Quesnel, Pasquier
Quesnel, Pasquier
Writer. Born in 1634 in Parish, France; died in 1719 in Amsteram, Holland. He joined the Congregation of the Oratory but the doctrines propounded in his writings were condemned by Pope Clement XI. Quesnel was profoundly imbued with the errors of Baius and the Jansenists, and on account of the Jansenist opinions which he emphasized he was relegated to Orleans. Expelled from the Congregation of the Oratory in 1684, Quesnel went to Belgium and published numerous works under assumed names. Arrested in 1703, he fled to Holland, where he continued to write in support of his ideas. He requested and received the Last Sacraments, and made final profession of his faith.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Quesnel, Pasquier
(PASCHASE)
Pasquier Quesnel, born in Paris, 14 July, 1634; died at Amsterdam, 2 December, 1719. Descended from an ancient noble family he completed at the Sorbonne a brilliant course in philosophy and theology. At the age of twenty-three he entered the congregation of the Oratory where his talents were profitably employed in the direction of the young. He composed for the use of the students under his charge, and published in 1671 an “Epitome of the Morals of the Evangelists, or Christian Thoughts on the Texts of the Four Evangelists”. By important successive developments, this work became “The New Testament in French with Moral Reflections on each verse” (Paris, 1687-92) and gave rise to lively polemics until at last, in 1708, his doctrines were condemned by Clement XI (see JANSENIUS). But the edition of 1671 already contained five of the 101 propositions (12, 13, 30, 60, and 65) later censured in the Bull “Unigenitus”. Quesnel was profoundly imbued with the errors of Baius and the Jansenists, and he had skilfully spread these views in his “Moral Reflections” on the New Testament. Furthermore, he had adopted, in relation to the papacy, the teachings of Marco Antonio de Dominis (q.v.) and of Richer. He published (Paris, 1675; Lyons, 1700) a complete edition of the works of Leo the Great. The notes and dissertations which he added, though very learned, are spoiled by his attacks upon infallibility, and even Roman primacy. In consequence, this work was placed under the ban of the Index, and Quesnel’s only reply to the condemnation was disrespectful recrimination. On account of his Jansenist opinions, which he emphasized more and more he was relegated to Orléans. In 1684, having refused to subscribe to the formula which the General Assembly of the Oratory felt obliged to draw up against the current errors, he was compelled to quit the congregation. He then went to Belgium to join Antoine Arnauld, at whose death (1694) he was present, and whose place he took at the head of the party.
The difficulties of a sojourn in a foreign land failed to dampen his ardour for proselytizing or abate his literary activity. The dictionary of Moreri attributes to him some sixty discourses, ascetic or polemical, several of which were published under assumed names or anonymously at Brussels, where for some time he remained in hiding. But in 1703 Philip V, acting in concert with the Archbishop of Mechlin, Humbert of Precipiano, had him arrested and imprisoned in the archiepiscopal palace. Nevertheless, he succeeded in escaping and reaching Holland, finding an asylum at Amsterdam, where he continued, despite all bans and censures, to write in support of his ideas. Obstinate in the pursuit of his aims, he was not always delicate in his choice of means. When the royal commissioners discovered him disguised in secular dress and crouching behind a cask, and wished to assure themselves of his identity, he declared that his name was Rebecq, one of his numerous pseudonyms. On the part of a man who like all those of his party scorned mental restrictions and equivocations, the expedient, to say the least, was singular. Still more disloyal was his attempt to cloak his doctrines with the authority of Bossuet. The latter had been requested to examine the text of the “Réflexions morales” and had consented to do so. He had even drawn up an advertisement as a preface to a new edition, insisting, however, on the correction of one hundred and twenty propositions which he had found reprehensible. As this condition was not accepted, he refused his co-operation and held back his proposed “Avertissement”. But later on Quesnel obtained from the heirs of Bossuet the materials which the latter had prepared, and which he published as an authentic work under the title “Justification of the Moral Reflections, by the late M. Bossuet”. Up to the time of his death the ardent Jansenist was inconsistent and insincere. He requested and received the last sacraments, and in presence of two Apostolic prothonotaries and other witnesses, he made a profession of faith over his own signature, in which he declared “that he wished to die, as he had always lived, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, that he believed all the truths taught by her, condemned all the errors condemned by her, that he recognized the Sovereign Pontiff as the chief Vicar of Jesus Christ, and the Apostolic See as the centre of unity”. That these formulas concealed some inadmissible restrictions is proved by their very tenor. On this point we are left in no doubt in view of Article 7 which completes them, and in which it is said the writer “persists in his appeal to a future General Council, regarding the constitution ‘Unigenitus’, and regarding the grievances à propos of which he sought the judgment of the Church” .
