American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)

"Carnal Quietism": Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadire Affair, 1731
Author(s): Mita Choudhury
Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter, 2006), pp. 173-186
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for EighteenthCentury Studies (ASECS).
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"CARNALQUIETISM":
IN
EMBODYINGANTI-JESUITPOLEMICS
THECATHERINE
CADIEREAFFAIR,1731

Mita Choudhury

During much of 1731, the public in Provence and throughout France and
Europe obsessively followed a scandalous case in which twenty-three year old
Catherine Cadiere accused her spiritual director, the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Girard,
of seduction, "spiritual incest," witchcraft, and the heretical doctrine of Quietism. The lurid story began in 1728 when Girard arrived in Toulon as the newlyappointed rector of the Seminaire royal de la marine.1 The fifty-year old rector
had a reputation for the devoutness he inspired in his penitents, many of them
women who appeared headed toward sainthood. And within her community, the
zealous Cadiere earned respect for her piety and charitable activities. It certainly
appeared to mark the meeting of kindred souls. In his memoirs the marquis
d'Argens caustically noted that "the reputation for making saints was as precious
to him [Girard] as the desire to be regarded as one was as violent for Cadiere."2
Within a year after Girard had assumed direction of Cadiere's spiritual life, her
devotion took a dramatic turn as signs of stigmata and visions appeared; the local
population became convinced that she, like Girard's other penitents, was destined
to be a saint. However, Cadi&re'sintense relationship with Girard began to disintegrate after she entered the convent of Ollioules in 1730. Subsequently, the bishop of Toulon replaced Girard as Cadiere's spiritual director with the avidly antiJesuit Carmelite prior Nicolas Girieux, who soon learned that the devotional bonds
between the famous director and his penitent concealed the well-worn narrative
of a lusty cleric seducing his young charge. Pare Nicolas prompted the young
woman to bring charges against the Jesuit before the bishop in late 1730; by

Mita Choudhuryis an AssociateProfessorof Historyat VassarCollege,andcurrentlyworking on a microhistory of the Cadiere affair to be published in Prentice Hall's Microhistory
Series in Western Civilization.
Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 39, no. 2 (2006) Pp. 173-186.

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January 1731, the Crown ordered the Parlement of Aix to hear the notorious
case. The public's insatiable fascination with the trial was well rewarded. Trial
briefs from both sides, which included personal letters and numerous testimonies,
were printed in France and even translated into English and German. The scandalous details were fodder for pamphlets, popular songs, plays, and engravings.
This essay will argue that the Cadiere affair represented more than a
sensational scandal of clerical hypocrisy and sexual betrayal, but reveals contemporary anxieties about spiritual integrity and clerical power, anxieties that were
mapped onto Catherine Cadiere's body. In trial briefs, pamphlets, and polemical
literature, lawyers and anonymous polemicists cast Cadiere into a victim of Quietism, a contemplative form of devotion that downplayed any notion of sin and
responsibility. Cadiere's lawyer Chaudon contended that Quietism enabled Girard to commit "spiritual incest," to possess and penetrate Cadidre's body and
soul, thus abusing his priestly authority. These accusations went beyond the principals in the case as the different authors shaped Cadiere into a powerful symbol
of Jesuit immorality and invasive influence. Cadiere's status as a passive female
and therefore, malleable figure enabled these authors to attach multiple meanings
to her body: erotic, theological, and political. Anti-Jesuit critics portrayed Girard
as abusing his authority through heresy and seduction and thus violating the sacred boundaries between sin and virtue, between individual and family. Moreover, these charges echoed the Jansenist hostility toward the Jesuits, toward their
theological principles and their influence over private families and the royal court.
Eager to bring down the Jesuits, the authors of the incendiary Jansenist periodical
the Nouvelles Ecclsiastiques made the public the primary judges of Jesuit theology and politics. Thus, Girard's domination of Cadiere came to signify an attack
orchestrated by the Jesuits on the larger body politic; detractors regarded the
Jesuit order as a foreign body that sought to control the Gallican church and the
Crown. The Jesuits' efforts to silence Cadiere and her supporters and to subvert
the legal process violated Cadiere's and ultimately, the public's rights as subjects
(if not citizens).
To understand how a provincial trial took on such meaning, it should be
noted that on both a local and national level, the Cadiere affair became one in
which various interests converged to fan fevered emotions and deepen political
and religious divisions. These rifts were exemplified in the trial's outcome when
the polarized Parlement of Aix issued an unprecedented split decision in which
twelve judges ordered Girard burned while another twelve voted for Cadiere's
hanging. Significantly, the case re-animated the strong partisan rancor between
the Jansenists and the Jesuits and thus helped make the conflict of national interest.3 The trial merged with the tumultuous factional politics surrounding the controversial anti-Jansenist papal bull Unigenitus. Earlier in March 1730 Cardinal
Fleury, Louis XV's premier minister, had outraged parlementary magistrates and
lawyers when he declared Unigenitus a law of state. His decision precipitated a
series of confrontations between the sovereign courts and the crown during 1731.
In addition, the beleaguered Jansenists also had to contend with the growing
convulsionary scandal in Paris that featured gyrating bodies and miraculous cures
around the tomb of the Jansenist deacon Francois de Paris.4 In the midst of such
setbacks, the Cadiere scandal provided Jansenist supporters with an opportunity

