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Théologie etpouvoir en Sorbonne. La Faculté de

Théologie de Paris et la Bulle Unigenitus, 1714–
1721. By Jacques M. Gres-Gayer. Pp. 391. Paris:
Klincksiek, 1991. 2 252 02770 3

John McManners

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History / Volume 48 / Issue 03 / July 1997, pp 588 - 588
DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900015645, Published online: 06 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022046900015645

How to cite this article:

John McManners (1997). The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 48, pp 588-588
doi:10.1017/S0022046900015645

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 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
community increasingly settled, conscious of its own traditions and willing to
share them within a society where tolerance generally triumphed over the
occasional bouts of anti-popery' (p. x).
OPEN UNIVERSITY JOHN FARRELL

Theologie etpouvoir en Sorbonne. La Faculte de Theologie de Paris et la Bulle Unigenitus,

17i4-172i. By Jacques M. Gres-Gayer. Pp. 391. Paris: Klincksiek, 1991. 2
252 02770 3
Louis xiv forced the Sorbonne to register the Bull Unigenitus (March 1714); after
his death the faculty struck out the registration (December 1715-January 1716);
the Regent reinstated it by ruthless pressure, including the exclusion of over one
hundred doctors (September 1721). By means of research in numerous archival
depositories (three in Rome and seven in Paris), and by exhaustive analysis of
contemporary official and Jansenist publications, Jacques Gres-Gayer (author of
Paris-Cantorbe'ry, 1717-20 [1969], a learned exploitation of the Wake MSS at Christ
Church along with the parallel French sources) has supplemented the meagre
record in the Registers to reproduce, for the first time, the substance of the
debates and the details of the voting on fifteen crucial occasions. He does this for
five meetings before 1714 which have a Jansenist relevance (for example, the
condemnation of the Jesuit Le Comte's book on China and the cas de conscience of
1704). Then, after the enforced registration of 1714, he deals with the two debates
of December 1714 and one of. the following 4 January repudiating the
registration, and thereafter with the appeals of the Four Bishops to a general
council, with individual adhesions of doctors, then the adherence of all the faculty
in 1718, and the reappeal in 1720. In addition, there is the recognition of the
authority of the Jansenist Church of Utrecht, and the acceptance of the faculty's
Corps de Doctrine - its final effort to shake off implication in the ambiguities of
Unigenitus, and to affirm its own right to pronounce on doctrine and to be, as it
were the 'standing Council of the Gallican Church' - Concile perpe'tuel des Gaules'.
By means of a system of symbols, the nuances of voting are indicated: for example
for March 1714, some doctors are for acceptance and registration, some for
registration but not acceptance, some for registration solely because it is the king's
order, some for reservations of other kinds, and some for abstention. The volume,
as a compressed biographical dictionary of 400 doctors, is an indispensable
research tool; it tells the story of the reception of Unigenitus in picturesque detail;
and by printing the Corps de doctrine in full (seventy-five pages) with a learned
commentary, it provides the starting point for a theological reassessment of
eighteenth-century Gallicanism, 'the Gallicanism of the University and the
Parlement' as against 'royal and episcopal Gallicanism'.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE, JOHN MCMANNERS
OXFORD

Glory, jest and riddle. Religious thought in the Enlightenment. By James Byrne. P p .
xiii + 253. London: SCM Press, 1996. £14.95 (P a P e r )' ° 334 02656 3
James Byrne's concise and clearly-written book delivers just what its title
promises. While offering sufficient background material, it avoids attempting to
be an encyclopedic history of eighteenth-century religion; and it equally escapes
588