Carnal Quietism. Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadière Affair, 1731.pdf

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"Carnal Quietism": Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadière Affair, 1731Author(s): Mita ChoudhurySource: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter, 2006), pp. 173-186Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053434 .

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"CARNAL QUIETISM":

EMBODYING ANTI-JESUIT POLEMICS IN

THE CATHERINE CADIERE AFFAIR, 1731

Mita Choudhury

During much of 1731, the public in Provence and throughout France and Europe obsessively followed a scandalous case in which twenty-three year old Catherine Cadiere accused her spiritual director, the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Girard, of seduction, "spiritual incest," witchcraft, and the heretical doctrine of Quiet- ism. The lurid story began in 1728 when Girard arrived in Toulon as the newly- appointed rector of the Seminaire royal de la marine.1 The fifty-year old rector had a reputation for the devoutness he inspired in his penitents, many of them women who appeared headed toward sainthood. And within her community, the zealous Cadiere earned respect for her piety and charitable activities. It certainly appeared to mark the meeting of kindred souls. In his memoirs the marquis d'Argens caustically noted that "the reputation for making saints was as precious to him [Girard] as the desire to be regarded as one was as violent for Cadiere."2 Within a year after Girard had assumed direction of Cadiere's spiritual life, her devotion took a dramatic turn as signs of stigmata and visions appeared; the local population became convinced that she, like Girard's other penitents, was destined to be a saint. However, Cadi&re's intense relationship with Girard began to disin- tegrate after she entered the convent of Ollioules in 1730. Subsequently, the bishop of Toulon replaced Girard as Cadiere's spiritual director with the avidly anti- Jesuit Carmelite prior Nicolas Girieux, who soon learned that the devotional bonds between the famous director and his penitent concealed the well-worn narrative of a lusty cleric seducing his young charge. Pare Nicolas prompted the young woman to bring charges against the Jesuit before the bishop in late 1730; by

Mita Choudhury is an Associate Professor of History at Vassar College, and currently work- ing on a microhistory of the Cadiere affair to be published in Prentice Hall's Microhistory Series in Western Civilization.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 39, no. 2 (2006) Pp. 173-186.



EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES 39 / 2

January 1731, the Crown ordered the Parlement of Aix to hear the notorious case. The public's insatiable fascination with the trial was well rewarded. Trial briefs from both sides, which included personal letters and numerous testimonies, were printed in France and even translated into English and German. The scandalous details were fodder for pamphlets, popular songs, plays, and engravings.

This essay will argue that the Cadiere affair represented more than a sensational scandal of clerical hypocrisy and sexual betrayal, but reveals contemporary anxieties about spiritual integrity and clerical power, anxieties that were mapped onto Catherine Cadiere's body. In trial briefs, pamphlets, and polemical literature, lawyers and anonymous polemicists cast Cadiere into a victim of Qui- etism, a contemplative form of devotion that downplayed any notion of sin and responsibility. Cadiere's lawyer Chaudon contended that Quietism enabled Gi- rard to commit "spiritual incest," to possess and penetrate Cadidre's body and soul, thus abusing his priestly authority. These accusations went beyond the prin- cipals in the case as the different authors shaped Cadiere into a powerful symbol of Jesuit immorality and invasive influence. Cadiere's status as a passive female and therefore, malleable figure enabled these authors to attach multiple meanings to her body: erotic, theological, and political. Anti-Jesuit critics portrayed Girard as abusing his authority through heresy and seduction and thus violating the sa- cred boundaries between sin and virtue, between individual and family. More- over, these charges echoed the Jansenist hostility toward the Jesuits, toward their theological principles and their influence over private families and the royal court. Eager to bring down the Jesuits, the authors of the incendiary Jansenist periodical the Nouvelles Ecclsiastiques made the public the primary judges of Jesuit theology and politics. Thus, Girard's domination of Cadiere came to signify an attack orchestrated by the Jesuits on the larger body politic; detractors regarded the Jesuit order as a foreign body that sought to control the Gallican church and the Crown. The Jesuits' efforts to silence Cadiere and her supporters and to subvert the legal process violated Cadiere's and ultimately, the public's rights as subjects (if not citizens).

To understand how a provincial trial took on such meaning, it should be noted that on both a local and national level, the Cadiere affair became one in which various interests converged to fan fevered emotions and deepen political

and religious divisions. These rifts were exemplified in the trial's outcome when the polarized Parlement of Aix issued an unprecedented split decision in which twelve judges ordered Girard burned while another twelve voted for Cadiere's hanging. Significantly, the case re-animated the strong partisan rancor between

the Jansenists and the Jesuits and thus helped make the conflict of national interest.3 The trial merged with the tumultuous factional politics surrounding the con- troversial anti-Jansenist papal bull Unigenitus. Earlier in March 1730 Cardinal Fleury, Louis XV's premier minister, had outraged parlementary magistrates and

lawyers when he declared Unigenitus a law of state. His decision precipitated a series of confrontations between the sovereign courts and the crown during 1731. In addition, the beleaguered Jansenists also had to contend with the growing convulsionary scandal in Paris that featured gyrating bodies and miraculous cures around the tomb of the Jansenist deacon Francois de Paris.4 In the midst of such setbacks, the Cadiere scandal provided Jansenist supporters with an opportunity

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CHOUDHURY / "Carnal Quietism"

to recover some ground by launching a spectacular offensive designed to expose the moral and political treachery of the entire Society of Jesus. This landmark affair combined the titillation of sexual scandal with explosive political and religious conflicts. In the process, it contributed to new and in some ways modern, expressions of political subjectivity and agency.