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to recover some ground by launching a spectacular offensive designed to expose

the moral and political treachery of the entire Society of Jesus. This landmark
affair combined the titillation of sexual scandal with explosive political and religious conflicts. In the process, it contributed to new and in some ways modern,
expressions of political subjectivity and agency.
The manifold representations of Cadiere's body highlight the complex
connections between religion, politics, and erotic discourse. In the most recent
scholarly treatment of the Cadiere scandal, Robert Kreiser argues that the trial
highlights the widening gap between elite and popular beliefs regarding witchcraft. For the purposes of this essay, I have chosen not to explore the accusations
of witchcraft already studied by Kreiser, but consider the rhetoric around Quietism and its connections to contemporary political concerns over clerical authority
and Unigenitus, which Kreiser has noted as an important dimension of the trial.
By delving into the theological dimensions of Quietism and spiritual incest argued in the case, I am continuing the work of scholars like Dale Van Kley who
have convincingly demonstrated that we take seriously the doctrinal controversies of the period in order to understand the emergence of modern politics fully.5
Moreover, this article links Jansenist quarrels with erotic political expression and
explores how the abstract theological and political arguments associated with
Jansenist spirituality and politics were made corporeal.6 Cadiere's body, then,
served as both an erotic entity and a politico-religious metaphor. It bore witness
against the Jesuits, a marker between two distinct theological and ultimately, two
divergent political visions of the church and the larger body politic. As my conclusion suggests, the significance of the Cadiere affair went beyond factional politics and political opportunism but became an event in which lawyers and polemicists began articulating political ideas that featured the individual as a participant
in the nation.
As one pamphlet Lettres ecrites d'Aix, pendant le procez du pere Girard
et de la Cadiere succinctly phrased it, for the Jansenists, "it is a great blessing to
find a Jesuit guilty and perhaps, with him, all the Jesuits of the universe."7 This
remark alluded to the longstanding animosity between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, which had originated in the religious quarrels during the reign of Louis XIV,
and indeed, the accusations of Quietism and spiritual incest against Jean-Baptiste
Girard also had their roots in this longstanding conflict.8 For their part, Jansenists loathed the humanist principles of the Jesuit Luis Molina who advocated
individual free will and sufficient grace, and they regard "Molinism" as unconscionable leniency toward sin. The Jesuits condemned the Jansenists' Augustinian
and anti-humanist stance, developed by the seventeenth-century theologian Cornelius Jansen. Jansenism highlighted humanity's inherent corruption, efficacious
grace, and predestinarianism.
These theological differences also acquired a political dimension. The
Jesuits order emphasized hierarchy and authority, principles that dovetailed with
Bourbon absolutism. In contrast, the weight Jansenists placed on individual conscience and on a more "republican" church structure, based on ecclesiastical councils, put them at odds with both the Jesuits and the Crown, a position articulated
in the theologian Pasquier Quesnel's Reflexions morales (1671). Quesnel advocated a broader definition of the church, one that essentially negated the hierar-

