Arnauld Family

Arnauld Family, French family of the lesser nobility that came to Paris from Auvergne in the 16th century and is chiefly remembered for its close connection with Jansenism (a Roman Catholic movement that propounded heretical doctrines on the nature of free will and predestination) and with the Jansenist religious communities of Port-Royal de Paris and Port-Royal des Champs.

The founder of the family, Antoine Arnauld (1560–1619), was born in Paris, the son of Antoine Arnauld, seigneur de la Mothe. Well known as an eloquent lawyer, he pleaded for the University of Paris against the Jesuits in 1594 and presented his case so forcefully that his speech on this occasion has been called “the original sin of the Arnaulds,” as if it were the first cause of the Jesuits’ animosity against the family. He married Catherine Marion de Druy, and they had 20 children, 10 of whom died young. All except one of the surviving children were in some way connected with Port-Royal. In 1629 Arnauld’s widow became a nun at Port-Royal de Paris, where she died in 1641.

Perhaps the most notable of Arnauld’s 10 surviving children were the youngest son, Antoine Arnauld (q.v.), called the Great Arnauld, who was the leading French Jansenist theologian of the 17th century; daughter Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld (q.v.), called Mère Angélique, who, as abbess, transferred the community from Port-Royal des Champs (near Versailles) to Paris and made it a centre of Jansenism; and her younger sister, Jeanne-Catherine-Agnès Arnauld (q.v.), called Mère Agnès, who twice served as abbess of Port-Royal.

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Robert Arnauld d’Andilly (1588–1674), the eldest surviving son, pursued a career in government service. In 1620, however, he made the acquaintance of the abbot of Saint-Cyran (see Duvergier de Hauranne, Jean), a founder of the Jansenist movement, and under Saint-Cyran’s influence he eventually sought to retire from secular life. In about 1644 Arnauld d’Andilly at Port-Royal des Champs entered the ascetic religious community established earlier by several of his nephews, chiefly Antoine Le Maistre. Because of his connection with the French court, Arnauld d’Andilly was especially important in Jansenist political affairs. He was also a poet, a translator of religious texts, and the editor of Saint-Cyran’s Lettres chrétiennes et spirituelles (1645; “Spiritual and Christian Letters”). His Mémoires was published in 1734. Five of Robert Arnauld d’Andilly’s daughters became nuns at Port-Royal des Champs.

Robert’s younger brother, Henri Arnauld (1597–1692), left his diplomatic career for a life in the church. Ordained as a priest, he ultimately became bishop of Angers. He played an important part in the Jansenist religious controversy, his sympathy lying with the Jansenists.

In addition to Mère Angélique and Mère Agnès, four more daughters of Antoine Arnauld eventually became nuns at Port-Royal. The most notable was Catherine Arnauld (1590–1651). She married Isaac Le Maistre, a king’s counselor, but, after his death, she too took religious vows and entered Port-Royal.

Antoine Le Maistre (1608–58), Catherine’s eldest son, abandoned worldly society and placed himself under the spiritual direction of Saint-Cyran. Thus guided, Le Maistre and several others—including two of his brothers—established the solitaires (“hermits”), a Jansenist ascetic group, at Port-Royal des Champs in about 1638. Early in 1656, as the anti-Jansenist campaign was gaining strength in France, Le Maistre went into hiding in Paris, along with his uncle, Antoine Arnauld, and the philosopher Blaise Pascal, who had been living at Port-Royal. Le Maistre collaborated in the composition of Pascal’s Les Provinciales (1656–57), a series of letters written in defense of Arnauld, who was, at the time, on trial before the faculty of theology in Paris because of his Jansenist views.

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Antoine Le Maistre’s youngest brother—the fourth son of Catherine Arnauld—was Isaac-Louis Le Maistre de Sacy (1613–84). Le Maistre de Sacy, also a student and follower of Saint-Cyran, was ordained in 1649. He became the confessor to the nuns and solitaires of Port-Royal and was held in high esteem by the Jansenists as a spiritual director. He is best remembered, however, as the principal author of the translation of the New Testament known as the Nouveau Testament de Mons (1667; “Mons New Testament”). Fragments of his correspondence with Pascal are preserved in the publication Entretien avec M. de Sacy (“Conversation with M. de Sacy”).