The manifold representations of Cadiere's body highlight the complex connections between religion, politics, and erotic discourse. In the most recent scholarly treatment of the Cadiere scandal, Robert Kreiser argues that the trial highlights the widening gap between elite and popular beliefs regarding witchcraft. For the purposes of this essay, I have chosen not to explore the accusations of witchcraft already studied by Kreiser, but consider the rhetoric around Quiet- ism and its connections to contemporary political concerns over clerical authority and Unigenitus, which Kreiser has noted as an important dimension of the trial. By delving into the theological dimensions of Quietism and spiritual incest argued in the case, I am continuing the work of scholars like Dale Van Kley who have convincingly demonstrated that we take seriously the doctrinal controversies of the period in order to understand the emergence of modern politics fully.5 Moreover, this article links Jansenist quarrels with erotic political expression and explores how the abstract theological and political arguments associated with Jansenist spirituality and politics were made corporeal.6 Cadiere's body, then, served as both an erotic entity and a politico-religious metaphor. It bore witness against the Jesuits, a marker between two distinct theological and ultimately, two divergent political visions of the church and the larger body politic. As my con- clusion suggests, the significance of the Cadiere affair went beyond factional politics and political opportunism but became an event in which lawyers and polemicists began articulating political ideas that featured the individual as a participant in the nation.

As one pamphlet Lettres ecrites d'Aix, pendant le procez du pere Girard et de la Cadiere succinctly phrased it, for the Jansenists, "it is a great blessing to find a Jesuit guilty and perhaps, with him, all the Jesuits of the universe."7 This remark alluded to the longstanding animosity between the Jansenists and the Je- suits, which had originated in the religious quarrels during the reign of Louis XIV, and indeed, the accusations of Quietism and spiritual incest against Jean-Baptiste Girard also had their roots in this longstanding conflict.8 For their part, Jans- enists loathed the humanist principles of the Jesuit Luis Molina who advocated individual free will and sufficient grace, and they regard "Molinism" as uncon- scionable leniency toward sin. The Jesuits condemned the Jansenists' Augustinian and anti-humanist stance, developed by the seventeenth-century theologian Cor- nelius Jansen. Jansenism highlighted humanity's inherent corruption, efficacious grace, and predestinarianism.

These theological differences also acquired a political dimension. The Jesuits order emphasized hierarchy and authority, principles that dovetailed with Bourbon absolutism. In contrast, the weight Jansenists placed on individual conscience and on a more "republican" church structure, based on ecclesiastical coun- cils, put them at odds with both the Jesuits and the Crown, a position articulated in the theologian Pasquier Quesnel's Reflexions morales (1671). Quesnel advocated a broader definition of the church, one that essentially negated the hierar-

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chical relationships between upper and lower clergy, and between the laity and the clergy. For a monarch whose reign was an exhibition of patriarchal hierarchy, such pronouncements (and the discovery of Quesnel's leading role in what amount- ed to an international Jansenist conspiracy) represented a direct challenge to Lou- is XIV's authority. In response, Louis XIV pressured Pope Clement XI to issue the bull Unigenitus in 1713 condemning the Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel's translation and commentary on the New Testament.9 Unigenitus then was designed, once and for all, to crush such challenges.

Ironically, although Louis XIV regarded Jansenism as the most dangerous example of heterodoxy, Jansenist theologians sided with the Sun King and the Jesuits in their opposition to the mystical Quietism, which emerged in the late seventeenth century. In the early modern era, Quietism reflected the mystical trends within Counter-Reformation Catholicism that were embodied by celebrated fig- ures such as Theresa of Avila and Francois de Sales, and it was prevalent in France, Italy, and Spain. Quietism "is synonymous with negative mysticism" and "is characterized by a form of mental practice, called 'orison' in the seventeenth century, in order to differentiate it from Ignacian meditation or from any other kind of mental practice that advocates using the faculties of the mind to focus on an object of meditation."10 While the origins of Quietism are complex and indeed, go back to the Middle Ages, this form of mysticism became most closely associated with its leading proponent, the Spanish Miguel de Molinos. In his Spiritual Guide (1675), Molinos urged followers to pursue a "negative" contemplative state, a "blank slate" on which God engraved his blessing and his will. These thoughts and revelations included temptation because "the greatest of all tempta- tions was to have none at all," and "pure love" of God demanded an absence of thought to "punishment, paradise, hell, death and eternity."11 Molinos's focus on the individual and the absence of any clerical authority in his theology made him the target of the papacy, religious orders such as the Jesuits, and monarchs like Louis XIV. Molinos was charged with heresy in 1687, his notoriety sealed by rumors of questionable relations with some of his female followers.12

Despite their own deep differences, both Jansenists and Jesuits abhorred Quietism because it represented an expression of faith devoid of any reason or intellectual thought, and therefore any moral foundation. For the Jesuits, Moli- nos's contemplative doctrine gave the individual believer too much independence, thus opening the door for unorthodox or heterodox manifestations of faith. Al- though both Jansenism and Quietism defined an individual's relationship with God in terms of interiority, their demands on the individual and their views of the Church made them distinctly different.13 In contrast to the Quietist emphasis on complete abandonment during contemplation, Jansenism embraced a moral rigor that called for mental and physical discipline from its followers. For Jansenists who espoused an austere lifestyle demanding constant penance, the passive spiritual position at the heart of Quietism confounded moral boundaries dividing sin and virtue. Moreover, the Jansenists envisioned a return to the ideal primitive church while Quietists remained focused on the individual.

