The nuns of Port Royal were the next victims of their relentless campaign. A more friendly Pope, Clement XI., succeeded Innocent, and in 1705 he was induced to issue a fresh bull (_Vineam Domini_) for the suppression of Jansenism. It was pressed for the acceptance of the nuns by the Archbishop of Paris; but it seemed to them still to consecrate the familiar untruth, and they declared that they would subscribe to it only with a qualifying clause. We have no documentary proof that the Jesuits inspired the events which followed this reserve, but the blame was openly cast upon them at the time, and the circumstances suggest it. The King--still under the guidance of Père la Chaise--wrote to the Vatican for permission to destroy the community, and in the early spring of 1708 the nuns were definitely scattered. Père la Chaise died at the beginning of the following year, and Père Letellier, a grim and resolute supporter of the ambitions of the Society, succeeded to the office. Under his influence the last insurgent movements of the brave nuns were rigorously suppressed, and in January 1710 their ancient and beloved abbey, the strictest centre of conventual virtue in France, was rased to the ground.
Letellier, a sombre, indefatigable man, whose flashing eyes scorned the comfort of the court--he was a peasant's son--and sought nothing in this world but the ascendancy of the Society of Jesus, now found the influence of the Jesuits threatened by that of Louis's wife and her favourite prelate Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. In 1711 a letter was intercepted which revealed the intrigues of Letellier and the Jesuits, and Noailles angrily suspended all the members of the Society in his diocese. The chief Jansenist writer was now Quesnel, who had just published his _Moral Reflections_. The Jesuits detected much heresy in the innocent work, and at once used their influence to secure a condemnation. The Archbishop had, however, expressed admiration of it, and the task of the Jesuits was more than usually difficult. At length, in July 1711, a letter was intercepted from which it was clear that Letellier was intriguing against the Archbishop, and there was much indignation among the new party at court. Noailles not only suspended the fathers, but condemned about a score of their writers and preachers for lax principles. The intrigue continued, however, and in the autumn of 1713, Clement XI. condemned Quesnel's book in the bull _Unigenitus_. Saint Simon, who was in the French court at the time and on good terms with the Jesuits, tells us that the bull was due to Letellier and two other Jesuits "as fine and false as he," and that in the bull "everything was brilliant except truth." Saint Simon was no theologian. We may accept his word that the securing of the bull was "a dark business"; and we know that, in its later stages, it was pressed at Rome with irregular and improper haste. It is, however, true that many of Quesnel's phrases were questionable, though they did little more than repeat and enforce the words of the gospel: "Without me ye can do nothing" (_John_ vi. 66). But the words of Scripture were condemned as well as the words of Quesnel, and the Jesuits were able to congratulate each other that "Jouvency was avenged."[27]