Autour de la saisie des pièces jansénistes à Bruxelles (1703). Bilan et perspectives

This study makes a provisional assessment of the seizure of the papers of Antoine Arnauld and the imposing correspondence (most of it received), of Pasquier Quesnel, upon the latter's arrest in May 1703. The « three or four well loaded carts » of manuscripts were studied in the Low Countries, in France and even in Rome. It should be possible today to establish a more precise inventory than those established by the actors and collaborators in the seizure. The anti-Jansenists had an interest in seizing those papers: Pope Clement XI, the new sovereign of the Catholic Low Countries, King Philippe V of Spain, and even more so King Louis XIV who intervened directly in the Low Countries' religious affairs. But the most hurried of all was the Archbishop of Mechlin Precipiano, for whom this seizure provided means of putting a number of Jansenists on trial, thus rattling the « Jansenist internationale » and provisorily reinforcing his position with the pope and kings.status: publishe