The divergent elements of Quietism and Jansenism, and the Jesuit/Jans- enist conflict became enmeshed in the 1690s during the Quietist affair involving Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe-Guyon, Jacques Bossuet, bishop of Meaux

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CHOUDHURY/ "Carnal Quietism"

and Frangois F6nelon, archbishop of Cambrai. Bossuet launched an attack on Guyon because he regarded her Quietist principles as anti-hierarchical, anti-authority, and highly individualistic, thus subverting church orthodoxy, divine right kingship as well as the gender hierarchies so central to Louis Quatorzian absolutism.14 In his campaign against Guyon, Bossuet enlisted the help of the Jansenist theologian Pierre Nicole whose last work, Refutation des principales erreurs des quietistes (1695) censured Guyon and Fen6lon; the Jansenists also supported Bossu- et's effort to bring F6n6lon's case to the court of Rome.15 On the other side, the Jesuits (who had condemned Molinos a decade earlier) sided with F6ndlon in 1699, and in Rome it was said that they put as much energy into his defense as they had condemning Jansen.16 A decade and a half later, the humiliated F6n6lon got his revenge. With the aid of the Jesuits, Fenlon helped bring about Unigeni- tus in 1713, which would ignite political turmoil for decades to come. The Cadiere affair, then, represented payback against the Jesuits, who appeared as the architects of Jansenist persecution. The Cadiere/Girard trial enabled righteous foes of the Jesuits "to unveil to the public the abyss to which the horrible maxims of the Society lead."''17 The charge of Quietism against Jean-Baptiste Girard would bring the larger political and doctrinal differences between the two camps to the public's attention during an era of renewed conflict over Unigenitus.

Although the Cadiere/Girard case lacked concrete Jansenist elements in and of itself, the blend of anti-Jesuit rhetoric and the critique of Quietism gave the affair recognizable Jansenist overtones. While Nicolas Girieux, Cadiere's spiritual director after Girard, was a likely Jansenist, Cadiere herself was not identifi- able as one. Nor was her barrister Chaudon. Indeed, the Jansenist Nouvelles Ec- clesiastiques itself described Chaudon as a "Molinist," who took the case because he was "so convinced of this Father's crime.. . that he did not believe that the defense [of Cadiere] should be abandoned to another."18 Nevertheless, the lawyer tapped into stereotypes that Blaise Pascal had publicized in the devastatingly popular Lettres Provinciales (1656), which claimed that Jesuit morality played fast and loose with Christian doctrine and practice. Chaudon and Cadiere's other supporters fused together Jansenist anxieties about Quietism with these well-worn stereotypes of Jesuits' seductive morality and their uncanny ability to insinuate themselves into the hearts and homes of unsuspecting Christians. Both Chaudon and Nicolas's lawyer Pascal repeatedly noted that Girard purportedly encouraged Cadiere to ignore any anxieties about sin and blasphemy, and in the process, they transformed Quietism into a form of Jesuit doctrine. Chaudon went so far as to issue a pamphlet, Parallele des sentimens du p. Girard avec ceux de Molinos, systematically comparing Girard's various instructions to Cadiere to the teachings of the infamous Quietist Molinos. Indeed, immediately following the article outlining Chaudon's arguments on Girard's Quietism, the Nouvelles began a sub- sequent piece suggesting that Quietism was in effect a Jesuit epidemic since "Qui- etism has made progress in the towns of this province [Provence], where the Jesu- its' direction prevails"19 Thus, Jansenists interpreted the Cadiere/Girard conflict as another chapter showcasing the perils of Jesuit influence, an attitude that fit into the Jansenists' worldview that they were caught in a struggle between good and evil.20

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In their characterization of Girard's Quietist teachings, the lawyers, Cadiere herself, and the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques painted a sensual spiritual practice deeply at odds not just with the austerity of Jansenist discipline and peni- tence, but also fundamentally with Christian teachings. Quietism was, of course, "heresy" (a charge Jansenists no doubt enjoyed pronouncing given the attacks they had had to endure)," which the Nouvelles defined as a "false spirituality," delivered by a "false Prophet."21 At the core of Girard's teachings was the infamous phrase oubliez-vous, et laissez-faire, "forget yourself and let it happen" (MI-CC, 119). Within a mystical framework, such an expression exhorted the practitioner to abandon all thought and reason in favor of pure contemplation and complete surrender to God. But Girard's critics argued that this maxim justi- fied sinful behavior and blasphemy. In his Parallele des sentimens du pkre Girard avec ceux de Molinos, Chaudon outlined how Girard promised Cadiere salvation through the Quietist principles of "forgetfulness, annihilation, self-abandonment," principles that masked a host of "infamies."22 According to the lawyer Pascal, such sentiments fostered a dangerous passivity in which the penitent's will "threw off all propriety in order not to prevent God's works."23 Such unthinking compli- ance and absence of reflection prevented the believer from considering the sinful nature of certain actions and therefore repenting.

