Person: Arnauld, Antoine
Antoine Arnauld was a French supporter of Jansen who published some important works on logic and philosphy.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Antoine Arnauld, the subject of our biography, studied at the Collège Calvi, then at the Collège Lisieux at the Sorbonne.
- Arnauld, with spiritual advice from Saint-Cyran, wrote On Frequent Communion in 1643 and, in the same year, Moral Theology of the Jesuits.
- In 1655 Arnauld supported the Jansenists in two pamphlets and again he was on dangerous ground since Pope Innocent X had condemned five propositions in the Augustinus two years earlier.
- Arnauld called himself a follower of St Augustine, which of course was not unreasonable since Jansen had based his beliefs on those of St Augustine.
- However, the Jesuits called Arnauld a Jansenist and in 1656 after heated theological arguments he was expelled from the Sorbonne for his Jansenist views.
- Pascal wrote a series of 18 letters now known as Les Provinciales during the years 1656 and 1657 in defence of Arnauld.
- In these letters Pascal attacked the moral teachings of the Jesuits which he saw as the weak point in their controversy with Port-Royal and Arnauld.
- The letters also supported the views that Arnauld had expressed in On Frequent Communion in 1643 and, with Pascal's support, these ideas would indeed eventually became accepted.
- The Jansenists, however, were persecuted between 1661 and 1669 and during this time Arnauld led the resistance to their persecutors.
- Although Pascal died in 1662, his influence on Arnauld was clearly seen in the important works which he produced through the period that he led the resistance to the attacks on the Jansenists.
- In Port-Royal Grammar Arnauld argued that mental processes and grammar are virtually the same thing.
- Arnauld's next work was Port-Royal Logic which was another book of major importance.
- In 1667 Arnauld published New Elements of Geometry.
- If Arnauld's pedagogical concerns are insufficiently appreciated, it may be because the role of what are properly pedagogical concerns in the habits and 'methods' of modern science is insufficiently understood ...
- It was not only the Pope who was opposed to Arnauld and the Jansenists.
- However, in January 1669 Pope Clement IX made an agreement, called the Peace of Clement IX, which suspended persecution of the Jansenists and Arnauld had ten years of relative peace.
- During this period there was a disagreement between Louis XIV and the Pope which meant that their attention was diverted from the Jansenists and Louis XIV saw a Catholic ally in Arnauld who turned his writings to attacking Calvinists rather than Jesuits.
- Renewed persecution against the Port-Royal monastery led to Arnauld's self-imposed exile in 1679.
- Arnauld's criticisms led to a further publication by Malebranche in 1680, but this work Traité de la nature et de la grâce was not pleasing to the Catholic Church which banned it ten years later.
- Arnauld corresponded with many of the leading mathematicians and scientists throughout his life and exerted quite a considerable influence.
Born 6 February 1612, Paris, France. Died 6 August 1694, Brussels, Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium).
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