Among the numerous works of Quesnel besides those already mentioned we may cite especially: “Lettres contre les nudités addressées aux religieuses qui ont soin de l’éducation des filles”; “L’Idée du Sacerdoce et du Sacrifice de Jésus Christ”; “Les trois consécrations: la consécration baptismale, la sacerdotale et la eonsécration religieuse”; “Elévation à N. S. J. C. sur sa Passion et sa Mort”; “Jésus pénitent”; “Du bonheur de la mort chrétienne”; “Prières chrétiennes avec des pratiques de piété”; “Office de Jésus avec des réflexions”; “Recueil de lettres spirituelles sur divers sujets de la morale et de la piété”; under the pseudonym of Géry, “Apologie historique de deux censures (contre Lessius) de l’Université de Douai”; under the pseudonym of Germain, “Tradition de l’Eglise Romaine sur la prédestination des saints et sur la grâce efficace”; “La discipline de l’Eglise tirée du Nouveau Testament et de quelques anciens conciles”; “Causa Arnaldina”, a work produced under another form as “La justification de M. Arnauld”; “Entretiens sur le Décret de Rome contre le Nouveau Testament de Châlons accompagnées de reflexions morales”; finally seven “Mémoires” serving as a history of the constitution “Unigenitus”. This list, however incomplete, comprises in its first part only the most generally useful and edifying works; as an offset the seven last numbers are either impregnated with the Jansenist principles or consecrated principally to their defence.
QUESNELLISM
The theological errors of Quesnel found their most complete expression in his “Réflexions morales”. Although they appear there only on occasions, disjointedly, in a fragmentary way, and are moreover hidden in the expression of pious considerations, they really form a systematic whole; they show their author to have adopted a radically false but coherent system, which is fundamentally only a synthesis of the systems of Baius and Jansenius. To make this clear, one has only to compare the hundred and one propositions condemned in the Bull “Unigenitus”, and faithfully extracted from the “Réflexions morales” with the theories previously defended by the Bishop of Ypres and his predecessor in the University of Louvain. For Quesnel, like Baius, conceived human nature in its three successive states: innocence, fall, and restoration. All his essential theses are based on a confusion between the natural and the supernatural order, which necessarily entailed the assertion of an intrinsic difference in regard to gratuity as well as to efficacy, between the grace of the Creator and the grace of the Redeemer. “The grace of Adam produced only human merits” (prop. 34); but “being a consequence of the creation, it was due to nature when whole and unimpaired” (prop. 35). Its loss through the original fall mutilated our nature, and man having become “a sinner is, without the grace of the Liberator, free only to do evil” (prop. 38). Moreover, this grace “is never given except by faith” (prop. 26). Faith which “is the first grace and the source of all the others” (prop. 27), is to be understood as “operative faith, and it works only by charity” (prop. 51). Consequently “outside of the Church no grace is given” (prop. 29), and “the first grace given to the sinner being the remission of sins” (prop. 28), all his acts, as long as he remains a sinner, are sins (prop. 44-8), so that “the prayer of the wicked is a new sin, and what God grants to them is a fresh condemnation” (prop. 59).
This is all resumed in the thesis of the double contrary love: “There are only two loves, from which all our volitions and all our actions spring: the love of God (charity properly so called) which refers everything to God and which God rewards; and love of self and of the world, which is evil as it does not refer to God what should be referred to Him” (prop. 44). From this follow not only the uselessness, but the malice and the evil effects of attrition, that is, of all repentance which does not arise from pure charity; for, “fear restrains only the hands; the heart remains attached to sin, as long as it is not led by the love of justice” (prop. 61); and “he who refrains from evil only through fear of punishment has already sinned in his heart” (prop. 62). Thus, the erroneous conception of the really gratuitous and supernatural character of the original grace bore its legitimate fruits, rigorism and despair; it resulted, as far as concerns attrition, in a conclusion already condemned by the Council of Trent. In Quesnel we find likewise the doctrine of the “Augustinus” (see JANSENIUS). Like that famous book, the “Réflexions Morales” did not admit either purely sufficient grace or real liberty of indifference; on the contrary, it denied them in many formulas “Grace is the operation of the omnipotent hand of God, which nothing can hinder or retard” (prop. 10), “it is nothing but the omnipotent will of God who commands and who executes his commands” (prop. 11). “When God, no matter when or where, wishes to save a soul, the will of God is infallibly carried into effect” (prop. 12). “When God wills to save a soul and touches it with the interior hand of his grace, no human will can resist it” (prop. 13); “there is no attraction but yields to the attraction of grace, because nothing resists the Omnipotent” (prop. 16). In a word, the action of grace can and must be likened to that by which God created the world, realized the Incarnation, raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and by which He worked every other miracle (prop. 20-5).
