In retirement, I have been thinking about people whom I have come to know something about, whom I would like to know better by researching more about them, and sharing that information with any followers of this blog. Before the Seminary, I was an undergraduate Math major at LaSalle College [sic — it was a college then; now it is a university]; while in the Seminary, I went to Villanova University to earn a Masters Degree in Math; and for a number of years, I taught Math in the Secondary School System of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. In my Math world, I came to know a little about Blaise Pascal, understanding him to be a great Mathematician and an exemplary Catholic, and I thought I'd like to know more.

My research began with a book from my personal library, Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell, © 1937, published by Simon and Shuster, Inc.; it included a chapter on Blaise Pascal. But his introduction to Pascal did not really correspond to my understanding of him; namely:

We shall consider Pascal primarily as a highly gifted mathematician who let his masochistic proclivities for self-torturing and profitless speculation on the sectarian controversies of his day degrade him to what would now be called a religious neurotic. On the mathematical side, Pascal is perhaps the greatest might-have-been in history.

Further, as I read on, I learned that when Pascal became more deeply involved in faith, he embraced Jansenism, which the Pope denounced as heresy. So much for my concept of a great Mathematician and an exemplary Catholic! However, there is a principal that St. Thomas Aquinas uses, and that I frequently quote, that may very well apply here:

Quidquid recipitur, recipitur ad modem recipientis.

Whatever is received is received according to the condition of the receiver.

Basically, it means that we all process data through our own personal filters, so our view of a person or a situation may actually say more about us than it does about the person or situation. That is E.T. Bell's view of Blaise Pascal; we should try to get a broader view.

Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, in Clermont, central France, of Étienne Pascal, a magistrate and civil servant, and Antoinette Bégon Pascal. His older sister, Gilberte, would become his first biographer; his younger sister, Jacqueline, would earn acclaim as a poet and dramatist before becoming a nun. Pascal's mother, who was known for her piety and charitable work, died when Pascal was only three years old. Blaise was a sickly child who suffered various pains and diseases throughout his life.

In 1631, Étienne liquidated his assets in Clermont and moved the family to Paris, partly to pursue his own scientific studies, and partly to oversee personally the education of his children. Blaise had already displayed exceptional ability, and his father devised a special program for him which focused initially on the study of languages, and would delay the introduction of mathematics until Blaise was 15. This prohibition, of course, made Blaise curious, and at the age of 12, he asked what geometry was. His tutor replied that it was the science of constructing exact figures and determining the proportions between their different parts. Blaise gave up his play-time to study and discover for himself many properties of figures, in particular the proposition the the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. In response, his father provided him with a copy of Euclid's Elements. Blaise wrote a treatise on the communication of sounds at the age of 12, and wrote a treatise on conic sections at the age of 16.

When Blaise was 18 year old, he father was a tax collector, and he and his staff were sometimes overwhelmed figuring the tax levies, so Blaise designed a calculating machine to help speed the process. He then continued to experiment, constructing improved versions of the machine, which came to be called the pascaline. It is thought that he intended to market the machine, and some were constructed and sold, but the cost of producing the machines proved too much.

The Pascal family were practicing Roman Catholics, although it does not seem that they emphasized deepening their relationship with God within the Church. In 1646, Étienne, Blaise's father, injured his leg, and while recuperating at home was assisted by two men who were disciples of the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, who, as director of the convent of Port-Royal, had brought the austere moral and theological conceptions of Jansenism into the life and thought of the convent. Their presence in the Pascal home brought Blaise to consider a more profound expression of his religion.

Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) was a Dutch theologian, and a professor at the University of Louvain, who strove to revive Christian theology according to the teachings of St. Augustine. The Jesuits were advocating for frequent confession and communion, and teaching that sin resulted from lapses in mental discipline. Jansen accused the order of rationalizing away the spiritual and social consequences of sin. Jansen spent his entire life as a conscientious church official, ultimately as Bishop of Ypres in what is now northern Belgium. He wrote his magnum opus, Augustinus, toward the end of his life — it was published posthumously in 1642. From his book, the Jansenism movement arose.

Jean du Vergier de Hauranne befriended Cornelius Jansen while they were studying together at Louvain from 1611 to 1616, after which he became a secretary to the bishop of Potiers. He was ordained a priest in 1618, and named abbot of Saint-Cyran in 1620; thereafter, he was referred to as the Abbé de Saint-Cyran. In the face of French Protestantism, he envisioned reforming Roman Catholicism along the lines outlined by Jansen. In 1637, he established a community that became known as the Solitaires (hermits) in the former convent of Cistercian nuns at Port-Royal des Champs near Versailles. It was this community that began influencing the Pascal family.

