It was famously attacked by the Catholic and Jansenist philosopher Pascal, during the formulary controversy against the Jesuits, in his Provincial Letters as the use of rhetorics to justify moral laxity, which became identified by the public with Jesuitism ; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex and sophistic reasoning to justify moral laxity.

Pascal defended the schools publicly against the Jesuits in the Jansenist controversies which agitated the French Roman Catholic Church, writing his Provincial Letters in 1657.

Written in the midst of the formulary controversy between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, they are a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld from Port-Royal-des-Champs, a friend of Pascal who in 1656 was condemned by the Faculté de Théologie at the Sorbonne in Paris for views that were claimed to be heretical.

Port-Royal ( 1837-1859 ), probably Sainte-Beuve's masterpiece, is an exhaustive history of the Jansenist abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs.

In France, the Parlement de Paris, with its strong upper bourgeois background and Jansenist sympathies, opened the pressure to expel the Jesuits from France in the spring of 1761, and the published excerpts from Jesuit writings, the Extrait des assertions, provided anti-Jesuit ammunition ( though, arguably, many of the statements the Extrait contained were made to look worse than they were through judicious omission of context ).

His father, Giacomo, originally from Chiavari, was a university professor who had adhered to Jacobin ideology ; his mother, Maria Drago, was renowned for her beauty and religious ( Jansenist ) fervour.

His concentration on religious uniformity, and pressure from the heavily Jansenist Parlement, ultimately resulted in his decision to expel Jesuits from France.

However, certain ideas tinged with Jansenism remained in circulation for much longer ; in particular, the Jansenist idea that Holy Communion should be received very infrequently, and that reception required much more than freedom from mortal sin, remained influential until finally condemned by Pope St. Pius X, who endorsed frequent communion, as long as the communicant was free of mortal sin, in the early 20th century.

Strangely, despite the Debitum Pastoralis and the waivers it provided, in 1692 the Dutch ancient Church came under persecution from counter-reformist Jesuits, who, despite opposition to this from Rome, accused Petrus Codde, Apostolic Vicar of Utrecht and the Dutch Republic, of favouring the Jansenist heresy.

After attending the Collège du Plessis in Paris, he seems to have acquired a vocational interest in becoming a clergyman, but after studying theology in the Jansenist schools for some years, his interests turned away from the Church.

On account of his extreme Jansenist opinions he suffered considerable persecution from the Jesuits, and several of his works were suppressed at their instigation.

Within this notion clarity is possible, but for us who are neither Greek nor Jansenist there is not such clarity.

This manuscript, published in 1640 under the title Augustinus, styled itself as expounding Augustine's system and formed the basis for the subsequent Jansenist Controversy.

When the Holy Office drew the Réflexions morales to the attention of Clement XI, he issued the papal brief Universi dominici ( 1708 ), proscribing the book for " savouring of the Jansenist heresy.

The impetus for this was the publication of the Cas de Conscience, which revived the old Jansenist distinction between questions of law and questions of fact, and arguing that though the church had the right to condemn certain opinions as heretical, it did not have the right to oblige one to believe that these opinions were actually contained in Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus.

Jansenist theology remained a minority party within Catholicism, and during the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was condemned as a heresy for its similarities to Calvinism, though its style remained influential in ascetic circles.

Sent to Paris in 1642 to study theology, he soon entered into relations with the Jansenist community at Port-Royal through his aunt, Marie des Anges Suireau, who was for a short time abbess of the convent, and he taught for a while at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal.

The chief authority for Madame de Longueville's life is a little book in two volumes by Villefore the Jansenist, published in 1738.

During his last illness, he confessed to his parish curé, a priest of Jansenist sympathies, expressing his desire for the last sacraments of the Church.

In 1719 he had become a member of the Académie des Inscriptions, but had never offered himself as a member of the Académie Française, for fear, it is said, of incurring refusal on account of his Jansenist opinions.

) appeared in 1630 – 1642, and in 1651 the Jeune Alcidiane, intended to undo any harm the earlier novels may have done, for Gomberville became a Jansenist and spent the last twenty-five years of his life in pious retirement.

