Meantime, a new champion had entered the field, and the attack on the Jesuits assumed a more personal form. Anne de Rohan, Princess of Guémenée and mistress of Archbishop Paul de Gondi (later Cardinal de Retz), fell under the influence of Arnauld d'Andilly and St. Cyran, and their oratory and her advancing years persuaded her that the hour had come to turn to virtue. She had had a Jesuit confessor, like so many of the noble dames and bejewelled prelates who did not deign even to conceal their amours, and he was naturally piqued to find that, as the princess advanced in virtue, she discarded him in favour of St. Cyran. There is no doubt whatever of Anne de Rohan's sincerity, and it is little short of infamous for Crétineau-Joly to say that she "placed her elegant coquetries under the safeguard of the aged Arnauld d'Andilly," and that she was at the same time "the guest of Port Royal and the mistress of Paul de Gondi." The discarded Jesuit submitted to her a manuscript attack on the more rigorous principles she had embraced; Anne de Rohan showed this indignantly to St. Cyran; and the brilliant young brother of Angélique Arnauld was requested to reply. His book _De la fréquente Communion_ (1641) led to a controversy as acrid and noisy as that over the _Augustinus_.
Arnauld had foreseen the attack; he had submitted the manuscript to theologians, and, when it was denounced by the angry Jesuits, he was able to secure the support of four archbishops, twelve bishops, and a number of doctors of divinity. This alliance of a powerful minority of the higher French clergy with the Jansenists was destined to give the Jesuits serious trouble. One cannot quite endorse the statement that all the virtuous men in the French episcopacy were opposed to the Jesuits, and all the vicious prelates in favour of them. But it was an age so flagrantly immoral that the greater part of the higher clergy had their mistresses, their hounds and hawks, and their boxes at the opera, while on the fringe of the Church were crowds of _abbés_ (often not priests) who led very dissolute lives. The Jesuits had for some time, in virtue of their influence at court, had a voice in the appointment of prelates--we shall find them entirely controlling it in a few years--and there is no doubt that they nominated men of little character who were willing to support them; just as they accepted for the English mission priests of little culture or character, because they could be the more easily dominated. On the other hand, the Jansenists represented, above all things, a rigorous standard of Christian character. The name which the Jesuits have fastened on them implies that they were wedded to certain academic, if not heretical, theories of Bishop Jansen. This is untrue. They were mostly laymen, indifferent to speculative theology, pleading only that the Christian faith demanded a stricter standard of conduct than French Christians generally exhibited. The correct name for them is the Puritans.