The Abbey at Port-Royal des Champs was founded in 1204 by Eudes de Sully, Bishop of Paris, for women living the Rule of St. Benedict under the supervision of the monks of Citeaux. Over the centuries, the discipline had become lax, and there was a certain amount of disorder. The nuns went to communion once a month, except for February which they celebrated with masquerades. There was not much luxury, for they were not rich, but there was great liberty in private expenditure, if their families could afford it — some nuns had their own furniture and silver service. They received visitors regularly, and took regular walks outside the convent cloister.

That was the situation in 1599 when Simon Marion successfully obtained from King Henri IV the royal appointment of his granddaughter, Jacqueline Marie Arnauld, as the abbess of Port-Royal — she was eight years old at the time. To prepare her for her role as abbess, she was sent for several years to another convent at Maubuisson, which was equally lax. There she was received into the Cistercian community and became known as Mère Angélique. In 1602, She was installed as Abbess of Port-Royal at the age of 12. Her mother and an elderly nun at the abbey oversaw the ordinary activities of the abbey for the next several years.

In 1608, at twilight a Capuchin friar appeared at the door and claimed his right to preach to the nuns at the abbey chapel. Preaching was rare at Port-Royal and it certainly was not the usual time for it; however, Mère Angélique gave orders that the chapel be prepared and the nuns assemble for the sermon. The topic was the humiliations of Jesus, and it somehow changed the heart of Mère Angélique. She began a period of personal reformation, without the aid of spiritual direction, and then began the process of reforming the community.

Her reforms included the abolition of private property and the institution of strictly communal property; the restoration of the rule of silence; the restoration of the night office; the institution of a vegetarian diet; the strict practice of cloister, with visitors relegated to a parlor divided by a grille. The reform campaign reached a dramatic moment in 1609 when Mère Angélique refused her own family admission to the convent. The reforms were not accomplished without struggle — her own personal struggles, as well as opposition both from within the community and outside the abbey. Several nuns left the community, but gradually the rest embraced the reforms, and soon additional women sought admission to the community.

In 1618 Mère Angélique received the spiritual direction and support she had been praying for in the person of St. Francis de Sales. Francis commended her reforms but warned of spiritual dangers lurking in her extreme penances and take-no-prisoners approach to opponents of her reforms. He challenged her to focus less on external feats and harsh reprimands of herself and others than on the interior disciplines of humility and gentleness. Practice your faith "joyously," Francis told Mère Angélique. Spend less time griping about your fellow Catholics and corrupt clergy and more time praying for God to purify the church and use you in that work. Mère Angélique revered Francis de Sales but mostly ignored his advice. After he died in 1622, she found a new spiritual director who encouraged her critical spirit: Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, and she and the Port-Royal community embraced Jansenism.

In 1621, the Abbé de Saint Cyran arrived in Paris and St. Vincent de Paul welcomed him and befriended him because of his learning and the austerity of his life. However, as he learned more of his Jansenistic teachings, and realized that they were dangerous, he tried to reason with the Abbé as a friend, while seeming to defend the Abbé from his early detractors. But when Abbé de Saint Cyran hardened in his Jansenistic convictions, St. Vincent de Paul actively worked to condemn the teachings, detesting the error, yet keeping in his heart a real concern for the Abbé. Among other things, Jansenism reputed free will, accepted predestination, and taught that divine grace alone was the key to salvation, without the necessity of accepting it.

In 1626, the Port-Royal community had expanded to the point that Mère Angélique established Port-Royal de Paris in the city, and moved the community there. The male Solitaires (hermits) who had established their hermitages just outside the abbey, moved into the abandoned buildings of the original abbey.

It was this Port-Royal community, led by Mère Angélique Arnauld and the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, that attracted Blaise Pascal in 1646. The community then was strongly influenced by Jansenism, about which many theological questions were being raised, especially about human free will and the power of God's grace, as well as the nature of predestination. However, it was not until 1653 that Pope Innocent X condemned the cardinal doctrines of Jansenism as heretical.