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chical relationships between upper and lower clergy, and between the laity and
the clergy. For a monarch whose reign was an exhibition of patriarchal hierarchy,
such pronouncements (and the discovery of Quesnel's leading role in what amounted to an international Jansenist conspiracy) represented a direct challenge to Louis XIV's authority. In response, Louis XIV pressured Pope Clement XI to issue the
bull Unigenitus in 1713 condemning the Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel's translation
and commentary on the New Testament.9 Unigenitus then was designed, once
and for all, to crush such challenges.
Ironically, although Louis XIV regarded Jansenism as the most dangerous example of heterodoxy, Jansenist theologians sided with the Sun King and the
Jesuits in their opposition to the mystical Quietism, which emerged in the late
seventeenth century. In the early modern era, Quietism reflected the mystical trends
within Counter-Reformation Catholicism that were embodied by celebrated figures such as Theresa of Avila and Francois de Sales, and it was prevalent in France,
Italy, and Spain. Quietism "is synonymous with negative mysticism" and "is characterized by a form of mental practice, called 'orison' in the seventeenth century,
in order to differentiate it from Ignacian meditation or from any other kind of
mental practice that advocates using the faculties of the mind to focus on an
object of meditation."10 While the origins of Quietism are complex and indeed,
go back to the Middle Ages, this form of mysticism became most closely associated with its leading proponent, the Spanish Miguel de Molinos. In his Spiritual
Guide (1675), Molinos urged followers to pursue a "negative" contemplative
state, a "blank slate" on which God engraved his blessing and his will. These
thoughts and revelations included temptation because "the greatest of all temptations was to have none at all," and "pure love" of God demanded an absence of
thought to "punishment, paradise, hell, death and eternity."11Molinos's focus on
the individual and the absence of any clerical authority in his theology made him
the target of the papacy, religious orders such as the Jesuits, and monarchs like
Louis XIV. Molinos was charged with heresy in 1687, his notoriety sealed by
rumors of questionable relations with some of his female followers.12
Despite their own deep differences, both Jansenists and Jesuits abhorred
Quietism because it represented an expression of faith devoid of any reason or
intellectual thought, and therefore any moral foundation. For the Jesuits, Molinos's contemplative doctrine gave the individual believer too much independence,
thus opening the door for unorthodox or heterodox manifestations of faith. Although both Jansenism and Quietism defined an individual's relationship with
God in terms of interiority, their demands on the individual and their views of the
Church made them distinctly different.13 In contrast to the Quietist emphasis on
complete abandonment during contemplation, Jansenism embraced a moral rigor
that called for mental and physical discipline from its followers. For Jansenists
who espoused an austere lifestyle demanding constant penance, the passive spiritual position at the heart of Quietism confounded moral boundaries dividing sin
and virtue. Moreover, the Jansenists envisioned a return to the ideal primitive
church while Quietists remained focused on the individual.
The divergent elements of Quietism and Jansenism, and the Jesuit/Jansenist conflict became enmeshed in the 1690s during the Quietist affair involving
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe-Guyon, Jacques Bossuet, bishop of Meaux

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and Frangois F6nelon, archbishop of Cambrai. Bossuet launched an attack on

