Cornelius Jansen
Bishop of Ypres and author of the Augustinus, printed two years after his death in 1638. Rome condemned five propositions as his teaching; his defenders, called Jansenists, denied that he had taught them.
The title page of his book names him Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, and gives Louvain and the year 1640 as the place and date of printing (Jansen, Augustinus, vol. 1, title page). His will, printed in the same volume, is dated 6 May 1638 and is said in its heading to have been dictated scarcely half an hour before he died. In it he leaves his writings on Augustine to be published as faithfully as possible and declares himself an obedient son of the Roman See and of the church in which he had always lived (Jansen, Augustinus, vol. 1, will of 6 May 1638).
In 1656 Pope Alexander VII defined that five propositions condemned three years earlier had been taken from his Augustinus and condemned in the sense he intended (Alexander VII, Ad sanctam beati Petri sedem, Denzinger no. 1098). Blaise Pascal answered for his defenders that they condemned the propositions but could not admit that Jansen had taught them (Pascal, Provincial Letters 17). See Jansenism and the Bull Unigenitus.
In the timeline
- 1653 to 1713, firm dateJansenism and the Bull Unigenitus
In 1653 Rome condemns five propositions on grace. The defenders of Cornelius Jansen condemn them too but deny that they are in his book; Rome defines that they are, and in 1713 the bull Unigenitus condemns 101 propositions from Quesnel’s New Testament.