Suppressing the Arbitrary: Political Jansenism in the French Revolution and the Abolition of Lettres de Cachet, 1780-1790

Jansenism, a reform Catholic movement underpinned by Augustinian theology, played a fundamental role in French Revolutionary politics. Characterized by a religious controversy that spanned over a century, Jansenists clashed against both Jesuits and the papacy that condemned the reform movement after 1713 through the press and Parlement. The religious strife culminated in 1764, when the Jansenist faction in the Parlement of Paris pushed to formally dissolve the Jesuit order in France.[1] Although many historians think that few Jansenists remained in France after the Jesuit expulsion, some remained and even played important political roles in Parlement.[2] Religious Jansenism exhibited stark intellectual differences from the political manifestation of Jansenism: the devout broadly accepted the erasure of free will by original sin, efficacious grace, and later some observed figurism—bearing witness to the foretold troubled times of Unigenitus. While the hold of Jansenist theology faded during the eighteenth-century, political Jansenism in the Parlement of Paris continued to exert influence after 1764.[3] Intellectually distinct from the reform movement, the Jansenists in Parlement—informed by Gallicanism, parliamentary constitutionalism, and Jansenist theology—pursued political objectives into the French Revolution with support from the Jansenist press, the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques.[4] This article encompasses the Jansenist campaign to abolish lettres de cachet from 1780 until their final abolition in 1790.[5] The campaign highlights the ways in which the politicization of religious conflicts in France provided a context for the crafting of intellectual and legal arguments to abolish lettres de cachet. The article traces the two key threads of the campaign: propaganda pieces crafted in the Jansenist press Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques and principled arguments made by Jansenist barristers in the Parlement of Paris, Parisian cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances), and the National Constituent Assembly. The religious context of Jansenist arguments opened an avenue to critique absolutism and furthered the development of French law during the early-revolutionary period.

Lettres de cachet, executive royal orders signed by the king and countersigned by his ministers, date back to an ordinance published by Phillipe V in 1318 and gradually became referred to as lettres de cachet due to their distinguishing seal, or cachet.[6] Lettres de cachet as legal instruments used for political and social regulation appeared under the tenure of Louis XIV.[7] From Louis XIV to the French Revolution, the king and his ministers authorized lettres de cachet to settle family disputes and dispose of political dissidents, including members of Parlement, by exiling or imprisoning their targets indefinitely.[8] In 1790, the National Constituent Assembly finally abolished lettres de cachet after the deputies declared them to be contrary to personal liberty and arbitrary because they embodied absolutist oppression as executive power left unrestrained by courts.[9] Lettres de cachet were not viewed in such a negative manner until the late eighteenth century due to their practical application in domestic spaces.

In particular, noble patriarchs during the Old Regime supported lettres de cachet. Fathers could have their sons and daughters exiled or detained to prevent them from squandering family fortunes and to avert public scandals. In a letter addressed to Monsieur Lenoir, the Comte de Mirabeau wrote that his father imprisoned him with a lettre de cachet due to his “debts, or for the kidnapping of [Sophie, the Marquise] de Monnier.”[10] The Comte’s excessive spending of his father’s money and the kidnapping of a woman he was not married to both reflected poorly on the Mirabeau name. In his father’s case, the preservation of the Mirabeau family’s reputation and fortune necessitated a lettre de cachet.[11] In domestic situations such as these, noble patriarchs had little reason to oppose lettres de cachet. After Louis XIV imposed Gallicanism by situating priests under the direct authority of Gallican bishops—French bishops with more authority over priests than the pope—lettres de cachet could be used to exile and detain priests in the same manner. Nonetheless, the onset of ecclesiastic regulation generated an upsurge in criticism towards lettres de cachet.