Guyon because he regarded her Quietist principles as anti-hierarchical, anti-authority, and highly individualistic, thus subverting church orthodoxy, divine right
kingship as well as the gender hierarchies so central to Louis Quatorzian absolutism.14 In his campaign against Guyon, Bossuet enlisted the help of the Jansenist
theologian Pierre Nicole whose last work, Refutation des principales erreurs des
quietistes (1695) censured Guyon and Fen6lon; the Jansenists also supported Bossuet's effort to bring F6n6lon's case to the court of Rome.15 On the other side, the
Jesuits (who had condemned Molinos a decade earlier) sided with F6ndlon in
1699, and in Rome it was said that they put as much energy into his defense as
they had condemning Jansen.16 A decade and a half later, the humiliated F6n6lon
got his revenge. With the aid of the Jesuits, Fenlon helped bring about Unigenitus in 1713, which would ignite political turmoil for decades to come. The Cadiere
affair, then, represented payback against the Jesuits, who appeared as the architects of Jansenist persecution. The Cadiere/Girard trial enabled righteous foes of
the Jesuits "to unveil to the public the abyss to which the horrible maxims of the
Society lead."''17The charge of Quietism against Jean-Baptiste Girard would bring
the larger political and doctrinal differences between the two camps to the public's attention during an era of renewed conflict over Unigenitus.
Although the Cadiere/Girard case lacked concrete Jansenist elements in
and of itself, the blend of anti-Jesuit rhetoric and the critique of Quietism gave the
affair recognizable Jansenist overtones. While Nicolas Girieux, Cadiere's spiritual director after Girard, was a likely Jansenist, Cadiere herself was not identifiable as one. Nor was her barrister Chaudon. Indeed, the Jansenist Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques itself described Chaudon as a "Molinist," who took the case because
he was "so convinced of this Father's crime.. . that he did not believe that the
defense [of Cadiere] should be abandoned to another."18Nevertheless, the lawyer
tapped into stereotypes that Blaise Pascal had publicized in the devastatingly popular Lettres Provinciales (1656), which claimed that Jesuit morality played fast
and loose with Christian doctrine and practice. Chaudon and Cadiere's other
supporters fused together Jansenist anxieties about Quietism with these well-worn
stereotypes of Jesuits' seductive morality and their uncanny ability to insinuate
themselves into the hearts and homes of unsuspecting Christians. Both Chaudon
and Nicolas's lawyer Pascal repeatedly noted that Girard purportedly encouraged
Cadiere to ignore any anxieties about sin and blasphemy, and in the process, they
transformed Quietism into a form of Jesuit doctrine. Chaudon went so far as to
issue a pamphlet, Parallele des sentimens du p. Girard avec ceux de Molinos,
systematically comparing Girard's various instructions to Cadiere to the teachings of the infamous Quietist Molinos. Indeed, immediately following the article
outlining Chaudon's arguments on Girard's Quietism, the Nouvelles began a subsequent piece suggesting that Quietism was in effect a Jesuit epidemic since "Quietism has made progress in the towns of this province [Provence], where the Jesuits' direction prevails"19Thus, Jansenists interpreted the Cadiere/Girard conflict
as another chapter showcasing the perils of Jesuit influence, an attitude that fit
into the Jansenists' worldview that they were caught in a struggle between good
and evil.20

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In their characterization of Girard's Quietist teachings, the lawyers,

Cadiere herself, and the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques painted a sensual spiritual practice deeply at odds not just with the austerity of Jansenist discipline and penitence, but also fundamentally with Christian teachings. Quietism was, of course,
"heresy" (a charge Jansenists no doubt enjoyed pronouncing given the attacks
they had had to endure)," which the Nouvelles defined as a "false spirituality,"
delivered by a "false Prophet."21 At the core of Girard's teachings was the infamous phrase oubliez-vous, et laissez-faire, "forget yourself and let it happen"
(MI-CC, 119). Within a mystical framework, such an expression exhorted the
practitioner to abandon all thought and reason in favor of pure contemplation
and complete surrender to God. But Girard's critics argued that this maxim justified sinful behavior and blasphemy. In his Parallele des sentimens du pkre Girard
avec ceux de Molinos, Chaudon outlined how Girard promised Cadiere salvation
through the Quietist principles of "forgetfulness, annihilation, self-abandonment,"
principles that masked a host of "infamies."22 According to the lawyer Pascal,
such sentiments fostered a dangerous passivity in which the penitent's will "threw
off all propriety in order not to prevent God's works."23 Such unthinking compliance and absence of reflection prevented the believer from considering the sinful
nature of certain actions and therefore repenting.
The un-Christian essence of Quietism manifested itself in un-Christian
practices. Catherine Cadiere and another penitent found themselves unable to
pray. Instead of urging her to overcome this failure, Girard, claimed Cadidre, told
her not to worry, "that prayer being only a means to God, once one achieves this,
it becomes useless."24 The Jesuit also ordered Cadiere to partake of the Eucharist
frequently, without any preparation and in different churches. According to Chaudon, Girard encouraged his penitents to take communion even after they went on
pleasure expeditions, including the theatre (MI-CC, 8, 72, 75; Parallele, 14, 26).
And when Cadibre reported that she continually imagined "infamous representations, of horrible nude images of men and women, he [Girard] responded that
God wished to purify me through them" (Justification, 9). The lawyer Pascal interpreted these Quietist teachings as an inversion of the moral order: "the path of
crime is shown as the path that leads to God: libertinism is a virtue, and such a
great virtue, that insensibility regarding acts of the flesh perfects the union with
God."25 Thus, the Jesuit advanced theological arguments that seemingly denied
the notion of sin, thereby leading an innocent Cadiere right into sin.
Pascal reminded his audience of Girard's real intentions in using seductive theology by repeatedly using the expression "carnal Quietism," a phrase so
evocative that it made its way into a poem about the affair.26 The Nouvelles
Eccldsiastiques triumphantly noted, "the seductor went from theory to practice"
as Girard seduced Cadiere's soul in order to take possession of her body. What
happened to that body of course was what drove much of the public interest in
the trial. Persistent readers would not have to wait until 1740 for the infamous
Therese Philosophe's account of Father Dirrag's seduction of Mademoiselle Eradice! They could peruse Chaudon's exhaustive account in the Memoire instructif
pour Catherine Cadiere as well as the Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere,
for descriptions of the "indecent postures" in which the young penitent found
herself when alone in her bedroom with Girard. Cadiere reported that after hav-

