In 1644, the nuns were dispersed by order of Louis XIV., against whose despotic caprices two Jansenist bishops had fought in support of the rights of the pope.  The Paris convent remained closed until 1669, when it and the one at Chevreuse, near Versailles were made independent of each other, a proceeding which resulted in the two institutions becoming opponents.  In 1708 the Convent of Port-Royal des Champs was suppressed, and, a year later, the beautiful and once prosperous community was destroyed, the buildings being levelled to the ground.  In 1780 the Paris convent was abolished; five years later the structure was converted into a hospital, and in 1814 it became the lying-in asylum of La Maternite.

In those two convents, which were practically one, was fomented and developed the entire religious movement of the seventeenth century, to which period belong the general study and development of theology, metaphysics, and morality.  Such great, good, and brilliant women as the Countess of Maure, Mlle. de Vandy, Anne de Rohan, Mme. de Bregy, Mme. de Hautefort, Mme. de Longueville, Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mme. de Sable were inmates of Port-Royal, or its friends and constant visitors.

Port-Royal may have been the cause of the civil war waged by the Frondists against the government.  It did bring on the struggle between the Jesuits, who were all-powerful in the Church, and the Jansenists.  The latter denied the doctrine of free will, and taught the absolutism of religion, the “terrible God,” the powerlessness of kings and princes before God—­a doctrine which brought down upon them the wrath of Louis XIV., for whom their notion of virtue was too severe, their use of the Gospel too excessive, and their Christianity impossible.

In its purest form, Port-Royalism was a return to the sanctity of the primitive church—­an attempt at the use, in French, of the whole body of Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers; it aimed to maintain a vigorous religious reaction in the shape of a reform, and that reform was vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church.

One family that is associated with Port-Royal gave to its cause no less than six sisters; the latter all belonged to the Convent of Port-Royal and were attached to the Jansenist party; of them, the Archbishop of Paris said that they were “as pure as angels, but as proud as devils.”  They were related to the one great Arnauld family, of which Antoine and his three sons—­Robert, Henri, and the younger Antoine, called “the great Antoine”—­were illustrious champions of Port-Royal.