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Jansenists, Orientalists, and the Eucharistic Controversy

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Jansenists, Orientalists, and the Eucharistic Controversy FROM EAST TO WEST: JANSENISTS, ORIENTALISTS, AND THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY Alastair Hamilton Few movements were further removed from oriental studies than Jansen- ism when it started in the 1630s with the Abbé de Saint-Cyran’s efforts to reform the convent of Port-Royal in Paris. Its teaching was based on that of a Church Father who met with particular favour in the West, St Augus- tine.1 Even as its ideals expanded, they were essentially confined to the western Church and western problems–to combating the Jesuits, to argu- ing against Molinism and probabilism, and, ultimately, to bringing about a fundamental reform of the Church itself. And this is equally true of the origins of the eucharistic controversy. To start with it was an exclusive- ly western concern, prompted by the publications, in the late 1620s and early 1630s, by Huguenot ministers such as Edme Aubertin, in defence of the Calvinist teaching on the eucharist, which denied that the bread and wine underwent any transformation at the consecration.2 In 1659 the two Jansenist leaders, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, replied by restating the Catholic belief in transubstantiation in a brief preface to the eucha- ristic liturgy for use by the nuns of Port-Royal. Although they were still mainly concerned with the Church of the West, they added a long section with passages from the Fathers, many of whom were Greek, and wrote that the teaching of transubstantiation “was so universally established, not only in the entire Church of Rome but also in all the communities which were separated from it, such as those of the Greeks and the Armenians, that no trace or memory suggests that there had ever been a different view.”3 1 As nobody knows better than Burcht Pranger. See, for example, his “Augustinian- ism and drama: Jansenius’ refutation of the concept of natura pura,” in M. Lamberigts, ed., L’augustinisme à l’ancienne faculté de théologie de Louvain (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994), 299-308. 2 Jean-Louis Quantin, Le Catholicisme classique et les Pères de l’Eglise: Un retour aux sources (1669-1713) (Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes, 1991), 291-39. 3 L’Office du S. Sacrement pour le jour de la feste, et toute l’octave… (Paris: Pierre le Petit, 1659) sig.a4r. 84 alastair hamilton Jean Claude, the Huguenot minister of Charenton, responded. He claimed that the current Catholic teaching could not be traced back any earlier than the tenth or eleventh centuries, “the darkest and most pollut- ed centuries, the most lacking in men of piety and learning, which Chris- tianity has ever known.”4 Claude, moreover, denied that the Greeks had had a consistent belief in transubstantiation and expressed grave doubts about whether the other Christians of the East had either. To Claude’s somewhat questionable sources for this claim we shall re- turn. Arnauld and Nicole took up the challenge with enthusiasm. For this there were many reasons. First of all it allowed them to indulge in their favourite pursuit–polemic. This, their refusal to let any argument drop, to continue discussions way beyond their point of exhaustion, was to be one of the causes of their undoing.5 But in this case the polemic was differ- ent from the ones to which they were accustomed. They normally devoted their energy to contesting the teaching of the Jesuits or to replying to the strictures of the papacy. Now, however, they could attack Protestantism. This had immense advantages. It meant that they could prove their own orthodoxy and spring to the defence of a teaching shared by the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. Rather than defending themselves against charges of heresy, they could appear as champions of the Church to which they never ceased to profess their devotion. And besides, defence of the eucharist could also serve as an answer to those of their enemies incensed by the publication in 1643 of De la fréquente communion, the work in which Arnauld rejected the widespread view, greatly encouraged among the Jesuits, that communion should be taken as frequently as possible. Ar- nauld justified his opposition by his deep veneration for the eucharist and his insistence on the need of a particular preparation before the faithful could partake of it. His enemies had noted with horror that the number of communicants had dropped appreciably as a result of his publication, and that he was encouraging not respect, but contempt, for the sacrament. In their first edition of La perpetuité de la foy de l’Eglise catholique touchant l’eucharistie of 1664 the Jansenist leaders still concentrated all but entirely on the western tradition. Only at the very end did they turn briefly to the eastern Churches, criticising Claude’s sources and maintain- ing again that there was no doubt that “all the schismatic communions 4 Jean Claude, Réponse aux deux traitez intitulez la Perpétuité de la foy de l’Eglise Ca- tholique touchant l’Eucharistie, 7th ed. (Paris: Antoine Cellier, 1668), 9. 5 This is justly emphasised in Antoine Adam, Du mysticisme à la révolte: les Jansénistes du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1968), 157. .
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