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ing locked the door, Girard would draw her close, kissing and embracing her, and
undressing her. He also demanded that Cadi&rekneel before him, sometimes in
the nude, while he disciplined her and then kissed the areas he had just beaten.
The satirical pamphlet Antifactum Criti-Comique du pere Girard mocked the
Jesuit's assertion that he was only identifying signs of stigmata: "it was an anatomical study that pere Girard was conducting on the lovable body of his devoted
penitent; one can say that she is at his beck and call, but one cannot identify
through which route the hand made its way five or six fingers above a beautiful
tit and a little above a pretty thigh, without one touching the other."27
While such remarks and Cadiere's artless descriptions provided an avid
public with libertine images, Chaudon's references to Girard's perfidy also underscored the sacrilegious nature of their liaison. Supposedly, Girard's "love for his
penitent was so violent, that neither the constraint of the grill, nor the holiest of
places were able to prevent him from embracing and kissing her," referring to the
Jesuit's purported advances while Cadiere was at the convent of Ollioules (MICC, 142). And, in the Memoire instructif Chaudon referred to another of Girard's expressions that would be the basis for the accusations of libertine behavior. On July 22, 1730 Girard wrote to Cadi&re:"I have a great hunger to see you
again and to see all" (MI-CC, 24, 119). Hunger suggested lust, and seeing "all"
referred to the signs of stigmata, including those that were on her side, "four
fingers below her left breast," which he regarded with "such sensuality" (MI-CC,
120, 142). According to Chaudon, "it was notorious in Toulon that this chaste
Director had made a little seraglio of seven to eight devoted women with stigmatism. What a scandal!" (MI-CC, 150). Stigmata no longer functioned as a subject
of reverent contemplation of Christ's suffering, but a path to desire. Chaudon's emphasis on Girard's fascination with Cadiere's supposed stigmata and indeed, his
penitent's entire body were not just rhetorical ploys to keep the reader's attention.
They projected vivid images of Girardas subverting Christian places and symbols.28
I would maintain that for non-Jansenists like Chaudon as well the authors of the Nouvelles Eccldsiastiques, Girard's purported Quietism and his seduction represented a spectacular fulfillment of the sensuous baroque Catholicism and casuistry associated with the Jesuits. Robert Kreiser has noted that "not
since the publication of Pascal's devastating Lettres Provinciales some three-quarters of a century earlier had the Jansenists mounted so effective and so potentially
damaging an attack on the moral position of the Society of Jesus."29 Indeed, the
traits of Quietism that Jansenist polemicists associated with Girard affirmed the
moral laxity trenchantly described by the philosopher Blaise Pascal in the Lettres
Provinciales. In the Provinciales, the Jansenist character outlines how the Jesuits
sought to "govern all conscience ... Thus are they prepared for all sorts of persons, and so ready are they to suit the supply to the demand.. . you will see so
many crimes palliated and irregularities tolerated."30 According to Pascal, the
Jesuit drive for domination led to a casuistry so permissive that it in effect erased
sin. Anti-Girard authors harped on the rector's efforts to discourage Cadiere from
considering her behavior as sinful. Girard's insistent embraces exposed the sensual side of Jesuit theology, which quickly bled into sexual licentiousness. Chaudon
clearly linked Quietism with the Jesuits, thus making Girard's crimes those of his
order. The lawyer often referred to Girard not by his name, but as "the Jesuit" or