Having admitted all this, it is not astonishing that the Divine precepts cannot be observed by men of good will who make the effort. For, on the one hand, “the grace of Jesus Christ, the efficacious principle of all good, is necessary for any good work whatsoever; without it not only is nothing done but nothing can be done” (prop. 2); “the will without prevenient grace has no light save to go wrong, no zeal but to hasten to destruction, no strength but to wound itself: it is capable of all evil, and incapable of any good” (prop. 39). On the other hand, when grace is present and acting one never resists it. If therefore anyone fail in his duty, it can only be because he has not received the indispensable grace. For “grace is that voice of the Father teaching men interiorly and leading them to Jesus Christ; whoever, having heard the exterior voice of the Son, does not come to him, has not been taught by the Father” (prop. 17). And yet, according to Quesnel, man will be held guilty and condemned for those transgressions which he cannot possibly avoid (prop. 40). But, since the observing of commandments and therefore of the conditions necessary for salvation is not within the reach of all, it is evident that neither the intention of God to save nor the efficacy of the sufferings of the Saviour extend to all mankind. So “all those whom God wishes to save through Christ are infallibly saved” (prop. 30), and if “Christ Himself delivered Himself up to death”, it was solely “to snatch the first-born, that is the elect, from the hand of the exterminating angel” (prop. 32).
All these extraordinary ideas of Quesnel’s concerning grace, and his obstinate defence of them against legitimate authority had, as a practical and logical result, a second group of errors no less serious about the Church, its membership, discipline, and government in general. According to Quesnel, the Church is invisible; for it comprises “as members only the saints” or “the elect and the just” (prop. 72-7), and “a person is separated from it by not living according to the Gospel as much as by not believing in the Gospel” (prop. 78). It is an abuse in the Church “to forbid Christians to read the Holy Scriptures and especially the Gospel” (prop. 85), for this reading “is necessary to all, in every place and at all times” (prop. 79-84). “It is the Church that has the power of excommunicating, to be used by the chief pastors with the consent, at least presumed, of the whole body” (prop. 90). This, as the author states explicitly in his seventh “Mémoire”, supposes that the multitude of the faithful, without distinction of rank, is properly speaking the sole depository of all ecclesiastical power; but, as it cannot exercise this power by itself, the community entrusts it to the bishops and the pope, who are its agents and its mandatories; and, in this sense, the pope is only “the ministerial head” of the episcopal body. Moreover, “the fear of an unjust excommunication must never keep us from doing our duty” (prop. 91), “to suffer in peace an undeserved excommunication and anathema rather than betray the truth is to imitate St. Paul” (prop. 92). The directly personal character and object of these last declarations are apparent. The same may be said of the articles that protest against the abuse of multiplying oaths among Christians (prop. 101), or speak of the contempt, intolerance, and persecution to which truth is subjected (prop. 93-100), and which, crowning this sad arraignment with an assertion more offensive than the others, see in the abuses pretended to have been discovered “one of the most striking proofs of the senile decay of the Church” (prop. 95).
———————————–
LAFITEAU, Histoire de la Constitution Unigenitus (Liége, 1738); SCHILL, Die Constitution Unigenitus (Freiburg, 1876).