Louis XIV’s imposition of Gallicanism in France conceived of a legal means to deploy lettres de cachet against priests in the Edicts of 1695 and 1698. Dale Van Kley discusses that the roots of Gallicanism lay in medieval debates over the papacy’s claim to temporal domain—the authority of the pope to exercise secular, political powers in Catholic kingdoms. In contrast to supreme papal authority, or ultramontanism, Gallicanism maintained both the worldly sovereignty of the French monarch and the independence of the French Catholic Church in relation to the papacy.[12] The Declaration of the Clergy of France in 1682 formally outlined the principles of Gallicanism. This declaration reinforced the curtailing of papal oversight in France and upheld the Gallican Church’s capability to judge doctrine concurrently with Rome.[13] By virtue of Gallicanism, Louis XIV issued the Edict of 1695 that placed the priesthood under the authority of Gallican Bishops and Archbishops. Articles ten and eleven forbade non-beneficed clergy from preaching, performing sacraments, or hearing confession without the authority of the Bishop or Archbishop of the Diocese.[14] Three years later, the Edict of 1698 permitted Bishops and Archbishops to “order, if necessary, priests and other clergy...to retreat to seminaries for up to three months...regardless of appeal,” and in special cases indefinitely, by lettres de cachet.[15] In sum, these two Edicts embodied Gallicanism by augmenting the authority of French Bishops at the expense of the papacy. Under this criteria, lettres de cachet were not used on Jansenists until after the promulgation of the papal bull Unigenitus.

Unigenitus warranted lettres de cachet by declaring the heterodoxy of Jansenism. Louis XIV solicited the bull in opposition to Pasquier Quesnel’s Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament (Moral Reflections on the New Testament) in 1713. This controversial commentary on the New Testament outlined the conventions of Jansenist theology.[16] The bull condemned its principles and concluded the Catholic toleration of Jansenism. In 1730, the monarchy registered the papal bull Unigenitus as law. This action formally outlawed Jansenism in the kingdom and fundamentally contradicted Gallicanism. Consequently, Jansenists became targets immediately following Unigenitus. Alongside the bull, a royal declaration renewed the requirement for priests to sign Pope Alexander VII’s formulary condemning the five heretical propositions from Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinius in order to receive academic degrees and benefices.[17] Meanwhile Cardinal Fleury, the head of the committee that controlled ecclesiastic appointments, purged priests that refused to sign the formulary.[18] It is estimated that Cardinal Fleury unleashed forty-thousand lettres de cachet to remove Jansenists from benefices and universities across France.[19] Lettres de cachet exiled Jansenist priests from their parishes, stripped them of their duties, and removed them from their benefices. Despite Fleury’s purges, Jansenists refused to stifle their resentment towards Unigenitus.

Concurrently, irregular and clandestine manuscripts circulated throughout Paris expressing the opinions of those against the bull.[20] In 1727, Cardinal Fleury’s exiling of the Bishop of Senez, Jean Soanen, inspired a new periodical specifically opposed to Unigenitus and its supporters. Outraged by the exile of one of the most outspoken clergy against the bull, the Dessesart brothers, Jean-Baptiste and Marc-Antoine, contributed significantly to the founding of the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques.[21] The two brothers originated from a wealthy merchant family, frequented the circles of Port-Royal, and served as deacons. Due to the Dessesart’s finances and connections to Parlement, they were able to help raise the considerable funds necessary to found the Nouvelles.[22] Publication began on 23 February, 1728, after securing publishers willing to avoid the police, and ran up until 1803.[23] The leadership of the periodical administered a subversive production network due to its illegality: the anonymous author distributed manuscripts to correspondents, whose sous (under) correspondents relayed copies to multiple printing houses to ensure that the arrest of one publisher would not halt production and distribution.[24] Distributors sold issues cheaply from an estimated three to six sols on the streets, near stagecoaches, and in front of boutiques all the while avoiding the police and lieutenant-general Herault. However, some readers simply picked up disposed copies off of the ground.[25] The Nouvelles distributed six-thousand copies each week in comparison to Le Mercure, another contemporary newspaper that sold two-thousand weekly.[26] The authors of the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques composed propaganda articles that reported the intolerable abuses resulting from Unigenitus.[27] In these issues, the authors disparaged lettres de cachet and their detrimental effects on Jansenists.[28]

The Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques chronicled the perceived injustices that lettres de cachet imposed on Jansenists. The periodical released factional articles interweaved with Gallican principles to sway public opinion and influence legal thought. The authors’ Gallican logos derived from their understanding of Unigenitus as a contradiction of French Gallicanism that enabled lettres de cachet to persecute Jansenists. On 13 February 1782, the Nouvelles reminded readers of the refusal of sacraments controversy in a published obituary of the late Curé de Grandville, Antoine de la Grange. The article recalled his exile by a lettre de cachet in 1765. The author indicated that Antoine read “no other written periodical except [Les Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques] ... [and] had read Jansenius’ book on grace a number of times,” which confirmed his Jansenist inclinations.[29] Ultimately, the Nouvelles reported that “lettres de cachet were requested by everyone, and the Curé of Grandville was regarded as the head of the so-called Jansenists of his canton.”[30] A lettre de cachet exiled him to the Abbaye de Reclus for three months. Afterwards, he received threats from the local Church to revoke his benefice and his jurisdiction over the parish.[31] La Grange received a lettre de cachet because he administered last rites to a former clergyman that refused to sign the formulary accepting Unigenitus.[32] An explosion of cases similar to La Grange’s during the 1730s characterized the refusal of sacraments controversy: priests could receive a lettre de cachet by administering last rites to those without a signed confessional note declaring that they supported Unigenitus.[33] Through drawing parallels to the controversy, the Nouvelles recalled one of the prevailing ways in which Unigenitus solicited lettres de cachet against Jansenists. Therefore, the article denounced lettres de cachet from a Gallican perspective because they enforced the will of the papacy at the cost of compromising the spiritual wellbeing of French parishioners. Recalling the refusal of sacraments controversy was just one way in which the Nouvelles aimed to galvanize public opinion.

In 1786, the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques announced a new edition of Pasquier Quesnel’s Réflexions Morales and appropriated its assertions to declare the illegality of lettres de cachet to enforce Unigenitus.[34] Considering that Unigenitus condemned Réflexions Morales, the article adopted Quesnel’s principles to appeal to Jansenist memory. The author began by stating that lettres de cachet constituted an “illegal means employed by the Jesuits” to enforce Unigenitus. The author then quoted from Réflexions Morales that one must “distinguish the church from the pope” and that “the obedience due to superiors is subordinated to the obedience that one must give to the law of god.”[35] By channeling Quesnel, the author suggested that Unigenitus must be understood as a papal encroachment on French sovereignty rather than an enforcement of canon law. Unigenitus could not enable a French secular legal instrument to reprimand priests because French Gallicanism preserved the sovereignty of the absolutist monarch.[36] Furthermore, the General Counsel of the Church in France never affirmed Unigenitus to be doctrine. The registering of Unigenitus as law violated the Gallican Liberties and thereupon created an inlying paradox that juxtaposed approved canon law against French law.[37] Since the French king comprised the source of justice, allowing lettres de cachet to enforce Unigenitus as a French law contradicted the ideology of Gallican absolutism entirely.[38] The article concluded on the illegality of lettres de cachet to punish priests, because recording Unigenitus as a law in France created a legal paradox encapsulated by the mutual incompatibility of Gallican absolutism and ultramontanism.

Another article in 1788 attacked lettres de cachet by connecting Cardinal Fleury’s ecclesiastic purges to Jesuit corruption. The article opened by stating, “Ever since the lettres de cachet and the exiles placed the Molinists in possession of the majority of chairs in the kingdom’s universities, we rarely see true theses on theology, metaphysics, and morality.”[39] This quote alluded to Jansenist memory by referencing Cardinal Fleury’s university purges during the 1730s.[40] The author posited that the increase in perceived Jesuit corruption (Molinism) and the wane of theological scholarship in universities stemmed from lettres de cachet and Unigenitus. Without Unigenitus and lettres de cachet enforcing it, the Jansenists would have held influence over universities and the scholarship produced in them. As a result, the universities would have remained free of corruption. Overall, the author denounced lettres de cachet because they harmed the influence of Jansenist theology and hastened the spread of perceived Jesuit corruption. Whereas the Jansenist press made consistent partisan attacks on lettres de cachet, Jansenist barristers made a principled case against their practice.