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more pointedly "the Quietist Jesuit" (MI-CC). He also used widely-known Jansenist arguments that pointed to the sensuous elements in Jesuit doctrine. For example, his observations regarding Cadiere's frequent and clandestine communion
echoed the great Antoine Arnauld's 1643 notorious condemnation of the Jesuits'
practice of frequent communion. The Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques pointedly noted
that Girard's libertine behavior was like that of another Jesuit, pere Rhodat, who
had scandalized Toulouse with similar acts and had also received the order's protection despite his transgressions. According to the Nouvelles, "who does not
know that among these fathers, the errors of individuals become in some way
those of the whole Society."31
Behind this fear of Jesuit depravity and moral incertitude was the Jesuits'
very real power as spiritual directors and confessors, which had enabled Girard
to become such an insidious presence in the lives of Cadiere and his other penitents. Cadiere's supporters claimed that in abusing his position, Girard had committed spiritual incest, which canon law defined as a crime violating spiritual
relations through carnal association. Moreover, sexual liaisons between a clerical
director and his penitent encompassed a multitude of sins as the term "spiritual
incest" indicates.32 When Girard took possession of Cadiere's body and soul, he
established himself as the sole source of authority. The Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques
noted how Girard'sletters instructed Cadiere to think of him as her "father,brother,
friend, and son."33 Girard infiltrated the Cadiere household to the point that
Madame Cadiere accepted his orders as sacrosanct. In the process, he displaced
Catherine's natural family, and this "master Quietist" became Cadiere's master, a
term repeatedly used in the different trial briefs.34In essence, Girard misused the
weight of his position within the church and his order's prestige to penetrate
Cadiere's body, her spiritual life, and the inner sanctum of her family. He presented a threat not just to Cadiere and her family but the larger community. Indeed,
spiritual incest was not just Girard's crime, but was presented as an epidemic. For
example, in Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere, Cadiere claimed that
"my story will teach my sex that they should be on guard against the most specious appearances of piety and religion, as soon as their directors wish to engage
them in new paths, and tear them from the paths marked by the Bible, and the
example of the Saints"(Justification, 5). As the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques pointedly noted, Chaudon had produced other examples of Jesuits, such as Father
Mena in Spain, who had committed spiritual incest (MI-CC, 150-2).
The combination of spiritual incest, sexual transgressions, and Quietist
heresy, thus represented an indictment of "Jesuit morality," charges that tapped
into widespread hostility against the Jesuits. The Parisian lawyer Edmond Barbier
noted in his entries on the Cadiere affair that "one hates the Jesuits mortally."35
Popular polemics openly targeted the Jesuits, referring to how Girard, a "deputy
of Ignatius" kept "the spirit of the Ignatius's descendants" alive through his sermons.36 Anonymous authors expressed outrage at the great lengths the Jesuits
went to protect Girard, regardless of his guilt.37 The deep-seated nature of this
anger was also revealed by the popular demonstrations in Toulon during which
Girard was burned in effigy or paraded around as a devil, all acts of anger against
the Parlement of Aix's ruling.38To some extent, this resentment reflected the power
of the Jesuits in Toulon, but it was also provoked by distrust of Unigenitus.39

