The Other Pascals

The Philosophy of Jacqueline Pascal, Gilberte Pascal Périer, and Marguerite Périer

John J. Conley S.J.

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780268105167
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

There have been many studies analyzing the philosophy of Blaise Pascal, but this book is the first full-length study of the philosophies of his sisters, Jacqueline Pascal and Gilberte Pascal Périer, and his niece, Marguerite Périer. While these women have long been presented as the disciples, secretaries, correspondents, and nurses of their brother and uncle, each woman developed a distinctive philosophy that is more than auxiliary to the thought of Blaise Pascal. The unique philosophical voice of each Pascal woman is studied in The Other Pascals.

As the headmistress of the Port-Royal convent school, Jacqueline Pascal made important contributions to the philosophy of education. Gilberte Pascal Périer wrote the first philosophical biographies of Blaise and Jacqueline. Marguerite Périer defended freedom of conscience against coercion by political and religious superiors.

Each of these women authors speaks in a gendered voice, emphasizing the right of women to develop a philosophical and theological culture and to resist commands to blind obedience by paternal, political, or ecclesiastical authorities. The Other Pascals will be of keen interest to readers interested in early modern philosophy, history, literature, and religion. The book will also appeal to those with an interest in women's studies and French studies.

CHAPTER 2

JACQUELINE PASCAL

Virtue and Conscience

Long eclipsed by the fame of her brother, Blaise, Jacqueline Pascal (1625–61) has recently become the object of renewed scholarly attention. Contemporary studies in French, German, Italian, and English have examined the life of the poet prodigy who became a leader of the Port-Royal resistance.¹ Specialists in literature have long recognized her skill as an author. Scholarly editions of her works in the nineteenth century have recently been complemented by new critical editions in French and English.² By the end of her brief life, Soeur Jacqueline had composed literary works in a variety of genres: biography, autobiography, educational treatise, devotional treatise, judicial memoir, poetry, and letters.

Alone among the other Port-Royal nuns, Soeur Jacqueline has enjoyed a certain reputation as a philosopher. Her Rule for Children has long been considered a key treatise in the philosophy of education. Historians of modern philosophy cite her correspondence to interpret the work of Blaise and of other philosophers, such as Descartes, whom she personally knew and discussed. Soeur Jacqueline’s philosophical contributions, however, transcend the limits of educational theory and background context. Her devotional writings develop an apophatic theology, focused on the mystery of the hidden God, especially in the mystery of the cross. Her educational theories reflect a broader concern with women’s acquisition of virtue in an itinerary governed by God’s gift of grace to a small elect. The nun’s ethical theory is often marked by the rigorism that characterizes Jansenist ethics. In her defense of the rights of conscience possessed by the nuns opposed to the anti-Jansenist declarations of the Church, Jacqueline manifests a broader commitment to women’s personal freedom of vocation, a freedom tested by her own effort to pursue her calling as a nun against familial opposition.

BIOGRAPHY: POET AND NUN

Born on October 5, 1625, Jacqueline Pascal was the fifth and last child of Étienne Pascal and Antoinette Begon Pascal.³ Two of her siblings had died as infants in 1617 and 1619, respectively; only she, Gilberte (born 1620), and Blaise (born 1623) survived into adulthood. Having lost her mother in 1626, Jacqueline passed her early life in the provincial city of Clermont, where her father held the post of second president of the Cour des Aides of Montferrand, a neighboring city. From a young age Jacqueline was plunged into the coterie of lawyers and scientists that constituted her father’s social circle.

In 1631, Étienne moved his family to Paris. Transferring the presidency of the Cour des Aides to his brother Blaise in 1634, he devoted himself to the political, artistic, and scientific circles of the capital. Close friends included the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, Madame de Combalet (the future Duchesse d’Aiguillon); the poet Dalibray; and the mathematician Le Pailleur.⁴ In 1635, Étienne became a founding member of the academy of Marin Mersenne, the scientific entrepreneur who was the intimate friend of René Descartes.⁵

Committed to the personal education of his children at home, Étienne delegated his daughter Gilberte to teach her younger sister to read. When Gilberte first attempted to teach the seven-year-old Jacqueline to read, the younger sister rebelled and refused to follow her lessons. But when Gilberte read to her from a book of poetry, Jacqueline exclaimed: “When you want to have me read, make me read in a book of verse. Then I will say my lessons as much as you want.”⁶ From the moment of this breakthrough, Jacqueline rapidly progressed in reading and revealed her precocious ability to compose verses herself.

