Port-Royal

Port-Royal, critical work by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, published in three volumes in 1840–48. It was based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Lausanne in 1837–38. This monumental assemblage of scholarship, insights, and historical acumen—a unique work of its kind—chronicles the history of the Cistercian abbey of Port-Royal. The abbey, with its associated community of brilliant scholars and teachers, was famous in the 17th century as a centre of Jansenism, a controversial movement within French Roman Catholicism. Saint-Beuve’s work covers the religious and literary history of France over half of the 17th century, as viewed from the Jansenist perspective.