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As noted earlier, national politics surrounding the bull had heated up and
aroused new anxieties about abuses of clerical authority. For example, during
1731 and into 1732 the Parlement of Paris argued for the preservation of the
appel comme d'abus, the appeals process through which individuals or groups
could bring cases of clerical infractions before the secular courts.40 In the face of
Fleury's efforts to quell dissent, the parlements resisted what they regarded as the
clergy's efforts to penetrate and usurp secular authority. Thus, the plight of Catherine Cadiere quickly merged with the larger ecclesiastical conflict for the hearts
and minds of a growing public. Girard's seduction and rape of Cadiere's body
was a violation of Cadiere's trust and innocence. Moreover, her plight symbolized
the vulnerability of the laity as a whole before an ambitious clergy. Within her
lawyer's factums and various polemics, Cadiere was also a victim whose troubles
exposed the moral boundaries that separated the Jesuits from the public, her public.41 When asking the parlementary magistrates to punish Girard, Cadiere's lawyer Chaudon raised questions designed to alarm the public: "If the crimes of the
accused remain unpunished, what will happen to Religion? to the Sacraments? to
the Public?"42 Cadi&re'scase, then, was part of the same fight against clerical
encroachment, especially Jesuit domination, which the sovereign courts were
waging on a larger scale.
Chaudon's remarks also suggest how contemporaries fused together religious concerns with political ones as Cadiere's body became a microcosm of the
body politic, or more precisely the body politic under siege. The lawyer Pascal
referred to Quietism as a "poison," thus reiterating remarks made by Chaudon
who, in his discussion of Miguel Molinos, described Quietism as a "contagion"
infecting France.43A popular poem presented Cadiere describing how Girard had
essentially "forced" himself on her, infecting her with "vermin."44This language
of pathology was further sustained by Cadiere's claims that she had been poisoned twice: once, in order to induce a miscarriage and another time, to force her
to retract her accusations against Girard. The different legal briefs, pamphlets,
and songs attacked the carriers of such disease, namely spiritual directors and
especially Jesuit directors. Indeed, both Chaudon and Pascal characterized Quietism as a foreign disease; Chaudon used the example of the Spanish Jesuit Mena to
emphasize how Girard's crimes were essentially Jesuit crimes. Both lawyers either
glossed over or ignored the French Quietist controversies over Guyon and Fendlon
and instead, devoted their energies to drawing parallels between the Spaniard
Molinos and Girard.
What did the invasion of Cadiere's body by this foreign influence mean in
the context of the political culture of the 1730s? Unlike the 1750s and the 1770s,
the 1730s was not a period in which great debates about the nation and sovereignty were at the heart of political discourse.45 Nevertheless, as both Peter Campbell and Thomas E. Kaiser have demonstrated, the foundation was being established for such debate. During the early 1730s, parlementary magistrates and
lawyers laid claim to the sovereign courts' importance as a buttress against overreaching clerical authority and arbitrary royal initiatives such as the declaration
of Unigenitus as a law of state. The fierce conflicts surrounding clerical jurisdiction
and the status of Unigenitus made the Jesuits even more suspect. The "foreignness" of the Jesuits was not necessarily the result of the order's Spanish origins

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but because the Jesuits owed primary allegiance to the Pope and were not answerable to French authorities, either secular or ecclesiastical.46 I would argue that the
power and visibility of the Jesuits, especially with the Cadikre affair, made them
an easy target and therefore, emblematic of heavy-handed ecclesiastic power. The
trial afforded Jansenists and members of the legal profession a sensational opportunity to illustrate how the Jesuits represented a threat to the body politic because
they seemed to show utter disrespect for the laws of France and the rights of its
subjects. Indeed, the political implications of the trial were not lost to the larger
public. For example, one poem directly linked Girard's actions to the larger body
politic: "these...political ruses/have corrupted all Spirit/and through their [the
Jesuits] horrible writings; and through their impious writings/the King, the magistrates, the Princes/ the Kingdoms and the provinces/ tremble under their authority."47A widely-circulated three-act play, Le Nouveau Tarquin, cast Girard as the
despotic Tarquin because of "his pride and his usurpation of sovereignty."48Just
as Girard had usurped the place of Cadiere's family when he had committed "spiritual incest," the Jesuits had insinuated themselves into the French polity with the
intention of commanding complete and unquestioning submission, at the expense
of other French institutions.
I would like to suggest that the significance of Cadiere trial goes beyond
illustrating how issues of competing jurisdiction weakened Old Regime institutions and changed the political landscape. The Cadiere scandal also allows us to
consider how new individual and more modern political identities emerged from
religious conflict. The model believer of the early modern era was configured in
"feminine" terms, passive, obedient, and subordinate, precisely the characteristics expected of the ideal subject. Although Jansenists would concur with this
ideal, they increasingly promoted an alternative image of the true believer that
stressed the importance of personal conscience, and thereby, drew a distinct line
between passivity and submission. This rhetoric would be at its strongest during
the refusal of sacraments in the 1750s when lawyers argued, on the grounds of
private conscience, that ultramontane clerics could not refuse an individual communion or the last rites. Cadiere's defense suggested that such elements were already surfacing and becoming more politicized some two decades earlier. Girard
had violated Cadiire's trust and faith by demanding complete subordination.
Moreover, the Jesuits had sought to hide his transgressions by violating Cadiere's
rights as a subject. According to the author of the Anatomie de l'arrest rendu par
le parlement de Provence, the fact that twelve of the judges reconfigured Cadiere's
accusations as "calumnies" attested to the efforts to protect the Jesuits at all costs:
"one wanted by this mixture of true and false crimes confuse the innocent with
the guilty.., if not in France, than at least everywhere else, if not today, than at
least in the future."49