For the most part, French royalty continued to obstruct implementation of the reforms decreed by the Council of Trent to address problems in the Catholic Church which led to the Protestant Reformation, even though the Council had ended in 1563. As noted above, both St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul were contemporaries of Pascal; each of them, in different ways, tried to compensate: Francis by his teaching and writing, Vincent by his presence on the Queen's Council suggesting holy bishops to the King, who still appointed them, and conducting conferences for priests and candidates for the priesthood, since they were not receiving the seminary preparation envisioned by the Council. Also as noted above, both Francis and Vincent were impressed with the reforms implemented at Port-Royal, although concerned about some of the teachings. Independently of the teachings, the moral living and discipline of the Port-Royal community seemed to be what attracted vocations and followers . . . including Pascal.

As noted earlier, in 1646 as Étienne, Blaise's father, was recuperating from an injury, he was assisted by two men who introduced the teachings of Port-Royal to the Pascal family. They all embraced the teachings and began living the strict moral code of Jansenism. Blaise felt the need to turn to God, and away from the world, and for several years was his family's spiritual advisor, although he himself was torn between the world and an ascetic life. Étienne Pascal died in 1651, and three months after his death Jacqueline Pascal joined the community of nuns at Port-Royal.

Meanwhile, Blaise found himself torn between his life in the world, and the attraction of Port-Royal aceticism. He resumed his scientific interests, as a matter of fact, this was a period of intense scientific activity. He called it his "worldly period," apparently because he was not spending as much time being involved with the Port-Royal community.

Building on theories of Evangelista Torricelli and Galileo, he fashioned mercury barometers and was able to determine differences in air pressure at different elevations. This experimentation led him to develop a functioning theory of atmospheric pressure. He proved that a vacuum existed above the atmosphere; at the time Descartes denied the existence of a vacuum.

A friend who was a gambler, asked Pascal for help in determining the fairest way to divide the pot in certain games of chance if the games were interrupted before completion. This led to a correspondence with Pierre de Fermat in which they tried to determine the odds of each side's winning had the game been completed, and in so doing, they laid the foundations of probability theory.

In his work with fluids, he invented the hydraulic press and the syringe. In his effort to create a perpetual motion machine, he devised the roulette wheel. His final work in mathematics was on the cycloid, the curve traced by a point on the circumference of a rolling circle.

On November 23, 1654, Pascal's horses bolted and plunged off a bridge. Pascal was thrown into the roadway, badly shaken. That night, light flooded his room and he recognized Jesus. For the rest of his life Pascal carried around a piece of parchment sewn into his coat which was discovered after his death; it said:

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars . . . Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy . . . "This is life eternal that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ . . . May I not fall from him forever . . . I will not forget your word. Amen.

From that point on, Pascal tried to live primarily for God, and left the pursuit of science and mathematics. He gave much more to the poor and embraced the Jansenism of Port-Royal. At this point, the heresies of Jansenism were under attack by the Catholic Church, particularly by the Jesuits. He began writing a series of Lettres Provinciales (Provincial Letters) under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte, eighteen in all. They attacked the Jesuits and defended the Jansenists' demand for a return to morality and the Jansenists' interpretation of St. Augustine's belief in divine grace. In preparation for what he envisioned to more formal apologia of Jansenism, he began jotting down ideas, but this work was incomplete at his death in 1662. After his death, his notes were gathered together and published as Pensées.

These works came to be respected as great French literature, with brilliant irony and satire, but were also appreciated for their spirituality, even by those who could not agree with some of the doctrines he embraced.

At the beginning of this look at the life of Blaise Pascal, I learned that E.T. Bell saw him:

. . . primarily as a highly gifted mathematician who let his masochistic proclivities for self-torturing and profitless speculation on the sectarian controversies of his day degrade him to what would now be called a religious neurotic. On the mathematical side, Pascal is perhaps the greatest might-have-been in history.

Pascal was a great mathematician, but he might have been a greater mathematician if he had not embraced his faith in Jesus as fully as he did. Evidently, E.T. Bell's evaluation was based on the premise that mathematics is far more important than faith. Catholics could insist that faith is foremost, but, then again, Pascal's faith was in Jansenism, a heresy.

In the end, Pascal was an extremely gifted man who left the world better in mathematics, science and philosophy — and even in religion. Pope Alexander VII condemned the Lettres Provinciales; nevertheless, persuaded by Pascal's arguments, he condemned "laxity" in the Church and ordered a revision of casuistic texts — casuistry is a rhetorical method that was often used by Jesuit theologians.

The good news is: it is God who judges, not us.