 78). On the other hand, regarding the potential link between d’Aguesseau and Gournay and the reasons for the way in which their thinking had been related, they were together members of the extraordinary commission of the king for the affairs of commerce [bureau du commerce],23 which dealt with the issues of the grain trade, industry, and the business of royal manufactories. In addition, some of d’Aguesseau’s important writings were to be found in Gournay’s library (Garrigues 1998), including his Mémoire sur le commerce et la compagnie des Indes, and Considérations sur les monnaies. In the first of these, d’Aguesseau considered that he had been wrong to oppose the Royal Bank (Compagnie d’Occident ou du Mississippi). In this new economic perception of society, agriculture, industry, and labour were needed for social harmony to arise (Monnier 1975: 199). The second book24 was less interesting. Following Jean de Malestroit, the jurist considered that the ruler cannot change the natural value of the money that lies in the amount of metal: “the prince cannot force this principle and do violence to nature itself; authority does not have the power to subjugate reason completely and enslave common sense” (d’Aguesseau in Monnier 1975: 201). Such a perspective highlights d’Aguesseau’s concept of the State; the prince is subject to the natural law that ensures the production of the common good.

The second author to develop Nicole’s self-love theory was Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert (1646– 1714). After studying at the Petite-Ecoles of Port-Royal, Boisguilbert developed a conception of market-based society. He applied Nicole’s vision of self-love to economic relations and considered that the sum of all individual considerations of self-love can lead to social harmony (defining it as the Etat d’Opulence), provided that a “superior and general authority”—Providence—is achieved. For Nicole and Boisguilbert, the presence of an external force (the political order in Nicole and Providence in Boisguilbert) was needed for a social optimum to emerge, contrasting with d’Aguesseau. However, Boisguilbert’s Providence differed from Nicole’s political order since Providence refers to a natural order that ensures free competition in transactions. Hence the best political action was “laissez-faire and laissez-passer”: “all the commerce of the land … is governed by nothing other than the self-interest of entrepreneurs … It is this reciprocal utility which ensures that harmony appears” (Boisguilbert in Faccarello 1999: 28).

23 See the minutes of the commission, in Almanach royal, 1757: 141.

24 See Oualid (1909) for a review. !22 Since a large and bloated body of literature has focused on Boisguilbert (starting with Van Dyke Roberts 1935; Faccarello [1986] 1999), we simply mention some evidence of the author’s influence on early economists.25 Faccarello claimed that

[Boisguilbert’s] new approach was to inspire the main developments in political economy during the eighteenth century. Quesnay, the physiocracy, Turgot and sensationalist political economy developed the basic free trade ideas proposed by Boisguilbert. (Faccarello 2014)

Many papers have documented the influence of Boisguilbert on (i) Mandeville’s Fable of Bees, summarised in the expression private vices, public benefits (Hecht 1989: 479; Groenewegen 2002: 112/113); on (ii) Cantillon (1680–1734);26 and on (iii) the physiocratic spirit, such as in Quesnay, Dupont de Nemours, Mercier de la Rivière, l’abbé Baudeau, and others.27 A 1966 publication by the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) went further and was given over to the influence of Boisguilbert on modern economic ideas. In the current state of the art, the literature seems to overstate Boisguilbert’s influence on economic thought (especially in Marx’s works, or in the proto-macroeconomic theory of aggregate demand, as argued by Van Dyke Roberts, 1956). On the one hand, only one of the aforementioned authors—Quesnay himself—referred explicitly to Boisguilbert. For example, Turgot, in his Eloge de Quesnay (1775), Réflexion sur la formation de la richesse des nations (1776), and Lettre sur la liberté du commerce de grain à l’abbé Terray (1770), made no reference to Boisguilbert’s works.28 On the other hand, as documented by Peter Groenewegen, Boisguilbert’s thought had a decisive impact on Quesnay’s education; hence, a consensus seems to have emerged: “Boisguilbert’s work is almost certainly the inspiration for the great emphasis on the circulation of French economic writing of the first half of the 18th century, including the highly influential works of Melon” (Groenewegen, 1994: 2-3).

