Unigenitus

Louis XIV received the Bull at Fontainebleau on 24 Sept., 1713, and sent a copy to Cardinal Noailles, who, probably before receiving it, had revoked, on 28 Sept., his approbation of the "Moral Reflections" given in 1695. The king also ordered the assembly of the French clergy to convene at Paris on 16 Oct., and designated the acceptation of the Bull as the purpose of the meeting. At the first session, on 16 Oct., Noailles appointed a committee presided over by Cardinal Rohan of Strasburg to decide upon the most suitable manner of accepting the Bull. Noailles, who took part in a few sessions of the committee, attempted to prevent an unconditional acceptation of the Bull by the committee, and when his efforts proved fruitless he would have withdrawn from the assembly if the king had not ordered him to remain. The report of the committee was for an unqualified acceptance of the Bull, and at the session of the assembly on 22 Jan., 1714, the report was accepted by a vote of forty against nine. By order of the king, the bull was registered by the Parliament on 15 Feb. and by the Sorbonne on 5 March. A pastoral instruction of Noailles, forbidding his priests under pain of suspension to accept the Bull without his authorization, was condemned by Rome. Of the bishops not present at the assembly, seven joined the opposition, while the remaining seventy-two accepted the Bull unconditionally. The opposition, with the exception of Bishop de la Brou of Mirepoix, also condemned the book of Quesnel. As a pretext of their non-acceptance of the Bull, they gave out that it was obscure. Ostensibly they postponed their acceptance only until the pope would explain its obscurity by special declarations. It is manifest that the pope could not yield to these demands without imperilling the authority of the Apostolic See.

It was the intention of Clement XI to summon Noailles before the Curia and, if needs be, despoil him of the purple. But the king and his councillors, seeing in this mode of procedure a trespass upon the "Gallican Liberties", proposed the convocation of a national council which should judge and pass sentence upon Noailles and his faction. The pope did not relish the idea of convoking a national council which might unnecessarily protract the quarrel and endanger the papal authority. He, however, drew up two Briefs, the one demanding the unconditional acceptance of the Bull by Noailles within fifteen days, on pain of losing the purple and incurring canonical punishment, the other paternally pointing out the gravity of the cardinal's offence and exhorting him to go hand in hand with the Apostolic See in opposing the enemies of the Church. Both Briefs were put in the hand of the king, with the request to deliver the less severe in case there was well-founded hope of the cardinal's speedy submission, but the more severe if he continued in his obstinacy. On the one hand, Noailles gave no hope of submission, while, on the other, the more severe of the Briefs was rejected by the king as subversive of the "Gallican Liberties". Louis XIV, therefore, again pressed the convocation of a national council but died (1 Sept., 1715) before it could be convened. He was succeeded as regent by Duke Philip of Orléans, who favoured the opponents of the Bull. The Sorbonne passed a resolution, 4 Jan., 1716, annulling its previous registration of the Bull, and twenty-two Sorbonnists who protested were removed from the faculty on 5 Feb. The Universities of Nantes and Reims now also rejected the Bull, the former on 2 Jan., the latter on 26 June. In consequence Clement XI withdrew from the Sorbonne all the papal privileges which it possessed and deprived it of the power of conferring academic degrees on 18 Nov. He had sent two Briefs to France on 1 May. One, addressed to the regent, severely reproved him for favouring the opponents of the Bull; the other, addressed to the opposition, threatened to deprive Noailles of the purple, and to proceed canonically against all that would not accept the Bull within two months. These Briefs were not accepted by the regent because their text had not been previously submitted to his ministers. But he sent to Rome, Chevalier, the Jansenist Vicar-General of Meaux whom the pope did not, however, admit to his presence, when it became known that his sole purpose was to wrest the admission from Clement XI that the Bull was obscure and required an explanation. In a consistory held on 27 June, 1716, the pope delivered a passionate allocution, lasting three hours, in which he informed the cardinals of the treatment which the Bull had received in France, and expressed his purpose of divesting Noailles of the cardinalate. The following November he sent two new Briefs to France, one to the regent, whose co-operation he asked in suppressing the opposition to the Bull; the other to the acceptants, whom he warned against the intrigues of the recalcitrants, and requested to exhort their erring brethren to give up their resistance.

On 1 March, 1717, four bishops (Soanen of Senez, , Delangle of Boulogne, and de La Broue of Mirepoix) drew up an appeal from the Bull to a general council, thus founding the party hereafter known as the "appellants". They were joined by the faculties of the Sorbonne on 5 March, of Reims on 8 March, and of Nantes on 10 March; likewise by the Bishops of Verdun on 22 March, of Pamiers on 12 April, of Châlons, Condom, Agen, and St. Malo on 21 April, of Auxerre on 14 May, and more than a year later by the Bishop of Laon, also by the Bishops of Bayonne and Angoulême. Though a personal letter of the pope, dated 25 March, and a joint letter of the cardinals at Rome urgently begged Noailles to submit, he also drew up an appeal on 3 April, "from the pope manifestly mistaken, and from the Constitution Unigenitus, in virtue of the decrees of the Councils of Constance and Basle, to the pope better informed and to a general council to be held without constraint and in a safe place". He did not, however, publish his appeal for the present, but deposited it in the archives of the officialité of Paris. On 6 May he wrote a long letter to the pope, in which he endeavours to justify his position and that of his adherents. A few months later his appeal from the Bull was published. The appellants were soon joined by many priests and religious, especially from the Dioceses of Paris and Reims. To swell the list of appellants the names of laymen and even women were accepted. The number of appellants is said to have reached 1800 to 2000, pitifully small, if we consider that about 1,500,000 livres ($300,000) were spent by them as bribes.

On 8 March, 1718, appeared a Decree of the Inquisition, approved by Clement XI, which condemned the appeal of the four bishops as schismatic and heretical, and that of Noailles as schismatic and approaching to heresy. Since they did not withdraw their appeal within a reasonable time, the pope issued the Bull "Pastoralis officii" on 28 Aug., 1718, excommunicating all that refused to accept the Bull "Unigenitus". But they appealed also from this second Bull. Noailles finally made an ambiguous submission on 13 March, 1720, by signing an explanation of the Bull "Unigenitus", drawn up by order of the French secretary of State, Abbé Dubois, and, later, approved by ninety-five bishops. After much pressure from the king and the bishops he made public this ambiguous acceptance of the Bull in his pastoral instruction of 18 Nov., 1720. But this did not satisfy Clement XI, who required an unconditional acceptance. After the death of Clement XI, 19 March, 1721, the appellants continued in their obstinancy during the pontificates of Innocent XIII (1721-24) and Benedict XIII (1724-30). Noailles, the soul of the opposition, finally made a sincere and unconditional submission on 11 Oct., 1728, and died soon after (2 May, 1729). The Apostolic See, in concerted action with the new Archbishop Vintimille of Paris and the French Government, gradually brought about the submission of most of the appellants. (See JANSENIUS AND JANSENISM: The Convulsionaries, Decline and End of Jansenism.)