In the rarified social milieu of the Pascal family, Jacqueline’s literary talent was soon recognized. With the young daughters of Madame Sainctot, a courtier and close family friend, she wrote and acted in a five-act verse play that enjoyed two performances in 1636. The poet prodigy found herself the toast of Parisian salons.

Jacqueline’s composition of poetry apparently began in 1633, but the first poems still extant are the “Rondeaux” and “Song on the Air of a Sarabande” from 1637.⁷ In 1638 she wrote quatrains, acrostics, and epigrams in honor of family members and friends. Thanks to Madame de Morangis, a neighbor and prominent courtier, the poetry of Jacqueline soon gained the attention of the court. In May 1638, the twelve-year-old poet wrote a sonnet, “To the Queen on the Subject of Her Pregnancy.”⁸ Impressed by the work, Queen Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII, summoned Jacqueline to her court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where the queen asked the poet prodigy to compose a series of spontaneous poems addressed to ladies of the court. Jacqueline’s swift composition of epigrams honoring Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de Hautefort confirmed her precocious literary skill.⁹ Madame de Morangis’s publication of a booklet containing Jacqueline’s early works, Poetry of the Young Pascal (1638), sealed her national literary reputation. Conventional in form and content, the early poems exhibit the influence of Isaac de Benserade, a writer and family friend who specialized in lyrical and pastoral poetry.¹⁰

In the summer of 1638 the poems acquired a new religious focus. Two poems expressed Jacqueline’s thanksgiving to God for having given her the vocation of being a poet. “Epigram to Thank God for the Gift of Poetry” thanks God for an apparently supernatural gift: “I am not so taken / With the commotion of poetry / That I do not humbly recognize before everyone, / Great God! That it is not study / That has given me this habit / And that, without meriting it, I possess it from You.”¹¹ In “Stanzas on the Same Subject,” Jacqueline uses more exalted rhetoric to express the divine origin of her writing: “As the torrents, the streams, / The waves and the waters / Return to the sea, their place of origin / So, great God, my small poems, / Unconcerned with the world, / Return to You, You, their divine source.”¹² These religious works indicate a spiritual maturation on the part of Jacqueline, years before her entry into the orbit of Port-Royal. But they also express the self-intoxication that would challenge her family members and religious superiors in the conflicts to come.

In September 1638, Jacqueline Pascal fell ill from an attack of smallpox. She recovered from the disease but remained scarred for life. In her poem, “To Thank God for Recovering from Small-Pox” (November 1638), she thanks God both for the healing from the disease and the enduring presence of its marks: “Oh! My heart rejoices / When in the mirror I see the scars / And marks of my smallpox! / I consider them sacred witnesses / According to Your holy word / That I am not among those whom You love the least.”¹³ Under the blow of suffering, the earlier, more bombastic affirmation of God the Creator is transformed into a more personal recognition of the providential and redeeming God.

During these years Étienne had fallen into political disgrace. Facing bankruptcy because of the chronic budget deficit and expenses for the then current war with Spain, the French throne in 1638 abruptly suspended payment to a number of its creditors. Among these creditors were bondholders in the Parisian Hôtel de Ville, a group that included Étienne Pascal. On March 24, 1638, four hundred of the outraged creditors staged a demonstration against the throne’s refusal of payment; several rioters assaulted the French chancellor Pierre Séguier, whom they considered the architect of the draconian measures. Cardinal Richelieu immediately ordered the arrest and imprisonment of those responsible for the protest. Although Étienne did not participate in the assault, he was named in the list of the condemned. To avoid arrest he promptly fled into hiding. Madame d’Aiguillon, the niece of Richelieu and a close friend of the Pascals, attempted to persuade her uncle to pardon Pascal. On April 3, 1639, Jacqueline acted in a presentation of Georges de Scudéry’s L’Amour tyrannique in the presence of Cardinal Richelieu. Coached by Madame d’Aiguillon, Jacqueline personally asked the prime minister to pardon her father, a request he gladly granted. Jacqueline’s subsequent letter to her father recounting her triumph and her “Epigram to Cardinal Duc de Richelieu” (May 1639), whom she addresses as “the incomparable duke,” express the pride of an adolescent dazzled by her prestige and influence in the highest court circles.¹⁴