The un-Christian essence of Quietism manifested itself in un-Christian practices. Catherine Cadiere and another penitent found themselves unable to pray. Instead of urging her to overcome this failure, Girard, claimed Cadidre, told her not to worry, "that prayer being only a means to God, once one achieves this, it becomes useless."24 The Jesuit also ordered Cadiere to partake of the Eucharist frequently, without any preparation and in different churches. According to Chau- don, Girard encouraged his penitents to take communion even after they went on pleasure expeditions, including the theatre (MI-CC, 8, 72, 75; Parallele, 14, 26). And when Cadibre reported that she continually imagined "infamous representations, of horrible nude images of men and women, he [Girard] responded that God wished to purify me through them" (Justification, 9). The lawyer Pascal interpreted these Quietist teachings as an inversion of the moral order: "the path of crime is shown as the path that leads to God: libertinism is a virtue, and such a great virtue, that insensibility regarding acts of the flesh perfects the union with God."25 Thus, the Jesuit advanced theological arguments that seemingly denied the notion of sin, thereby leading an innocent Cadiere right into sin.

Pascal reminded his audience of Girard's real intentions in using seductive theology by repeatedly using the expression "carnal Quietism," a phrase so evocative that it made its way into a poem about the affair.26 The Nouvelles Eccldsiastiques triumphantly noted, "the seductor went from theory to practice" as Girard seduced Cadiere's soul in order to take possession of her body. What happened to that body of course was what drove much of the public interest in the trial. Persistent readers would not have to wait until 1740 for the infamous Therese Philosophe's account of Father Dirrag's seduction of Mademoiselle Era- dice! They could peruse Chaudon's exhaustive account in the Memoire instructif pour Catherine Cadiere as well as the Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere, for descriptions of the "indecent postures" in which the young penitent found herself when alone in her bedroom with Girard. Cadiere reported that after hav-

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ing locked the door, Girard would draw her close, kissing and embracing her, and undressing her. He also demanded that Cadi&re kneel before him, sometimes in the nude, while he disciplined her and then kissed the areas he had just beaten. The satirical pamphlet Antifactum Criti-Comique du pere Girard mocked the Jesuit's assertion that he was only identifying signs of stigmata: "it was an ana- tomical study that pere Girard was conducting on the lovable body of his devoted penitent; one can say that she is at his beck and call, but one cannot identify through which route the hand made its way five or six fingers above a beautiful tit and a little above a pretty thigh, without one touching the other."27

While such remarks and Cadiere's artless descriptions provided an avid public with libertine images, Chaudon's references to Girard's perfidy also under- scored the sacrilegious nature of their liaison. Supposedly, Girard's "love for his penitent was so violent, that neither the constraint of the grill, nor the holiest of places were able to prevent him from embracing and kissing her," referring to the Jesuit's purported advances while Cadiere was at the convent of Ollioules (MI- CC, 142). And, in the Memoire instructif Chaudon referred to another of Gi- rard's expressions that would be the basis for the accusations of libertine behavior. On July 22, 1730 Girard wrote to Cadi&re: "I have a great hunger to see you again and to see all" (MI-CC, 24, 119). Hunger suggested lust, and seeing "all" referred to the signs of stigmata, including those that were on her side, "four fingers below her left breast," which he regarded with "such sensuality" (MI-CC, 120, 142). According to Chaudon, "it was notorious in Toulon that this chaste Director had made a little seraglio of seven to eight devoted women with stigma- tism. What a scandal!" (MI-CC, 150). Stigmata no longer functioned as a subject of reverent contemplation of Christ's suffering, but a path to desire. Chaudon's emphasis on Girard's fascination with Cadiere's supposed stigmata and indeed, his penitent's entire body were not just rhetorical ploys to keep the reader's attention. They projected vivid images of Girard as subverting Christian places and symbols.28

I would maintain that for non-Jansenists like Chaudon as well the authors of the Nouvelles Eccldsiastiques, Girard's purported Quietism and his seduction represented a spectacular fulfillment of the sensuous baroque Catholi- cism and casuistry associated with the Jesuits. Robert Kreiser has noted that "not since the publication of Pascal's devastating Lettres Provinciales some three-quar- ters of a century earlier had the Jansenists mounted so effective and so potentially damaging an attack on the moral position of the Society of Jesus."29 Indeed, the traits of Quietism that Jansenist polemicists associated with Girard affirmed the moral laxity trenchantly described by the philosopher Blaise Pascal in the Lettres Provinciales. In the Provinciales, the Jansenist character outlines how the Jesuits sought to "govern all conscience ... Thus are they prepared for all sorts of per- sons, and so ready are they to suit the supply to the demand.. . you will see so many crimes palliated and irregularities tolerated."30 According to Pascal, the Jesuit drive for domination led to a casuistry so permissive that it in effect erased sin. Anti-Girard authors harped on the rector's efforts to discourage Cadiere from considering her behavior as sinful. Girard's insistent embraces exposed the sensual side of Jesuit theology, which quickly bled into sexual licentiousness. Chaudon clearly linked Quietism with the Jesuits, thus making Girard's crimes those of his order. The lawyer often referred to Girard not by his name, but as "the Jesuit" or

