New-York tribune., 1907-08-24
PORT ROYAL.
The Rise and Fall of the Great
French abbey.

THE STORY OF PORT ROYAL. BY Ethel Ro-
names. $40. pp. 5o4. f. p. Dutton & co.
The story Of Port Royal long ago dwindled
and the cruel annihilation OF the noble pile of
buildings; dwindled thus at all events, in the
minds Of the vast majority of readers. who
have never become acquainted with Sainte-
BeUve's history of the institution. However
much one may sympathize with and pity the
charmingly austere characters whose lives are
bound up in the history Of the place. however
heartily may assent to Royer-Collards
hyperbole QHi conrait pas Port Royal nc con
matt pas ThumGnitC. Port Royal loses much of
its hold upon the imagination and sentiment.
And it does this chiefly because it's strongest
voices clamOring for the most inspiring of all
demands, liberation and religious freedom. bat
tied against the Jesuits with metaphysics. math-
ematics and science. Those SOIitGiTes, the her
rnits who clustered about St. Cyran in the snake
infested dilapidated gardens. after the great
leaders release from prison, were all filled with
a lofty spirituality but spirituality which
pressed itself in abstract controversies. private
rneditations mysticism-everything, in short,
running counter TO the age of Richelieu React
| ing against the excessive worldliness of their
! contemporaries, these men and their associates
| became even more excessive in their unworldli-
ness; and the old. pathetic story of the struggle
/ between the recluse and the organizer, between
the man who would himself from his uni
verse and the who would compromise in
order to live at peace with his fellows.
| told
Miss Ronanes endeavors to write the story of
Port Royal with three pens in her hand; his
/ torian, admirer and apologist at the same time.
| she succeeds in producing a book pleasing, per
| haps to the Anglican novice in search of edify
ing reading, but rather unsatisfactory to every
body else. One of her dearest wishes is to acquit
| the Port Royalists of Jansenism, that revived
| Augustinianism whose doctrine of predestfna-
ton and divine grace violently athwart
| the orthodox teachings Of the Jesuits. In under
| taking this for her, pleasant task, the writer
| comes perilousy 20 convicting herself of
duplicity in that she does not admit frankly the
presence of differing theorists in the abbey. The
| very freedom of opinion for which the institu-
| ton stood made unavoidable a considerable df-
| vergence of creeds among it's members. If we
/ take as typical of Port Royal the philosophy
| and theology of its two greatest thinkers Anton
| ArnauId and Blaise Pascal, it is more than
| hazardous to deny the usual verdict of history
| that Jansenisn, though perhaps not accepted in
| every detail and though perhaps rejected in
| some of its clauses mathematical by the Pope,
| was nevertheless the dominant spirit in Port
| ROYAL speculation Miss Romanes too. admits
| that in the teaching of st. Cyran and others
there is IAN absolute falicre 10 see the presence
| of God in the world" Their recognition of the
need of divine grace, which Justifies the writer's
| belief that the Port Royasts were not truly
| Jansenists was not only minor point in the
| doctrine of the predestinationsts, but was
| dragged into their writings only after every
thing else had been settled in true Augustinian
| fashion 1t would be useless to dwell at length
! here upon this minor problem In the history of
| philosophy were it not for the fact that Miss
Romanes. in answering the problem. displays