The rehabilitated Étienne was appointed by the throne in 1639 to serve as commissioner for taxes for Normandy. Headquartered in Rouen from 1640 until 1648, he struggled to bring order to the chaotic public finances he had inherited from his predecessors. The perilous mission was compounded by the violent political situation in Normandy, plagued by periodic riots against excessive taxes and by the bitter opposition of the provincial aristocracy to the growing Parisian bureaucracy. In 1644, Blaise Pascal debuted his revolutionary calculating machine, originally designed to assist his father to make quicker and more accurate financial accounts. Invited to tour the Parisian salons with demonstrations of his machine, Blaise established his reputation as a scientific prodigy.

The Pascals’ Rouen household soon featured a frequent literary guest: Pierre Corneille, the nation’s leading dramatist. Under Corneille’s direction, Jacqueline composed a Marian lyric, “On the Conception of the Virgin,” which won the 1640 Prix de la Tour, a prestigious regional literary award.¹⁵ Exhibiting a new philosophical and literary sophistication, the poem constructs its defense of the controversial doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception through a series of logical deductions from widely accepted general theological truths.

Her other poems of the period alternate between religious meditations, romantic lyrics, and political panegyrics in honor of the royal family. From a gendered perspective, the focus on female figures of religious and political authority is striking. In “On the Conception of the Virgin,” the Blessed Virgin Mary exercises a spiritual power superior to that exercised by her Old Testament type, the Ark of the Covenant: “If one [the ark of the covenant] helped to win several battles, / Because a treasure is hidden in its womb, / The other [Mary] does no less, since she holds in her womb / What helps us to vanquish and overcome sin.”¹⁶ Her epigram “To Saint Cecilia” celebrates the courage of the martyred maiden.¹⁷ Her sonnet “To the Queen on Her Regency” addresses the controversy of the accession of Queen Anne of Austria to the regency of France upon the death of her husband, Louis XIII, in 1643. The poem explicitly supports the right of women to exercise political governance against widespread male criticism that women lacked such a capacity and that consequently Queen Anne should be barred from the post of regent: “Indiscreet politicians, speak without violence; / Do not say, troubling our joy in its birth [of Queen Anne’s regency], / That the gentleness of a woman is a weak [political] pillar. / Learn to respect your illustrious princess, / Whose truly divine mind knows how to combine artfully / The gentleness of her sex with the strength of yours.”¹⁸

In 1646 the Pascal family underwent a religious revolution—it suddenly entered the Jansenist movement. Falling on the ice near the Rouen home, Étienne had seriously injured his thigh. To aid their bed-ridden father, the siblings summoned the services of the Deschamps brothers, lay medical practitioners renowned for their ability to heal broken bones and to relieve the pain of accident victims. Grateful for Étienne’s rapid medical progress under the Dechamps’s care, the family members avidly heard the religious testimony of the brothers, ardent partisans of the austere religious renewal promoted by the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, a disciple of Cornelius Jansen, and centered in the Port-Royal convent governed by Mère Angélique Arnauld.¹⁹ Étienne, Blaise, and Jacqueline quickly became converts to the movement; during a visit to Rouen, Gilberte and her husband, Florin Périer, joined the other family members in adopting the theological views and ascetical moral code of the bourgeoning Jansenist circle.

Not only was the conversion to the Jansenist movement under the tutelage of the Deschamps brothers a spiritual watershed for the family, but it also incited the family members to develop a theological and philosophical culture they had previously lacked. Study and discussion of scripture became a daily household routine. The family studied major theological works of the movement: Jansen’s Reform of the Interior Man, Antoine Arnauld’s Of Frequent Communion, and Saint-Cyran’s Christian and Spiritual Letters. If Jacqueline never personally read Jansen’s Augustinus, her study of these complex theological writings introduced her to the controversial theories of grace and freedom that constituted the heart of the controversy over the Augustinus. Patristic works studied by the family included the writings of Saint Augustine himself and the writings of later Augustinians, especially Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Among contemporary theological authors, François de Sales and Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle held pride of place. Preparing to receive the sacrament of confirmation during this period, Jacqueline exhibited a predilection for the works of Saint-Cyran, studying in particular his Familiar Catechism.²⁰ The distinctively Augustinian theological culture pursued by the Pascal family in its last years in Rouen durably marked the philosophical orientation of the mature Jacqueline; many of the works she later mandated for the curriculum of the Port-Royal convent school and cited in her correspondence were first studied by her during her Jansenist apprenticeship in Rouen.