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more pointedly "the Quietist Jesuit" (MI-CC). He also used widely-known Jans- enist arguments that pointed to the sensuous elements in Jesuit doctrine. For example, his observations regarding Cadiere's frequent and clandestine communion echoed the great Antoine Arnauld's 1643 notorious condemnation of the Jesuits' practice of frequent communion. The Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques pointedly noted that Girard's libertine behavior was like that of another Jesuit, pere Rhodat, who had scandalized Toulouse with similar acts and had also received the order's pro- tection despite his transgressions. According to the Nouvelles, "who does not know that among these fathers, the errors of individuals become in some way those of the whole Society."31

Behind this fear of Jesuit depravity and moral incertitude was the Jesuits' very real power as spiritual directors and confessors, which had enabled Girard to become such an insidious presence in the lives of Cadiere and his other penitents. Cadiere's supporters claimed that in abusing his position, Girard had committed spiritual incest, which canon law defined as a crime violating spiritual relations through carnal association. Moreover, sexual liaisons between a clerical director and his penitent encompassed a multitude of sins as the term "spiritual incest" indicates.32 When Girard took possession of Cadiere's body and soul, he established himself as the sole source of authority. The Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques noted how Girard's letters instructed Cadiere to think of him as her "father, brother, friend, and son."33 Girard infiltrated the Cadiere household to the point that Madame Cadiere accepted his orders as sacrosanct. In the process, he displaced Catherine's natural family, and this "master Quietist" became Cadiere's master, a term repeatedly used in the different trial briefs.34 In essence, Girard misused the weight of his position within the church and his order's prestige to penetrate Cadiere's body, her spiritual life, and the inner sanctum of her family. He presented a threat not just to Cadiere and her family but the larger community. Indeed, spiritual incest was not just Girard's crime, but was presented as an epidemic. For example, in Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere, Cadiere claimed that "my story will teach my sex that they should be on guard against the most spe- cious appearances of piety and religion, as soon as their directors wish to engage them in new paths, and tear them from the paths marked by the Bible, and the example of the Saints" (Justification, 5). As the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques pointedly noted, Chaudon had produced other examples of Jesuits, such as Father Mena in Spain, who had committed spiritual incest (MI-CC, 150-2).

The combination of spiritual incest, sexual transgressions, and Quietist heresy, thus represented an indictment of "Jesuit morality," charges that tapped into widespread hostility against the Jesuits. The Parisian lawyer Edmond Barbier noted in his entries on the Cadiere affair that "one hates the Jesuits mortally."35 Popular polemics openly targeted the Jesuits, referring to how Girard, a "deputy of Ignatius" kept "the spirit of the Ignatius's descendants" alive through his ser- mons.36 Anonymous authors expressed outrage at the great lengths the Jesuits went to protect Girard, regardless of his guilt.37 The deep-seated nature of this anger was also revealed by the popular demonstrations in Toulon during which Girard was burned in effigy or paraded around as a devil, all acts of anger against the Parlement of Aix's ruling.38 To some extent, this resentment reflected the power of the Jesuits in Toulon, but it was also provoked by distrust of Unigenitus.39

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As noted earlier, national politics surrounding the bull had heated up and aroused new anxieties about abuses of clerical authority. For example, during 1731 and into 1732 the Parlement of Paris argued for the preservation of the appel comme d'abus, the appeals process through which individuals or groups could bring cases of clerical infractions before the secular courts.40 In the face of Fleury's efforts to quell dissent, the parlements resisted what they regarded as the clergy's efforts to penetrate and usurp secular authority. Thus, the plight of Cathe- rine Cadiere quickly merged with the larger ecclesiastical conflict for the hearts and minds of a growing public. Girard's seduction and rape of Cadiere's body was a violation of Cadiere's trust and innocence. Moreover, her plight symbolized the vulnerability of the laity as a whole before an ambitious clergy. Within her lawyer's factums and various polemics, Cadiere was also a victim whose troubles exposed the moral boundaries that separated the Jesuits from the public, her public.41 When asking the parlementary magistrates to punish Girard, Cadiere's lawyer Chaudon raised questions designed to alarm the public: "If the crimes of the accused remain unpunished, what will happen to Religion? to the Sacraments? to the Public?"42 Cadi&re's case, then, was part of the same fight against clerical encroachment, especially Jesuit domination, which the sovereign courts were waging on a larger scale.

Chaudon's remarks also suggest how contemporaries fused together religious concerns with political ones as Cadiere's body became a microcosm of the body politic, or more precisely the body politic under siege. The lawyer Pascal referred to Quietism as a "poison," thus reiterating remarks made by Chaudon who, in his discussion of Miguel Molinos, described Quietism as a "contagion" infecting France.43 A popular poem presented Cadiere describing how Girard had essentially "forced" himself on her, infecting her with "vermin."44 This language of pathology was further sustained by Cadiere's claims that she had been poi- soned twice: once, in order to induce a miscarriage and another time, to force her to retract her accusations against Girard. The different legal briefs, pamphlets, and songs attacked the carriers of such disease, namely spiritual directors and especially Jesuit directors. Indeed, both Chaudon and Pascal characterized Quiet- ism as a foreign disease; Chaudon used the example of the Spanish Jesuit Mena to emphasize how Girard's crimes were essentially Jesuit crimes. Both lawyers either glossed over or ignored the French Quietist controversies over Guyon and Fendlon and instead, devoted their energies to drawing parallels between the Spaniard Molinos and Girard.

