Port-Royal
Convent south-west of Paris whose nuns and the scholars living beside it were accused of Jansenism. Its community was dispersed by order of Louis XIV in 1709 and its buildings were pulled down.
The duc de Saint-Simon, who writes as an enemy of the Jesuits, says that learned men lived in retirement at the monastery of Port-Royal des Champs, taught the young and wrote, and that they were accused of Jansenism. There was a second house of the same name in Paris. On the night of 28 to 29 October 1709, he says, troops surrounded Port-Royal des Champs and an officer carried the nuns off in coaches to other convents; later the dead were ordered to be exhumed and the house, the church and all the buildings were razed (Saint-Simon, Memoirs, chapter 46 (the year is named in chapters 44 and 47)). Blaise Pascal, whose Provincial Letters defended its friends, wrote that he himself was “not of Port-Royal” (Pascal, Provincial Letters 17). The coordinates are those of the site of Port-Royal des Champs. See Jansenism and the Bull Unigenitus.
What happened here
- 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.