The Arnaulds' connexion with Port Royal (q.v.)--a convent of Cistercian nuns in the neighbourhood of Versailles--dated back to 1599, when the original Antoine secured the abbess's chair for his daughter Angélique, then a child of eight. About 1608 she started to reform her convent in the direction of its original Rule; but about 1623 she made the acquaintance of du Vergier (q.v.) and thenceforward began to move in a Jansenist direction. Her later history is entirely bound up with the fortunes of that revival. Angélique's strength lay chiefly in her character. Her sister and collaborator, Agnes, was also a graceful writer; and her _Letters_, edited by Prosper Feugère (2 vols., Paris, 1858), throw most valuable light on the inner aims and aspirations of the Jansenist movement. The first relative to join their projects of reform was their nephew, Antoine Lemaistre, who threw up brilliant prospects at the bar to settle down at the Abbey gates (1638). Here he was presently joined by his brother, de Saci, and other hermits, who led an austere semi-monastic existence, though without taking any formal vow. In 1646 they were joined by their uncle, Arnauld d'Andilly, hitherto a personage of some importance at court and in the world; he was a special favourite of the queen regent, Anne of Austria, and had held various offices of dignity in the government. Uncle and nephews passed their time partly in ascetic exercises--though Andilly never pretended to vie in austerity with the younger men--partly in managing the convent estates, and partly in translating religious classics. Andilly put Josephus, St Augustine's _Confessions_, and many other works, into singularly delicate French. Lemaistre attacked the lives of the saints; in 1654 Saci set to work on a translation of the Bible. His labours were interrupted by the outbreak of persecution. In 1661 he was forced to go into hiding; in 1666 he was arrested, thrown into the Bastille, and kept there more than two years. Meanwhile his friends printed his translation of the New Testament--really in Holland, nominally at Mons in the Spanish Netherlands (1667). Hence it is usually known as the _Nouveau Testament de Mons_. It found enthusiastic friends and violent detractors. Bossuet approved its orthodoxy, but not its over-elaborate style; and it was destructively criticized by Richard Simon, the founder of Biblical criticism in France. On the other hand it undoubtedly did much to popularize the Bible, and was bitterly attacked by the Jesuits on that ground.