What did the invasion of Cadiere's body by this foreign influence mean in the context of the political culture of the 1730s? Unlike the 1750s and the 1770s, the 1730s was not a period in which great debates about the nation and sovereignty were at the heart of political discourse.45 Nevertheless, as both Peter Camp- bell and Thomas E. Kaiser have demonstrated, the foundation was being established for such debate. During the early 1730s, parlementary magistrates and lawyers laid claim to the sovereign courts' importance as a buttress against over- reaching clerical authority and arbitrary royal initiatives such as the declaration of Unigenitus as a law of state. The fierce conflicts surrounding clerical jurisdiction and the status of Unigenitus made the Jesuits even more suspect. The "foreign- ness" of the Jesuits was not necessarily the result of the order's Spanish origins

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but because the Jesuits owed primary allegiance to the Pope and were not answer- able to French authorities, either secular or ecclesiastical.46 I would argue that the power and visibility of the Jesuits, especially with the Cadikre affair, made them an easy target and therefore, emblematic of heavy-handed ecclesiastic power. The trial afforded Jansenists and members of the legal profession a sensational opportunity to illustrate how the Jesuits represented a threat to the body politic because they seemed to show utter disrespect for the laws of France and the rights of its subjects. Indeed, the political implications of the trial were not lost to the larger public. For example, one poem directly linked Girard's actions to the larger body politic: "these...political ruses/have corrupted all Spirit/and through their [the Jesuits] horrible writings; and through their impious writings/the King, the magistrates, the Princes/ the Kingdoms and the provinces/ tremble under their authority."47 A widely-circulated three-act play, Le Nouveau Tarquin, cast Girard as the despotic Tarquin because of "his pride and his usurpation of sovereignty."48 Just as Girard had usurped the place of Cadiere's family when he had committed "spiritual incest," the Jesuits had insinuated themselves into the French polity with the intention of commanding complete and unquestioning submission, at the expense of other French institutions.

I would like to suggest that the significance of Cadiere trial goes beyond illustrating how issues of competing jurisdiction weakened Old Regime institutions and changed the political landscape. The Cadiere scandal also allows us to consider how new individual and more modern political identities emerged from religious conflict. The model believer of the early modern era was configured in "feminine" terms, passive, obedient, and subordinate, precisely the characteris- tics expected of the ideal subject. Although Jansenists would concur with this ideal, they increasingly promoted an alternative image of the true believer that stressed the importance of personal conscience, and thereby, drew a distinct line between passivity and submission. This rhetoric would be at its strongest during the refusal of sacraments in the 1750s when lawyers argued, on the grounds of private conscience, that ultramontane clerics could not refuse an individual communion or the last rites. Cadiere's defense suggested that such elements were already surfacing and becoming more politicized some two decades earlier. Girard had violated Cadiire's trust and faith by demanding complete subordination. Moreover, the Jesuits had sought to hide his transgressions by violating Cadiere's rights as a subject. According to the author of the Anatomie de l'arrest rendu par le parlement de Provence, the fact that twelve of the judges reconfigured Cadiere's accusations as "calumnies" attested to the efforts to protect the Jesuits at all costs: "one wanted by this mixture of true and false crimes confuse the innocent with the guilty.., if not in France, than at least everywhere else, if not today, than at least in the future."49

As Chaudon presented the case, what had happened to Cadiere was not just a fall from virtue, but an infringement of her spiritual autonomy and an affront to civic as well as religious morality. Cadiere remained a "feminine" figure, timid and retiring, but she was also the proto-citizen who found ways of exercising agency. Girard had rendered her will passive through the language of seductive heresy. In the pamphlet Justification written in the first person, Cadiere repeatedly referred to Girard's use of language to captivate and control her: "at

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first he only spoke to me in ordinary language, gradually, he familiarized me with a language that was always unknown to me, and gave me ideas that were com- pletely new but very flattering."50 As a mentor, Girard suppressed Cadiere's will and her ability to distinguish right from wrong. Significantly, it was the legal process of the case, especially once the trial fell under the purview of the secular courts, that gave Cadiere back her "voice." Freed from Girard, Cadi&re was able to tell her own story in the Justification and the pamphlet Les Veritables sentimens de Mademoiselle Cadiere. It is unlikely that the semi-educated Cadiere wrote these pieces herself. Nor is it my contention that pamphlets signed with her name represented a "feminist" act of agency. Nevertheless, the male writers who were the likely architects of these two pieces chose to give this passive female a say. Her very passivity allowed them to make Cadiere the symbol of an injured individual, willing to sacrifice her reputation by going against the powerful and protected Jesuits. The defense of Cadi&re, then, represented an effort to safeguard civic morality, as well as religious purity, and it suggested the emergence of a political subjectivity that pointed to individual, secular rights.

NOTES

The author would like to thank Dana Rabin, Ann Little, John Reisbord for their comments and suggestions for this article. Joan Landes, and Sarah Maza provided invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the material. Research on the subject was made possible by funds received from the Dean of Faculty's office at Vassar College. Special thanks to Dolly Choudhury without whom this article would not have been possible. The article is dedicated to Nicholas Sujoy Reisbord.