25 The first detailed work on Boisguilbert’s writing on economics was composed by Daire (1843). In a footnote on Boisguilbert (Schumpeter [1954] 1983: 302), Schumpeter considered that a “cult of Boisguilbert” characterised some early twentieth century works.

26 See Spengler (1954: 285). Benítez-Rochel and Robles-Teigeiro (2003) claim that Cantillon and Boisguilbert used a similar theoretical framework, which produced the basis of the Tableau Economique. The authors argue there is sufficient evidence to indicate Cantillon was influenced by Boisguilbert.

27 See the chapter, “Boisguilbert and French Political Economy” (Groenewegen 2002: 115-119), for a review of Boisguilbert’s influence on the leading physiocrats.

28 A member of Gurnay’s circle, François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais (1722–1800), opposing the physiocrats, referred to Boisguilbert (see Faccarello [1986] 1999). !23 The evidence for the impact of Boisguilbert’s works on Adam Smith is so far inconclusive.29 Generally Adam Smith disregarded pre-physiocrat authors. However, recent papers have shown that the Augustinian tradition is present in Smith’s background. Bruni and Santori (2019) claim that the Augustinian influence can provide a fresh examination of the Adam Smith problem, i.e., the relationship between the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776). This is a possible direction for future research.

Consequently there are many elements to suggest the contribution of the theology of self-love to the genesis of a number of economic ideas in the second half of the eighteenth century. The theological basis of this self-love is related to the Jansenist concept of necessary grace by which men are permanently fallen because of original sin. Against this background, the way grace works in man also had consequences for economic writing.

Itus and Reditus

Finally we discuss another important ingredient of the spirit of Jansenism, based on the Augustinian concept of itus et reditus [ebb and flow]. At present, no study details the implications of this concept in economic ideas, notwithstanding the stimulating work of Dal-Pont Legrand and Frobert (2010).

The intuition of this concept is as follows. In the spirit of Jansenism, all good actions are driven by divine grace (efficacious grace). However, such grace acts in men through phases of ebb and flow, hence the improvement of human nature seems to be a cyclical process. Saint-Cyran claimed that grace operates in men through “ineffable and divine ebb and flow” (Saint-Cyran in Orcibal 1962: 85), with “rising” and “falling” phases that “irrigate [man] eternally” (Ibid). For pedagogical purposes, the early Jansenist theologians referred to the sea and the tides to describe the effects of divine grace. From Saint-Cyran’s perspective, “we progress in virtue following the same way as the waves of the sea … This is why we should not be surprised by our falling frequencies” (Ibid: 522). In L’Esprit de M. Nicole, a pastoral book published in 1765 that summarised the Instructions that Nicole gave in the Petite-Ecole, references were made to the “ebb and flow” in human nature:

It is a continual ebb and flow of thought and movement. We almost never see objects with one eye. What seems to be true, good, and useful today, will appear to be false, bad, and useless tomorrow. Our affections and our moods are more changeable than our judgements. We

29 “No copy of Boisguilbert’s works has yet been placed in Smith’s library, but the circumstantial evidence is strong that Smith may have used Boisguilbert’s writing among his hundreds of sources for The Wealth of Nations” (see Groenewegen, 2002: 114). !24 experience a perpetual variety of movements and different dispositions, sometimes agitated, sometimes tranquil, sometimes sad, sometimes gay … Finally, we find in ourselves nothing firm, nothing uniform, nothing constant. (Nicole 1765: 13/14)

Pasquier Quesnel in his Réflexions morales—blacklisted by the papal authority in 1708 and 1713— suggested that “the distribution of the graces [is based on] this terrible ebb and flow of the mercy like of the ebb and flow of the sea” (Quesnel 1714: 18). In the same vein, Pascal developed his theory of “itus et reditus” in a fragment in his Pensées:

Continuous eloquence wearies. Princes and kings sometimes play. They are not always on their thrones. They weary there. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm. Nature acts by progress, itus et reditus. It goes and returns, then advances further, then twice as much backwards, then more forward than ever, etc. The tide of the sea behaves in the same manner, and so, apparently, does the sun in its course. (Pascal [1670] 1958: 101)

Pascal compared humans to “weird, changing, variable” organs: “man’s nature is not always to advance; it has its advances and retreats” (Ibid: 100). To illustrate his theory, Pascal drew the two following graphs, representing long-term oscillating trajectories:

Figure 1: Itus et reditus in Pascal’s Pensées, fragment no. 2/7.