Unigenitus ( named for its Latin opening words Unigenitus dei filius, or " Only-begotten son of God "), an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713, opened the final phase of the Jansenist controversy in France.

He became provincial of his order in 1706, but was banished to Châtellerault in 1709 for having subscribed to the Jansenist Cas de conscience ( 1703 ), and was deprived of his pension in 1713 on account of his opposition to the bull Unigenitus.

Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet ( 14 July 1736 – 27 June 1794 ), French journalist and advocate, was born in Reims, where his father, the assistant principal in the Collège de Beauvais of Paris, had recently been exiled by lettre de cachet for engaging in the Jansenist controversy.

His mentor at Navarre was the college's president, Nicolas Cornet, the theologian whose denunciation of Antoine Arnauld at the Sorbonne in 1649 was a major episode in the Jansenist controversy.

In 1691, the Jesuits accused Petrus Codde, the then apostolic vicar, of favouring the Jansenist heresy.

This in turn led to the further radicalization of the King and of the Jesuits, and in 1661 the Convent of Port-Royal was closed and the Jansenist community dissolved – it would be ultimately razed in 1710 on orders of Louis XIV.

The attack on the Jesuits was opened by the Jansenist sympathizer, the Abbé Chauvelin, April 17, 1762, who denounced the Constitution of the Jesuits, which was publicly examined and exposed in a hostile press.

He studied at the College of the Jesuits, and at the Collège Mazarin, but he nevertheless became a strong Jansenist.

Structurally, the first three letters ridicule the dispute between the Thomists and the Jesuits on the nature of salvation, rather asserting a Jansenist understanding of salvation.

Blaise Pascal, the French Mathematician, religious philosopher and Jansenist sympathiser, vigorously attacked the moral laxism of such Jesuits in his famous Lettres provinciales of 1656-57.

The Jansenist and Gallican influence was also strongly felt in Italy and in Germany, where Breviaries based on the French models were published at Cologne, Münster, Mainz and other towns.

* 1719 – Pasquier Quesnel, French Jansenist theologian ( b. 1634 )

Within Roman Catholicism, the Jansenist movement, which the Church then declared heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will.

In Catholic doctrine, the accepted understanding of predestination most predominantly follows the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, and can be contrasted with the Jansenist interpretation of Augustinianism, which was condemned by the Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation.

This led to the formulary controversy, Blaise Pascal's writing of the Lettres Provinciales, and finally to the razing of the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal and the subsequent dissolving of its community.

The most important of his doctrinal decisions was his condemnation of five disputed Jansenist propositions, in his Papal Bull, Cum occasione issued, 31 May 1653.

In France, the name ultramontain was applied to people who supported papal authority in French political affairs, as opposed to the Gallican and Jansenist factions of the indigenous French Catholic Church.

* July 14 – Pasquier Quesnel, French Jansenist theologian ( d. 1719 )

* November 4 – Antoine Le Maistre, French Jansenist ( b. 1608 )

* Blaise Pascal's Lettres provinciales, a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, is ordered to be shredded and burned by King Louis XIV of France.

* December 2 – Pasquier Quesnel, French Jansenist theologian ( b. 1634 )

Jansenist leaders endeavored to accommodate the pope's pronouncements while retaining their distinctives, and enjoyed a measure of peace in the late 17th century under Pope Clement IX.

However, further controversy led to the bull Unigenitus, issued by Pope Clement XI in 1713, which marked the end of Catholic toleration of Jansenist doctrine.

The book formed the foundation of the subsequent Jansenist controversy.

Louis also sought the dissolution of Port-Royal-des-Champs, the stronghold of Jansenist thought, and this was achieved in 1708, when the pope issued a bull dissolving Port-Royal-des-Champs.

Pasquier Quesnel ( 1634 – 1719 ), whose book Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament set off the last major flare-up of the Jansenist controversy, ultimately leading to the 1713 papal bull Unigenitus.

In 1692, Quesnel published a book which he had been working on since 1668, Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament ( Moral Reflections on the New Testament ), a devotional guide to the New Testament which laid out the Jansenist position in strong terms.