This article poses a number of questions around its subject matter, from which I develop some explanatory frameworks and further conceptualizations of Quietism. It addresses, primarily, the questions: What is Quietism? What were the issues of power and authority leading to the infamous Quietist Controversy in late seventeenth-century France? And subsequently, what is the nature of Quietism’s connection to the Quaker theological tradition?

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‘Upon the Quakers and the Quietists’: Quietism, Power and Authority in Late Seventeenth-Century France, and its Relation to Quaker History and Theology

In the fall of 1730, Catherine Cadière, a young woman with a growing reputation as a holy figure and mystic, accused Jean-Baptiste Girard, her Jesuit spiritual director, of seduction, heresy, abortion, and bewitchment. The resulting investigation and court case became a cause célèbre that reverberated from the provincial French port city of Toulon where it originated to the halls of Versailles and beyond. In the decades that followed, the Cadière scandal continued to resonate in the public sphere, serving as one inspiration for Jean Baptiste de Boyer’s famous pornographic novel, Thérèse philosophe (Paris: Fayard, 1986). In this well-conceived and engagingly written microhistory, Mita Choudhury explores this affair in all its rich detail. In doing so she brings to light how a salacious sex scandal that fascinated the public for years became a focus for broader debates about the Jesuits and the place of religious and political authority in French society. Through Choudhury’s careful analysis it becomes clear that many of the underlying issues that made the case so compelling to eighteenthcentury contemporaries also make it of real interest to modern historians. While seemingly a private affair, Girard’s alleged abuse of his position of trust and the efforts of ecclesiastical and royal officials to shape the investigation led both Jansenist and philosophe supporters of Cadière to critique the foundations of traditional religious and political authority in the kingdom. The case also provides a relatively early example of the growing role of public opinion and an emerging public sphere in shaping French political, religious, and social discourse in the decades leading up to the French Revolution. This book makes several useful contributions to Jesuit studies. First, it provides an example of how and why alleged scandalous behavior by an individual Jesuit became the subject of national interest and how his supposed misdeeds inspired broader attacks on the Society as an institution. Well-established anti-Jesuit narratives provided the context in which scandalous accusations like Cadière’s resonated. However embarrassing, the Cadière affair did not fundamentally compromise the Society’s mission and presence in France, but it did offer yet another example of Jesuit misconduct for their opponents, and in this way played a role in the Society’s ultimate suppression in 1764. Choudhury’s study also shows how the Jesuits’ close relationship with the monarchy was increasingly a liability in the decades following the death of Louis xiv, as Jesuit critics associated the Society with what they perceived as royal and

The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint: A Tale of Sex, Religion, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France

This article provides a commentary on the opaque and often contradictory arguments of ‘Humanistic Quietism’, Samuel Beckett's 1934 review of Thomas MacGreevy's Poems. Using Beckett's complicated relationship to both his own Protestant upbringing and the Catholicism of MacGreevy as a starting point, the article proposes new ways of understanding Beckett's ambivalent comments about MacGreevy's interiority, prayer-like poetry, humility, and quietism. It draws on Beckett's comments on Rilke, Andre Gide, and Arnold Geulincx, as well as his familiarity with Dante, to unpack the review's dense allusions and make sense of Beckett's aesthetic allegiances.

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Humility, Self-Awareness, and Religious Ambivalence: Another Look at Beckett's ‘Humanistic Quietism’

A contribution to the sixth installment of the Common Knowledge symposium "Apology for Quietism," this article addresses a) the extent to which the familiar term "Buddhist quietism" is legitimate, b) the use of the term by Jesuit missionaries in Asia at the time that Catholic quietism was briefly flourishing in Europe, and c) the use of the term in the European philosophical controversy over Spinozism. Faure argues that, in most cases, the European critique of Buddhism was aimed at European enemies. Chan Buddhism in China and Zen in Japan came to be associated with nihilism as well as quietism, and the association proved resilient down into the twentieth century, but the Jesuit critique has a peculiar provenance. The Jesuits in China borrowed arguments against Buddhism from neo-Confucianist allies, yet the Confucian critique of Buddhism was itself indebted to arguments that had been directed by Buddhist schools against one another. Certain Chan schools had accused other Chan schools of quietism and nihilism, and Western scholars even in the later twentieth century have taken sides in these disputes as well. However, Faure argues, the "no-thought" of Chan is not the "blank slate" of Christian quietism, on which God engraves his will and blessings. Nor does Buddhist quietism lead to the extasis of mystical union. Moreover, Buddhism was perceived by East Asian rulers mainly as an ideological weapon and only secondarily as a soteriological doctrine. Indeed "warrior monks" in Japan formed bands that attacked all who threatened their interests, and the country could not be unified under Tokugawa rule until this activist Buddhism was quelled. The article concludes with an expression of admiration for quietism and a wish that there might be more of it in Buddhism now.

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IN THE QUIET OF THE MONASTERY Buddhist Controversies over Quietism

In this introduction to the fourth part of an ongoing symposium on quietism, Perl, the editor of the sponsoring journal Common Knowledge , remarks on a new question raised in this latest grouping of articles. Can there be such a thing as a " mezza voce quietism"? Can there be activist quietists or quietist activists or active teachers of quietism without self-contradiction? Perl takes Gandhi and "passive resistance" as his own test case, concluding that Gandhi was a teacher of quietism and that satyagraha was a type of moral education directed at those (first the South Africans, then, more momentously, the British in India) whose spirits were imperiled by their self-confident certainty and whose manners were spoiled by their indelicacy and intrusiveness.

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Introduction: Mezza Voce Quietism?

An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history indicates that the relationship between the Jesuits and Quietism was shaped by politics as well as by concerns of theological orthodoxy. During the late 1690s, the Jesuits championed Francois Fenelon accused of Quietism at the same time as they spearheaded an attack against Quietism in Burgundy, emphasizing crimes of spiritual incest or the abuse of clerical authority. Such ambiguity indicates that the Jesuits were motivated by a desire to consolidate political power in Louis XIV . . . trades court. However, the fusion of Quietist heresy, charges of spiritual incest, and political gamesmanship would ultimately make the Jesuits themselves vulnerable to claims of heresy and abuse when the Girard/Cadiere affair became a national scandal in 1731. This essay argues that this disquiet over clerical behavior and power was articulated in a changing political culture between the late seventeenth century and the 1730s. Growing dissatisfaction against the crown established a new political consciousness, one that regarded the politics of secrecy as problematic if not outright illegitimate. The secrecy of the confession, the emphasis on interiority seemingly at the expense of morality, and the enigmatic language of mysticism, all associated with Quietism played into fears of clerical (or “Jesuit”) cabal and conspiracy. When Jesuit opponents linked the order to Quietism, they presented the Jesuits as threats to an emerging set of political values in which legitimate authority was transparent and open while illegitimate power operated in the shadows.

A Betrayal of Trust: The Jesuits and Quietism in Eighteenth-Century France

This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called “Apology for Quietism.” This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the “activist” Susan Sontag’s attraction to the “quietist” Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the “activist” William Empson’s attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson’s lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces (and to Sharon Cameron’s work on the topic in her book Impersonality ). The author, who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls (quoting Sontag) “the need for repose.”

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Introduction: “The Need for Repose”

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A Betrayal of Trust: The Jesuits and Quietism in Eighteenth-Century France

Introduction: “The Need for Repose”