Vindicated by protecting the natural right of liberty, Jansenist barristers in the Parlement of Paris made a principled argument for the abolition of lettres de cachet in 1788. The Parlement contained an influential Jansenist faction including Armand-Gaston Camus, Guy-Jean-Baptiste Target, Louis-Simon Martineau, and Jean-Baptiste Treilhard. They later became deputies of the Third Estate in the Estates General and National Constituent Assembly.[41] The remonstrance declared: “Man is born free and happiness depends on justice. Liberty is an inalienable right and consists of living according to laws. ...We will not cease to very respectfully ask Your Majesty for public liberty by abolishing lettres de cachet.”[42] In their desire to protect the natural right of liberty, the barristers opened an avenue to restrain absolutism. Lettres de cachet symbolized French absolutism and deprived liberty through bypassing laws and courts. By calling for their abolition, the barristers employed parliamentary constitutionalism to advocate a reduction in the absolutist monarch’s power and to ensure liberty through the judiciary.[43] During the Estates General, both the Jansenist draft and official version of the Parisian Third Estate cahier de doléances challenged absolutist executive powers by criticizing the indignities brought by lettres de cachet.

A grievance against Louis XIV’s Gallican Edicts in the draft of the Parisian Third Estate cahier de doléances employed parliamentary constitutionalism to combat lettres de cachet and absolutism. The draft included “Le Cahier des Jansénistes” (The Jansenist Grievances) signed by Jansenist barrister Armand-Gaston Camus. His signature delineates a connection between the Jansenist Parlement faction and the cahier.[44] The Jansenist section demanded the suppression of the Edicts of 1695, 1698, and the use of lettres de cachet to punish priests. The author began by writing, “All of the citizens are protesting, with as much force as reason, against the lettres de cachet...”[45] Furthermore, the author argued for the suppression of the Edicts because they created a legal procedure that ruled “without a judicial process, without interrogating the accused, without a hearing, [and] without confronting witnesses. It is a true inquisition, intolerable in any good government.”[46] This grievance contravened absolutism through the rhetoric of parliamentary constitutionalism. The cahier deplored lettres de cachet for reducing the jurisdictional authority of the courts by allowing Bishops to unfairly pass legal judgement. The abuses of lettres de cachet stemmed from executive power left unrestrained by judicial authority.[47] Moreover, the rhetoric of parliamentary constitutionalism illustrates a further connection to the Jansenist Parlement faction.[48] The official cahier explicitly targeted lettres de cachet in the same fashion as the 1788 remonstrance.

The official Third Estate cahier de doléances of Paris contested absolutism by designing a constitutional amendment against lettres de cachet and arbitrary executive powers. Whereas only Camus signed the draft Jansenist cahier, the official Third Estate cahier of Paris bore the signatures of Jansenist barristers Camus, Treilhard, and Target.[49] It appears that the official cahier exhibits a provisional link to the Jansenist cahier and Parlement faction. In the official cahier, the grievance against lettres de cachet became a proposed constitutional amendment as opposed to a specifically religious grievance. The amendment proposed “No citizen may be arrested nor their place of residence violated by virtue of lettres de cachet or all orders coming from executive power...”[50] The article would protect the natural right of liberty from extrajudicial procedures. The importance to safeguard subjects from executive power must not be understated: the cahier supported a significant reduction in the absolute monarchy’s legal capabilities. Jansenist barristers continued to explicitly defend the natural right of liberty by justifying the abolition of arbitrary executive orders that infringed it with parliamentary constitutionalism in the National Constituent Assembly.