Dal-Pont Legrand and Frobert (2010, hereafter DLF) showed that the French economist, Clément Juglar (1819–1905), was influenced by Pascal and the Jansenists’ theory of itus et reditus.

On the one hand, three kinds of evidence support the proximity between Juglar and the Port- Royalist authors. (i) Firstly, “Juglar’s Catholicism takes on a Jansenist nuance” (Salmon [1966]

!25 2011: 2). In particular, Juglar’s family was close to the Arnauld’s tradition—because the family home was on Rue Saint-Jacques near the “Jansenist library”—and participated in Jansenist seminaries in Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas parish (see Alemany 2013: footnote 815). For example, Juglar was buried in the Abbey of Port-Royal, which was extremely rare for a layman. (ii) Secondly, Juglar’s library was composed of the most influential Jansenist works, including the books by Arnauld and Nicole (DLF reveal that Juglar gave an entire collection of Jansenist books to the library of the Catholic University of Paris in 1893). (iii) Thirdly, Juglar was intellectually very close to Pascal. DLF report that “several testimonies from his relatives reveal that Pascal’s Pensées was Clément Juglar’s bedside book … His personal copy of the Pensées bears the trace of many annotations in his own hand, and it is obvious that he used it as an important source of inspiration”. We can also find the trace of many of Pascal’s notions in Juglar’s work.30 In addition Juglar used the metaphor of “itus and reditus” and referred to “the tides” to explain his theory of “providential economic crises” in 1850, with economic and financial movements being describing as “great oscillating trajectories that seem like the ebb and flow of the sea” (Juglar 1886, p. 77). The economist developed the idea that economic variables follow natural long-term cycles.

Consequently the theological questions about human nature and the early Jansenists’ answers paved the way for the development of economic ideas, influencing eighteenth and nineteenth century authors. The contributions of a “centrist” current within the Jansenist movement, with the concepts of self-love, or love of country, may have influenced some of the early economists’ and may have prepared the advent of French political economy as the “science of commerce” in the 1750s.

Conclusion

Intellectually the Jansenists developed a strict vision of St. Augustine’s theology in a period characterised by the great theological disputes that followed the Council of Trent. Both rigorist and modern, the early Jansenists developed new ideas such as self-love and self-deception. The main contribution of this article has been to show that the theoretical basis of divine grace influenced various economic ideas—encompassing other areas than interest-bearing loans and usury, such as the vision of work or the social optimum—and that the early Jansenists, several decades before the eighteenth century moralist-theologians, paved the way for the encounter between political

30 In addition to DLF, further evidence can be found in the Journal de la Société de statistique de Paris. Juglar was the scientific editor and main contributor to the first volumes. In the July to December 1860 volume, an explicit reference to Pascal is made: “The truth is that man is neither so pliable, as Pascal said, nor so fragile as the theories imagine” (Journal de la Société de statistique de Paris 1860: 30). !26 economy and moral theology. Beyond the well-known figures of Boisguilbert for political economy and Domat for the legal sciences, other theologians had decisive influences on the history of ideas: Saint-Cyran, Quesnel, Le Roy, de Barcos, d’Aguesseau, and de Sacy, among others, are examples of theologians who spread new concepts. For example, Saint-Cyran developed a vision of work as a personal and individual action, de Barcos distinguished the “true poor” from the “false poor”, Quesnel and de Sacy opposed idleness, while d’Aguesseau saw a likeness between self-love and love of country. In addition, evidence has been presented about the proximity of the early Jansenists and a number of economists (such as Baudeau, Gournay, and Juglar). Finally, a natural extension of our analysis would be to connect the early Jansenists, as presented in this paper, with the second Jansenists (see Orain 2014; Menuet and Orain 2017) to obtain an overview of the influence of the Jansenist movement on economic ideas. Future works might usefully analyse the impact of Jansenist thinking on economists in the post-Revolutionary period, notably in Italy (see Welch 1986).

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