sb. (a.) [f. the surname Jansen + -IST.] A member of that school or party in the Roman Catholic Church holding the doctrines of Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres in Flanders (died 1638), who maintained after St. Augustine the perverseness and inability for good of the natural human will.
The Jansenists were a powerful body in the R. C. Ch. in the 17th and 18th centuries, but were strongly opposed by the Molinists and other Jesuits, and their doctrines were condemned by several popes, especially by Clement X. in the Bull Unigenitus.
1664. T. Barlow, in Evelyn’s Mem. (1857), III. 143. Discovered to the world by the pious pains of the Jansenists.
a. 1715. Burnet, Own Time, II. 436. The Jansenists … were looked on as the most zealous asserters of the liberties of the Gallican Church.
1892. Nation (N. Y.), 20 Oct., 308/1. It is probable that the Jansenist was hardly less narrow than the Jesuit.
b. attrib. or adj. Of, pertaining to, or holding the doctrine of, Jansenism or the Jansenists.
1860. J. Gardner, Faiths of World, II. 201/2. A Jansenist divine of such piety and power as Quesnel. Ibid., 203/2. Thus closed the last public attempt made by the Jansenist church of Utrecht to become reconciled to Rome.
Hence Jansenistic, -ical adjs., = JANSENIST a.; Jansenize v. intr., to follow the doctrines of the Jansenists.
1745. A. Butler, Lives Saints, S. Vincent of Paul (1847), VII. 306. Gerberon the Jansenistical historian.
1756. Nugent, Gr. Tour, France, IV. 11. The present disputes between the parliament and the clergy, have revived the drooping spirits of the Jansenistical party.
1837. Hallam, Hist. Lit., III. ii. § 4, note. The Jansenizing Gallicans of the eighteenth century. Ibid. (1847), III. 273. This … cannot be reckoned entirely a Jansenistic controversy.
1882–3. Schaff, Encycl. Relig. Knowl., II. 1145. By the bull Unigenitus … a hundred and one propositions from Quesnel’s New Testament were condemned as Jansenistic.