During August of 1789, elected deputies that originally belonged to the Jansenist Parlement faction participated in debates on the floor of the National Constituent Assembly where they argued for the defense of liberty by demanding the abolition of lettres de cachet and other arbitrary executive powers. Preliminary debates on the abolition of lettres de cachet took place between 21 and 23 August, 1789.[51] Le Moniteur reported a proposal made by the Jansenist barrister Target before further commentary by his Jansenist colleague Martineau. Target vocalized a proposition to strictly limit the legal authority to detain and accuse citizens. He continued to attack lettres de cachet by declaring that “Every arbitrary order against liberty must be punished. Those that solicited, expedited, fulfilled, or enforced the fulfillment [of these orders], must be punished.”[52] Target definitively criticized lettres de cachet, alongside the king and his ministers who authorized them, as an abuse of absolutism that contradicted liberty. During this debate, Martineau suggested another amendment relative to lettres de cachet. Martineau articulated that the deputies should not take additional measures to curtail lettres de cachet because “it is not the law that accuses, it is solely the man.”[53] Martineau’s constitutionalist proclivities found the monarchy responsible for the abuses of lettres de cachet because they could sentence individuals regardless of legal violations. Considering that the king and his ministers authorized lettres de cachet, courts and laws could not limit their abuses without restraining executive power. This observation would not stop the deputies from preventing future injustice.

In response, the National Constituent Assembly designated a committee to investigate the effects of lettres de cachet. While no Jansenists served on the committee, the actions of the committee fulfilled their demands. The final decree abolishing lettres de cachet echoed the rhetoric of the Jansenist barristers from 1788 onward. The committee organized on 23 October, 1789 and consisted of four members: Fréteau de Saint-Just, the Comte de Castellane, the Comte de Mirabeau, and the barrister Barrère. First, the committee investigated the statuses of those imprisoned by lettres de cachet.[54] On 2 January, 1790 a decree ordered those overseeing prisoners detained by lettres de cachet, including priests exiled to seminaries, to inform the committee of their condition.[55] Following a report given by committee member Castellane on 20 February 1790, the National Constituent Assembly passed the Decree of 16 March that finally abolished lettres de cachet. Article ten of the decree announced, “The arbitrary orders bringing exile, and all others of the same nature are abolished. All of the lettres de cachet are abolished and they will no longer be given in the future. Those that were punished by them are free to go...”[56] The decree fulfilled Jansenist appeals by outlawing future injustices and releasing priests detained in seminaries by lettres de cachet.[57] The decree’s abolition of lettres de cachet and all the arbitrary executive orders they represented bore the footprint of the Jansenist barrister’s arguments to preserve the natural right of liberty.

In conclusion, the Jansenist campaign to abolish lettres de cachet illustrates the manner in which religious conflicts fashioned a context to critique absolutism and its legal instruments. In partisan articles intended to sway public opinion and rouse Jansenist memory, the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques implemented Gallicanism as a vanguard to illustrate the detriments that lettres de cachet imposed on Jansenists. Jansenist barristers consistently urged the abolition of lettres de cachet and arbitrary executive powers in the Parlement of Paris, Parisian cahiers de doléances, and on the floor of the National Constituent Assembly. The committee that eventually abolished lettres de cachet ensured the release of detained priests. Furthermore, the decree justified the abolition of lettres de cachet through the same reasoning deployed by the Jansenist barristers, however the connections described in this article should at the very least be understood as preliminary. Further research must be undertaken to fully explore the intellectual connections between the Jansenist press, Parliamentary Jansenism, and the French Revolution. Ultimately, the campaign resulted in a significant limiting of absolutism and a clear victory for the political Jansenists. Since the production of scholarship on political Jansenism, much complexity has been added to our understanding of the relationship between religion and Revolutionary origins. This article furthers our complex understanding of the French Revolution by contextualizing the abolition of lettres de cachet and critiques of royal absolutism in the contributions of political Jansenism to the development of French jurisprudence during the eighteenth century.

1. Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution 1560-1791 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 158. Hereafter cited “Religious Origins.” I would like to thank both Rafe Blaufarb and Daniel J. Watkins for their support and critique. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

2. For arguments that suggest Jansenism declined or disappeared after 1764, refer to James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 250; Joseph Byrnes, Priests of the French Revolution: Saints and Renegades in a New Political Era (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 2014), 41. By contrast, Catherine-Laurence Maire, “Aux sources politiques et religieuses de la Révolution Française: Deux modèles en discussion,” Le débat 130, no. 3 (2004): 144-5 makes the argument against Dale Van Kley that Jansenism was nothing more than a fervent religious revival devoid of politics.

3. Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 60, 92. For Jansenism in Parlement, refer to Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757-1765 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution 1560-1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), and The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the Ancien Regime, 1750-1770 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). For recent scholarship on Jansenism and Revolutionary origins see Mita Choudhury, The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint: A Tale of Sex, Religion, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015).

4. Dale Van Kley, The Damiens Affair, 173-4. Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques ou mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la constitution Unigenitus, or simply, Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques translates to the Ecclesiastic News. This title will also remain in French.

5. Lettres de cachet translates to “letters of the seal” but will remain in French throughout the article.

6. André Chassaigne, Des Lettres de Cachet sous l’ancien régime (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1903), 15-17.

7. Phillipe Negrin, La réforme de la lettre de cachet au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Émile Larosse, 1906), 7.

8. Ibid.; Julian Swann, Exile, Imprisonment, Or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France, 1610-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 107. In addition, see Brian E. Strayer, Lettres de Cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Régime, 1659-1789 (New York: P. Lang, 1992).

9. Jeanne-Marie Jandeaux, “La Révolution face aux ‘victimes du pouvoir arbitraire:’ l’abolition des lettres de cachet et ses conséquences,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 368 (2012): 43-4.

10. Honoré-Gabriel de Riqueti, Le Comte de Mirabeau, “Lettre II,” in Œuvres de Mirabeau: Lettres à Sophie, ed. Joseph Mérilhou (Paris: Lecointe et Pougin, 1834), 15.

11. Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault Le désordre des familles: Lettres de cachet des Archives de la Bastille (Paris: Gallimard, 1982) provides a more expanded account of how lettres de cachet regulated families. Even the Third Estate began to frequently request them over the course of the eighteenth century; Matthew Gerber, Bastards: Politics, Family, and Law in Early Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) contextualizes lettres de cachet as an arbitrary and extrajudicial process to regulate such disputes.

12. Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 34. Other scholars have extensively researched the history of the French Gallican Church and its relationship to royal politics. The two classic works are William Henley Jervis, The Gallican Church: A History of the Church of France from the Concordat of Bologna, A.D. 1516, to the Revolution: with an Introduction, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1872) and Victor Martin, Le Gallicanisme politique et le clergé de France (Paris: A. Picard, 1929). Also see B. Robert Kreiser Miracles, Convulsions, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), Jotham Parsons, The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), and Joseph Bergin, The Politics of Religion in Early-Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

13. Assemblé du Clergé de France, “Déclaration du clergé de France touchant la puissance ecclésiastique du 19 mars 1682,” in Déclaration du clergé de France faite dans l'Assemblée de 1682: sur les libertés de l'Eglise Gallicane et l'autorité ecclésiastique, ed. Pillet (Paris: Chez Pillet, 1811), 1-8.

14. Louis XIV, Édit du Roi concernant la jurisdiction ecclésiastique registré en parlement le 14 mai, 1695 (Paris: F. Muguet, 1695), 6-7.

15. Recueil des édits, déclarations, lettres patentes, &c., enregistrés au parlement de Flandres, des arrêts du Conseil d'État particuliers à son ressort; ensemble des arrêts de règlemens rendus par cette Cour depuis son érection en Conseil souverain à Tournay, v. 2 (Douai: Imprimerie de Derbaix, 1785), 719-20; Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 69.

16. John Rogister, Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737-55 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 32.

17. Cornelius Jansenius, Augustinus seu doctrina Sancti Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina adversus Pelagianos et Massilianses, 3 vols. (Leuven: Typis Jacobi Zegeri, 1640) is the foundational text of Jansenism.