In 1647 Jacqueline returned with Blaise to Paris. Hoping to find specialized doctors who could heal Blaise from the headaches he was suffering, Jacqueline began to serve as her brother’s nurse and secretary. An intimate participant in her brother’s intellectual life, she carefully observed the two visitations by Descartes to her brother in September 1647. Opposed to Pascal’s theory of the vacuum, Descartes ended his visit in a rage against Blaise’s criticism of the older man’s physics. In a letter to Gilberte, Jacqueline recounts with relish the discomfiture of the nation’s preeminent philosopher:

Next, they discussed the vacuum with Monsieur Descartes with great seriousness. They described to him a particular experiment [at Le Puy] and what he thought about it and what he thought had entered into the tube. He said that it was subtle matter. At this my brother responded as well as he could. Monsieur Roberval, believing my [ill] brother could barely speak, carried on a rather heated but civil discussion with Monsieur Descartes. Descartes rather bitterly responded that he would speak with my brother as much as anyone could want, because he spoke reasonably, but not with him [Roberval] who spoke with prejudice.²¹

Just as the conversion to Jansenist rigorism had not stilled Blaise’s tenacity in scientific disputes, it had not dimmed Jacqueline’s satirical delight in the moral foibles of the nation’s philosophical icon.

As soon as they arrived in Paris, Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal began to frequent the convent of Port-Royal, the citadel of the Jansenist movement located in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques adjacent to the Sorbonne. Listening to the sermons of the chaplain, Antoine Singlin, who became her spiritual director, and discussing her vocational desires with the abbess, Mère Angélique Arnauld, Jacqueline arrived at the conclusion that she had a vocation to become a nun at Port-Royal. When Étienne permanently moved to Paris in 1648, Jacqueline apprised him of her plans, but rather than approving them, her father sternly opposed them. He forbade her to frequent Port-Royal and assigned a longtime servant, Louise Delfault, to act as Jacqueline’s chaperone whenever she left the house. Jacqueline easily circumvented the regime of surveillance and maintained her contacts with the convent, evermore determined to pursue her vocation as a Port-Royal nun.

An uneasy truce gradually diminished the tension between father and daughter over Jacqueline’s declared religious vocation. Jacqueline agreed to remain with her ailing father until his death; Étienne agreed that his daughter could live as a nun in all but the vows, devoting herself to lengthy spiritual exercises in her room and practicing acts of charity toward the poor of the neighborhood. As the civil war of the Fronde (1648–53) descended on Paris, Étienne, Blaise, and Jacqueline returned to their native Auvergne. From May 1649 until November 1650, they resided at the home of the Périers. Pursuing her austere life in semimonastic seclusion, Jacqueline maintained an extensive correspondence with Mère Agnès Arnauld, the prioress of Port-Royal de Paris.²²

After the return of the Pascal family to Paris in 1650, the patriarch’s health rapidly deteriorated. Étienne died on September 24, 1651.

During the months of mourning, the three siblings reunited at the Pascal Parisian residence to resolve the complex legal issues concerning the estate of Étienne. Their father’s will mandated an even division of his wealth among the three children, an unusual position in a society that habitually confined major inheritance to the eldest son. After a series of apparently amicable negotiations, the siblings arrived at an agreement on the terms of the inheritance on December 31, 1651. Since, according to both the civil and canon law of the period, Jacqueline would lose her civil personality the moment she professed her vows as a nun, Jacqueline drew up her own will, designating Blaise as the executor of her estate.

Despite the apparent amity in the financial negotiations, the relationship between Jacqueline and Blaise deteriorated during this period. Recognizing his dependence on Jacqueline as secretary and confidante, Blaise begged his sister to delay her entry into the convent for at least a...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• ONE Introduction: A Familial Philosophy
• TWO Jacqueline Pascal: Virtue and Conscience
• THREE Gilberte Pascal Périer: Philosophical Portraiture
• FOUR Marguerite Périer: Creed and Resistance
• FIVE Conclusion: Canon and Gender
• APPENDICES
• Appendix A: Letters by Jacqueline Pascal
• Appendix B: Life of Jacqueline Pascal by Gilberte Pascal Périer
• Appendix C: Profession of Faith by Marguerite Périer
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index