Historiography of Jansenism: seven approaches

Abstract

The article attempts to classify the historiography of Jansenism, the largest phenomenon in the history of Western Christianity after the Reformation. The main impetus of the research is conditioned by very meagre study of this movement in national historiography and the need to evaluate the systematization of approaches to the study of Jansenism in foreign historiography. The classifi cation of the history of ideas of Jansenism is based primarily on the experience and discoveries of foreign historians and philosophers of the 17th — 21st centuries. The bibliography of foreign works on the history of Jansenism is very diverse, because Jansenism, as a very complex phenomenon, on the one hand, can be called “Catholic Reformation” and its interpretation of the heritage of St. Augustine was very close to Calvin's (which his numerous opponents constantly pointed out), on the other hand, supporters of the movement, many of whom were exceptionally educated people, created an extensive polemical-apologetic, moral-oratorical, religious-moralistic, memoir-historical prose of the 17th century, contributing to the formation of the literary language — and therefore the conversation about Jansenism is associated not only with the theological fi ghts of their century. Due to the use of the chronological principle, the article analyzes the development of interest in the study of Jansenism among supporters and opponents of the movement over four centuries and substantiates seven main approaches to the historiography of Jansenism.

Keywords

• янсенизм
• Общество Иисуса
• реформация
• религиоведческая историография
• Пор-Рояль
• Cен-Сиран
• Сент-Бёв