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Document Details : Title: Les témoignages des Capucins des Pays-Bas espagnols dans l'enquête sur le scandale causé par l'Augustinus de Jansénius (1644) Author(s): PARTOENS, Gert Journal: Augustiniana Volume: 67 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2017 Pages: 253-278 DOI: 10.2143/AUG.67.3.3275100 Abstract : The present paper analyses the 22 testimonies that were given by Capuchins of the Flandro-Belgian Province during the official enquiry of 1644 concerning the scandal that was said to have been caused by the publication of the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius (1640). The paper is part of a larger project that aims to give a less biased account of the Jansenist controversy among the Flemish Capuchins than the only one available, viz. the one given by Hildebrand of Hooglede in the 6th volume of his De Kapucijnen in de Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik (1951). Hildebrand’s main thesis was that the Flemish Capuchins never counted Jansenists among their number and that their alleged presence was the invention of the blind fanaticism of anti-Jansenist witch hunters. A close analysis of the 22 testimonies of 1644 shows, however, that most of them gave a judgment about the book’s doctrine that was unanimously in favour of the former bishop of Ypres. Moreover, the positive judgments were given by important members of the order. The analysis thus proves the untenable character of the later anti-Jansenist claim (repeated by Hildebrand) that the Flemish Capuchins first came into contact with the thought of Jansenius during the 1650s and 1660s. This account of the facts may have been an invention that had to present the doctrine of Jansenius as utterly foreign to Capuchin spirituality. The positive reception of the Augustinus by important members of the Order in the years immediately following the work’s publication clearly challenges this view. |
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