1. For summaries of the affair, see B. Robert Kreiser, "The Devils of Toulon: Demonic Possession and Religious Politics in Eighteenth-Century Provence," in Church, State and Society under the Bour- bon Kings of France, ed. Richard M. Golden (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1982), 173-221; Gaston Delayen, La Sainte de Monsieur de Toulon: Le Proces de la Cadiere et du pare Girard et la grande querelle du Parlement de Provence (Paris: Justitia, 1928); A.-Jacques, Pares, Le Proces Gi- rard-Cadiere (Toulon Aix...1731) (Marseille: l'Institut Historique de Provence, 1928).

2. "La reputation de faire des saintes lui 6tait aussi chere, que l'envie de passer pour telle 6tait violente chez la Cadiere." Jean Baptiste De Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, Memoires du monsieur le marquis d'Argens: contenant le recit des aventures (Paris: F. Buisson, 1807), 283.

3. Kreiser, "Devils of Toulon," 198-200; Monique Cubells, La Provence des Lumieres: les parle- mentaires d'Aix au 18eme siecle (Paris: Maloine, 1984), 276-7.

4. Peter R. Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745 (London: Rout- ledge, 1996); Catherine-Laurence Maire, Les Convulsionnaires de Saint-Medard (Paris: Gallimard/ Julliard, 1985); B. Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eigh- teenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978).

5. See Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution. From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1996). Catherine Maire, De la cause de Dieu a la cause de la nation : le jansenisme au XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998).

6. On the body and early modern politics, see, for example, Lynn Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991); Antoine de Baecque, Le Corps de l'histoire: mitaphores et politiques, 1770-1800 (Paris: Clamann-Levy, 1993); Sara E. Melzer and Kathryn Norberg, eds., From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1998); Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes, eds., Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2004.)




7. "C'est un grand bien de trouver un Jesuite coupable et s'il se peut, avec lui, tous les Jesuites de l'univers." Lettres ecrites d'Aix, pendant le procez du pere Girard, et de la Cadiere; contenant plu- sieurs anecdotes curieuses dont le public n'est pas encore instruit (Hereafter LE) (n.p., [1731]), 4.

8. For detailed discussion of these differences, see Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expul- sion of the Jesuits from France 1757-1765 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), 6-36.

9. For a discussion of Unigenitus, see Edmond Preclin, Les Jansenistes du XVIIIe siecle et la constitution civile du clerge (Paris: Libraire Universitaire J. Gambier, 1929); Kreiser, Miracles, Con- vulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics, 10-26.

10. Marie-Florine Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront the Modern World: Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717) (Albany: State Univ. of NewYork Press, 1998), 143.

11. Jean-Robert Argomathe, Le Quietisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973), 32-6.

12. Ibid., 37-9; Arthur Broekhuysen, "The Quietist Movement and Miguel de Molinos," Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 14, 3 (July 1991): 139-43.

13. For a sustained comparison of Jansenism and Quietism, see Louis Dupre, "Jansenism and Quietism," Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern, eds. Louis Dupre and Don E. Sa- liers, vol. 18 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 121-41.

14. R. N. Frost, "Authority in the Bossuet-Fenelon Debate," Evangelical Theological Society Pa- pers (1992); Louis Cognet, Crepuscule des mystiques: Bossuet, Fenelon (Belgium: Desclke, 1958); Catharine Randall, "'Loosening the Stays'": Madame Guyon's Quietist Opposition to Absolutism," Mystics Quarterly 26, 1 (March 2000): 15-22. See also Linda Timmermans, L'Acces des femmes a la culture (1598-1715): un ddbat d'idees de Saint Francois de Sales a la marquise de Lambert (Paris: Champion, 1993), 547-67; Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront the Modern World, 143.

15. Frost, "Authority in Bossuet-F6nelon Debate;" Armogathe, Quietisme, 88-97.

16. Armogathe, Quietisme, 91.

17. "Il s'agit de devoiler au public les abimes ou conduisent les maximes horribles de la Societe." LE, 4.

18. "Si persuade du crime de ce P.... il n'a pas cru en devoir abandonner la d6fense a un autre." Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques {hereafter NE} (June 16, 1731), 117.

19. "Le Quietisme fait de progres dans les villes de cette Province oii la direction des Jesuites prvaut." NE (June 16, 1731), 120.

20. On this Manichaen outlook, see Maire, De la cause de Dieu, 182-204; Catherine Maire, "L'6glise et la nation: du dp6ot de la verite au depot des lois, la traj6ctoire janseniste au XVIIIe siecle," Annales: economies, societes, civilisations 46 (1991): 1177-84.

21. Chaudon, Memoire instructif pour demoiselle Catherine Cadiere de la ville de Toulon ... contre le pere Jean-Baptiste Girard jesuite, recteur du seminaire royal de la Marine dudit Toulon {Hereafter MI-CC}, vol. 1 of Recueil general des pieces concernant le procez entre la demoiselle Cadiere, de la ville de Toulon; et le pere Girard, jesuite (La Haye: Swart, 1731), 72; NE (June 16, 1731), 119.

22. Chaudon, Parallkle des sentimens du pere Girard avec ceux de Molinos (Hereafter Parallkle), vol. 8 of Receuil general, 22.

23. "La volonte se depoiiille de toute propriete pour ne pas empecher les op&rations de Dieu." Pascal, Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas de Saint-Joseph, prieur des Carmes dechaussez du couvent de la ville de Toulon ... contre le pere Jean-Baptiste Girard, vol. 5 of Recueil gendral, 99.

