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 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 281 most famous home of the New Learning in Europe ' are a spiritual posses- sion which external violence has been unable to destroy. A contribution to the history of Jansenism comes fitly from the cradle of that movement, though the scene of action is laid not in Brabant but in France. The author draws an important contrast between the Jansenists of Louvain and Paris. While the disputants of the Netherlands had scarcely any aim but the speculative one of resolving questions of theology, the controversy in France took quite a different form. In the conception of St. Cyran and his disciples, doctrine was to be directed towards action. Jansenism was to become a vast movement of reform which was to be addressed to the elite rdigieuse, but also to go down to the lowest strata of simple believers. The period dealt with is one of ten years, from the publication of Jansen's Atigustinus in 1640 to the close of Antoine Arnauld's successful defence of his position in 1649. In that year the endeavour of the Jan- senists to obtain from the Sorbonne condemnation of an attack made upon them by a Jesuit, Father F. Veron, led to the proposal of Dr. Nicholas Cornet that an examination should be made of certain propositions contained in the Atigustinus. This was the beginning of the discussion of the famous five propositions, and thus the conflict assumed an entirely new form, and a period began which lies outside the subject of Abbe De Meyer's dissertation. The ten years chosen are upon the whole a period of Jansenist success. Two books form the centres round which the contests revolve, the Augustinus, and the Booh of Frequent Communion, and two names stand out above the rest in importance, St. Cyran and Antoine Arnauld. Of these two it was St. Cyran from whom the inspiration came which engaged the brilliant abilities of Arnauld in the service of Jansenist reform and the cause of religious revival. After a brief review of the literature on the subject in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the author proceeds to say that the early controversies, which he intends to treat, form a subject 'complete- ment inexplore par les auteurs '. He then describes his resort to original untouched sources, such as the Vatican archives, correspondence of nuncios, documents in the Foreign Office at Paris, and in certain libraries. A list of these sources is given in a note. But he adds significantly that many letters of importance passed to the keeping of the Holy Office ' dont les archives sont fermees aux historiens '. Passing from the introduction we find that the first of the three books into which the author divides his work is devoted to the conditions of religious thought previous to 1640. His observations on the effect of the Renaissance, the discredit brought upon scholastic theology, and the impulse given to the search for truth by direct recourse to scripture and tradition are most true and suggestive. The Augustinian teaching of Michael Baius, professor at Louvain, though condemned at Paris and by Rome, held its ground in the university of its birth. Baius's disciple and colleague, Jacques Janson, was president of the college in which Corneille Jansen studied ; so the pedigree is complete, and the connexion of Jansen's Augustinianism with Baianism is perfectly clear. The brief sketch of C. Jansen's life, which follows, leads naturally to his association with St. Cyran. The two friends spent five years together in the study of