Background
Jacqueline Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand, France, on the 4th of October 1625; the sister of Blaise Pascal.
( Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) was the sister of Blaise ...)
Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) was the sister of Blaise Pascal and a nun at the Jansenist Port-Royal convent in France. She was also a prolific writer who argued for the spiritual rights of women and the right of conscientious objection to royal, ecclesiastic, and family authority. This book presents selections from the whole of Pascal's career as a writer, including her witty adolescent poetry and her pioneering treatise on the education of women, A Rule for Children, which drew on her experiences as schoolmistress at Port-Royal. Readers will also find Pascal's devotional treatise, which matched each moment in Christ's Passion with a corresponding virtue that his female disciples should cultivate; a transcript of her interrogation by church authorities, in which she defended the controversial theological doctrines taught at Port-Royal; a biographical sketch of her abbess, which presented Pascal's conception of the ideal nun; and a selection of letters offering spirited defenses of Pascal's right to practice her vocation, regardless of patriarchal objections.
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Jacqueline Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand, France, on the 4th of October 1625; the sister of Blaise Pascal.
She was a genuine infant prodigy, composing verses when only eight years, and a five-act comedy at eleven.
In 1652, she took the veil, despite the strong opposition of her brother, and subsequently was largely instrumental in the latter's own final conversion.
As director of the Port-Royal convent’s celebrated school, Sister Jacqueline devised an educational program unusual for its theological sophistication. Every pupil was to have a French/Latin psalter as her basic prayer book. On feast days, the nun-teacher would deliver her own commentary on the Gospel for the feast.
She vehemently opposed the attempt to compel the assent of the nuns to the Papal bulls condemning Jansenism, but was at last compelled to yield her own. This blow, however, hastened her death, which occurred at Paris on the 4th of October 1661.
( Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) was the sister of Blaise ...)
In 1646 the influence of her brother converted her to Jansenism.