24. "Que la priere n'6tant que le moyen de parvenir a Dieu, une fois qu'on y 6toit parvenu, elle devenoit inutile." Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere contenant un recit fiddle de tout ce qui s'est passe entre cette damoiselle et le p. Jean-Baptiste Girard (Hereafter Justification), vol. 1 of Recueil general, 8.

25. Pascal, Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas, 100.

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26. Ibid.; "Poeme," Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Manuscrits Frangais, {hereafter BNF, Ms. Fr.}, 23, 859, f. 137.

27. "C'est l'Anatomie que le P. Girard a fait de l'aimable carcasse de sa Devote; on peut dire de lui qu'il a vfi au doigt et a l'oeil, mais on ne peut pas definir par quel chemin la main est arrivee a cinq ou six doigts au dessous d'un beau teton, et un peu a dessous d'une jolie cuisse, sans manier ou l'un ou l'autre." Antifactum critique-comique du pere Girard, ou reponse anticipee aux ecrits que M. Pazery donnera un jour au public.., par son tres-humble serviteur, le nouveau Chrystome Mathanasias, vol. 8 in Recueil general, 8.

28. In her work on food in medieval Christianity, Caroline Bynum has demonstrated the central- ity of corporeal images, particularly of blood, as a part of Christian worship. According to Bynum, eating and hunger could signify a desire for union with God, as in the case of Catherine of Siena. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1987), 65, 177-8.

29. Kreiser, "Devils of Toulon," 185.

30. Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, trans. Thomas McCrie, Pensees; Provincial Letters, (New York: Modern Library, 1941), 374-6. See also Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1988), 229-49.

31. "Mais qui ne sait que chez ces PP. les egaremens des particuliers deviennent en quelque sorte ceux de toute la Societe." NE (March 20, 1731), 53. On Rhodat, see NE (September 171, 1731), 180.

32. Codified under Justinian, "spiritual incest" outlawed sexual relations between those connect- ed through a spiritual association, such as godparents and godchildren. The term also applied to spiritual directors and their charges. Louis Haas, "Boccaccio, Baptismal Kinship and Spiritual In- cest," Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme 13 (1989): 344.

33. NE (February 6, 1731), 26.

34. Memoire instructif pour le pere Nicolas, 100. Justification, 9.

35. "On hait mortellement les Jesuites." Edmond Barbier, Chronique de la rigence et du rbgne de Louis XV (1718-1763) ou de Journal de Barbier, 8 vols. (Paris: Charpentier, 1857), 2: 201.

36. "Autre reponse a l'ode apolog&tique pour le pere Girard, commengant par: "Vous qui de l'equitable astre," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 8; "Poeme," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 56.

37. See for example "L'Entre triomphante du pere Girard jesuite aux enfers suivie de son retour sur la terre," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 29.

38. Maurice Agulhon and Paul-Albert Fevrier, Histoire de Toulon (Privat: Toulouse, 1980), 139.

39. "Poeme," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 56; "Calotte sur le Parlemen d'Aix. Le dos a dos du Parlement d'Aix," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 181.

40. Campbell, Power and Politics, 247-50.

41. Les Veritables sentimens de Mademoiselle Cadibre, tels qu'elle les a donnez a son confesseur, ecrits de sa propre main, pour les rendre publics, vol. 1 of Receuil general, 7.

42. "Si les crimes de l'Accus6 restent impunis, que deviendra la Religion? que deviendront les Sacremens? que deviendra le Public?" MI-CC, 172

43. Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas, 100, MI-CC, 73-4.

44. "Imputation de Mlle. Cadiere, parodie de Corneille," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 28.

45. The notable exception is the lawyer Francois de Maraimberg's 1730 memoire declaring the parlements to be "'the Senate of the nation, charged with rendering Justice to the subjects of the King." David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 92.



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46. Catherine-Laurence Maire, "La legende noire des Jesuites," L'Histoire, 84 (December 1978): 38-45.

47. "Ces. . . ruses politiques/Ont corrompu tous les Esprits/ Et par leurs horribles Ecrits/ Et par leurs impies Ecrits/Les Roys, les magistrates les Princes/Les Royaumes et les provinces/ Tremblent sous leur autorite." "Autre reponse a l'ode apologetique," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 8.

48. "J'ay prefere Tarquin a tout autre a cause de son orgueil et de son usurpation a la souverainete." Le Nouveau Tarquin, comedie en trois actes, vol. 1 of Recueil general, 3.

49. "On a voulu par ce melange de vrais et de faux crimes confondre l'innocent avec le coupable . . . sinon en France, du moins ailleurs, sinon aujourd'hui, du moins a l'avenir." Anatomie de l'arrest rendu par le parlement de Provence, le dix octobre 1731. Sur l'affaire de la demoiselle Cadibre, et du R.P.J.B. Girard, Jesuite. Adresse a M. L. B. par un magistrat d'un autre parlement (n.p., [1731]), 8.

50. "II ne me parla d'abord que le langage ordinaire, insensiblement il me familiarisa avec un langage qui m'avoit tofijours ete inconnu, et me donna des id&es toutes nouvelles pour moi, mais tres flatteuses." Justification, 28.



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Carnal Quietism. Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadière Affair, 1731.pdf