18. Van Kley, Religious Origins, 87.

19. Ibid., 88; Brian E. Strayer, Lettres de Cachet and Claude Quétel, Une légende noire: les lettres de cachet (Paris: Perrin, 2011) dispute these estimates.

20. Françoise Bontoux, “Paris Janséniste au XVIIIe siècle, ‘Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques,’” Paris et Ile-de-France 7 (1955): 206.

21. Ibid., 207-9; Mita Choudhury, The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint, 64-5.

22. Françoise Bontoux, “Paris Janséniste au XVIIIe siècle, ‘Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques,’” 209.

23. Ibid., 205-7.

24. Françoise Bontoux, “Paris Janséniste au XVIIIe siècle, ‘Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques,’” 212-3.

25. Ibid., 208; Ibid., 219 estimates the price at three sols whereas Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 96 estimates the price at six sols.

26. Ibid., 220.

27. Ibid., 208-10.

28. Arlette Farge, Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1995), 41. Other studies on the contents of the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques include Cyril O’Keefe Contemporary Reactions to the Enlightenment: A Study of Three Critical Journals (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974) and Monique Cottret and Valérie Guittienne-Mürger, Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques: Une aventure de presse clandestine au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Beauchesne, 2016). It is well-known that the Nouvelles supported the Jansenist faction in the Parlement of Paris which explains the intellectual composition of their Gallican arguments.

29. Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques ou mémoires pour server à l’histoire de la constitution Unigenitus, 13 February, 1782, 27. Hereafter cited “NE.”

30. Ibid., 27-8.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. For more on the refusal of sacraments controversy and billets de confession, refer to Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 142.

34. NE, 24 July, 1786, 120.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid. The intellectual paradox of Unigenitus is observed in the distinction between ecclesiastic and secular courts during the controversy of the appel comme d’abus in Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 121.

37. Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 120.

38. Ibid., 121.

39. NE, 20 February, 1788, 31.

40. Jeffrey D. Burson, “Between Power and Enlightenment: The Cultural and Intellectual Context for the Jesuit Suppression in France” in The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, eds. Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 57 describes Molinism as a pejorative term for perceived Jesuit corruption. One must note that the use of this term in the Nouvelles comes from a biased perspective because not all Jesuits were Molinists. Likewise, not all Augustinians were Jansenists.

41. Société de l'histoire de la révolution française, Liste des députés et des suppléants élus à l'Assemblée constituante de 1789, ed. Armond Brette (Paris: Au siège de la société, 1897), 5; For more on Jansenists in Parlement refer to Dale Van Kley, Religious Origins, 357-360.

42. Parlement de Paris, Remontrances du Parlement de Paris sur l'usage des lettres de cachet, arrêtées le 11 mars 1788 (Paris: 1788), 5, 15.

43. Clive Emsley, Crime, Police, and Penal Policy: European Experiences 1750-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 27.

44. Charles-Louis Chassin, Les élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789. Les assemblées primaires et les cahiers primitifs, Tome II (Paris: >Jouaust et Sigaux, 1889), 83.

45. Charles-Louis Chassin, Les élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789. Les assemblées primaires et les cahiers primitifs, 97.

46. Ibid., 98.

47. James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 51.

48. Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 79.

49. Charles-Louis Chassin, Les élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789: L'Assemblée des trois ordres et l'Assemblée générale des électeurs au 14 juillet, Tome III (Paris: >Jouaust et Sigaux, 1889), 299.

50. Ibid., 336.

51. Gazette Nationale ou Le moniteur Universal, n. 45, 21-3 August, 1789, 369.

52. Ibid., 370.

53. Ibid.

54. Jérôme Mavidal and Émile Laurent, eds., Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, Première série (1787 à 1799) (Paris: Société d’imprimerie et libraire administratives des Chemins de Fer Paul Dupont, 1881) Tome 9: 484; Nouvelle liste alphabétique des noms de MM. les députés à l'assemblée nationale (1790), 169.

55. Jérôme Mavidal and Émile Laurent, eds., Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, Première série (1787 à 1799) Tome 11: 66-7.

56. Ibid., Tome 12: 202-4.

57. Ibid.