PASQUIER

See also:

• PASQUIER QUESNEL (1634-1719)

QUESNEL (1634-1719)  , French Jansenist theologian, was born in Paris on the 14th of July 1634, and, after graduating in the Sorbonne with distinction in 1653, joined the French Oratory in 1657 . There he soon became prominent; but his Jansenist sympathies led to his banishment from Paris in 1681 . He took refuge with the friendly Cardinal Coislin, bishop of Orleans; four years later, however, foreseeing that a fresh storm of persecution was about to burst, he fled to Brussels, and took up his abode with Antoine Arnauld (q.v.) . There he remained till 1703, when he was arrested by order of the archbishop of Malines . After three months' imprisonment he made a highly dramatic escape, and settled at Amsterdam, where he spent the remainder of his life . After Arnauld's death in 1694 Quesnel was generally regarded as the leader of the Jansenist party; and his Reflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament played almost as large a part in its literature as Jansen's Augustinus itself . As its title betokens, this was a devotional commentary on the Scriptures, wherein Quesnel managed to explain the aims and ideals of the Jansenist party better than any earlier writer had done; and it accordingly became the chief object of Jesuit attack . It appeared in many forms and under varioustitles, the original germ going back so far as 1668; the first complete edition was published in 1692 . The bull Unigenitus, in which no fewer than rot sentences from the Reflexions morales were condemned as heretical, was obtained from Clement IX. on the 8th of September 1713 . Quesnel died at Amsterdam on the 2nd of December 1719 . See also Mme . Albert Le Roy, Un Janseniste en exil (Paris, 1900; and Maulvault, Repertoire de Port Royal (Paris, 1902) .

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