J. FORGET Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Quesnel, Pasquier
a celebrated French priest or the Oratory, was born of Scottish descent, at Paris, in 1634. He studied at the Sorbonne, and in 1657 entered the Congregation, to which his two brothers belonged also. Those were times that tried men’s souls. All France was agitated by the controversy which threatened the exodus of Holland from the domain of Romanism. The heresy of Jansen had found warm advocates in France also, and Quesnel was himself one of the most ardent of these. In 1671 he brought out his Abrege de la Morale de l’Evangile, which constitutes only the opening of the now celebrated work of his, Le Nouveau Testament en Francais, avec des Reflexions Morales (first complete ed. Paris, 1687, and often since). This work most unequivocally condemned much in the papacy, and advocated pretty boldly many features of Jansenism. Voltaire says that thirty pages of this book, properly qualified and softened, would have prevented much of the disturbance which Jansenism created in France. In 1675, Quesnel made the breach wider by his publication of the works of Leo I and of St. Hilary of Aries, greatly enriched by marginal notes, in the interest and defence of the rights of the Gallican Church. Of course, the book was placed on the Index, and its author proscribed at Rome. The superior of the Oratorians, pere Abel de Sainte-Marthe, was himself an enthusiastic Jansenist, and positively endorsed Quesnel. But when the archbishop of Paris, De Harlay, exiled Sainte-Marthe, Quesnel found France a very undesirable home, and he determined to go beyond its borders. In 1681 he was not even left to make his choice, for he was in that year driven from Paris. At first he went to Orleans.
His persistent refusal to abandon Jansenism made him uncomfortable here also. In 1684, finally, his order promulgated an anti-Jansenistic formula and demanded the signature of all its members. Quesnel refused to comply, and, feeling insecure, retired to Brussels, where he found the great Arnauld living, also in exile, on account of his Jansenistic proclivities. The two theologians became intimate companions and wrought much together, until the death of Arnauld, in 1694, terminated their relations. One of the most telling labors in defence of Jansenism brought out at Brussels by Quesnel was his Reflexions Morales. Notwithstanding its favorable treatment of Jansenism, the work, by its spirit of devotion and fervor, attracted many readers and warm admirers. Its beauties made even the moderate Ultramontanes forget the Jansenistic proclivities of the pen that wrote it, and all bestowed high encomiums on it. Several bishops were loud in its praises. Even the ultra- Jesuits would read it to catch its holy influences; and Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV, vol. ii) asserts that it was freely read at Rome.
He tells the story that the abbd Renaudot, one of the most learned men in France, being at Rome the first year of Clement Xi’s pontificate, went one day to wait upon this pope, who loved men of letters, and was himself a man of learning, and found him reading Quesnel’s book. This, said his holiness, is an excellent performance; we have no one at Rome capable of writing in this manner. I wish I could have the author near me. Yet this very pope in 1708 published a decree against it, and afterwards, in 1713, issued the famous bull Unigenitus, in which were condemned a hundred and one propositions extracted from it. We must not, however, look upon this condemnation of Clement XI as a contradiction to the encomium he had before given; it proceeded entirely from reasons of state. The warmest advocate of the Reflexions was cardinal de Noailles (q.v.). While still bishop of Chalons he had defended Quesnel’s works. Later, in the archiepiscopal see of Paris, he again espoused the cause of the PortRoyalists, and, of course, of Quesnel. In 1696 he even brought out an edition of the Reflexions at Paris. But the Jesuits were at work, and they finally succeeded in securing the pope’s disapproval of the work, and in blackening the character of its author. They accused him of plotting against the authorities and as a dangerous and seditious person.
In 1703 Quesnel was arrested by order of king Philip V, at the instigation of the archbishop of Malines, and put in prison. He was rescued, however, by Jansenistic friends, and made good his escape to Amsterdam, where he spent the remainder of his days building up Jansenism in Holland and strengthening it in France and Belgium also. He died in 1719. The titles of all his writings fill in Moreri several columns. We have room here to mention only, L’Idee du Sacerdoce et du Sacrifice de Jesus-Christ (Par. 1688, 12mo): Causa Arnaldina (ibid. 1697, 8vo): La Paix de Clement IX, ou Demonstration des deux Faussetes Capitales avancees dans l’Histoire de cinq Propositions contre la Foi des Disciples de Saint-Augustin, etc. (ibid. 1701, 2 vols. 12mo): Consultation sur le Famneux Cas de Conscience (ibid. 1704, 12mo): La Discipline de Eglise (ibid. 1698, 2 vols. 4to): Tradition de I’Eglise Romaine sur la Predestination des Saints et stur la Grace Efficace (ibid. 1687. 4 vols. 12mo). See Guettei, Hist. de l’Eglis e de France, vols. x and xi; Ceillier, Dict. Hist. des Aut. Ecclesiastes; Jervis, Hist. of the Church of France (see Index); Reuchlin, Gesch. v. Port- Royal, vol. ii; Neander, Christian Dogmas; Hagenbach, Hist. of Rationalism, p. 381; Princeton Review, 1856, p. 132; Moreri, Dict. Historique, s.v. (J. H. W.)