As Chaudon presented the case, what had happened to Cadiere was not
just a fall from virtue, but an infringement of her spiritual autonomy and an
affront to civic as well as religious morality. Cadiere remained a "feminine" figure, timid and retiring, but she was also the proto-citizen who found ways of
exercising agency. Girard had rendered her will passive through the language of
seductive heresy. In the pamphlet Justification written in the first person, Cadiere
repeatedly referred to Girard's use of language to captivate and control her: "at

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first he only spoke to me in ordinary language, gradually, he familiarized me with

a language that was always unknown to me, and gave me ideas that were completely new but very flattering."50 As a mentor, Girard suppressed Cadiere's will
and her ability to distinguish right from wrong. Significantly, it was the legal
process of the case, especially once the trial fell under the purview of the secular
courts, that gave Cadiere back her "voice." Freed from Girard, Cadi&rewas able
to tell her own story in the Justification and the pamphlet Les Veritables sentimens de Mademoiselle Cadiere. It is unlikely that the semi-educated Cadiere wrote
these pieces herself. Nor is it my contention that pamphlets signed with her name
represented a "feminist" act of agency. Nevertheless, the male writers who were
the likely architects of these two pieces chose to give this passive female a say. Her
very passivity allowed them to make Cadiere the symbol of an injured individual,
willing to sacrifice her reputation by going against the powerful and protected
Jesuits. The defense of Cadi&re,then, represented an effort to safeguard civic
morality, as well as religious purity, and it suggested the emergence of a political
subjectivity that pointed to individual, secular rights.

NOTES
The author would like to thank Dana Rabin, Ann Little, John Reisbord for their comments and
suggestions for this article. Joan Landes, and Sarah Maza provided invaluable feedback on earlier
versions of the material. Research on the subject was made possible by funds received from the Dean
of Faculty's office at Vassar College. Special thanks to Dolly Choudhury without whom this article
would not have been possible. The article is dedicated to Nicholas Sujoy Reisbord.
1. For summaries of the affair, see B. Robert Kreiser, "The Devils of Toulon: Demonic Possession
and Religious Politics in Eighteenth-Century Provence," in Church, State and Society under the Bourbon Kings of France, ed. Richard M. Golden (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1982), 173-221;
Gaston Delayen, La Sainte de Monsieur de Toulon: Le Proces de la Cadiere et du pare Girard et la
grande querelle du Parlement de Provence (Paris: Justitia, 1928); A.-Jacques, Pares, Le Proces Girard-Cadiere (Toulon Aix...1731) (Marseille: l'Institut Historique de Provence, 1928).
2. "La reputation de faire des saintes lui 6tait aussi chere, que l'envie de passer pour telle 6tait
violente chez la Cadiere." Jean Baptiste De Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, Memoires du monsieur le
marquis d'Argens: contenant le recit des aventures (Paris: F. Buisson, 1807), 283.
3. Kreiser, "Devils of Toulon," 198-200; Monique Cubells, La Provence des Lumieres: les parlementaires d'Aix au 18eme siecle (Paris: Maloine, 1984), 276-7.
4. Peter R. Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745 (London: Routledge, 1996); Catherine-Laurence Maire, Les Convulsionnaires de Saint-Medard (Paris: Gallimard/
Julliard, 1985); B. Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978).
5. See Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution. From Calvin to the Civil
Constitution, 1560-1791 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1996). Catherine Maire, De la cause de
Dieu a la cause de la nation : le jansenisme au XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998).
6. On the body and early modern politics, see, for example, Lynn Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the
Body Politic (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991); Antoine de Baecque, Le Corps de l'histoire:
mitaphores et politiques, 1770-1800 (Paris: Clamann-Levy, 1993); Sara E. Melzer and Kathryn
Norberg, eds., From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1998); Laura Lunger Knoppers and
Joan B. Landes, eds., Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca:
Cornell Univ. Press, 2004.)

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7. "C'est un grand bien de trouver un Jesuite coupable et s'il se peut, avec lui, tous les Jesuites de
l'univers." Lettres ecrites d'Aix, pendant le procez du pere Girard, et de la Cadiere; contenant plusieurs anecdotes curieuses dont le public n'est pas encore instruit (Hereafter LE) (n.p., [1731]), 4.
8. For detailed discussion of these differences, see Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France 1757-1765 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), 6-36.
9. For a discussion of Unigenitus, see Edmond Preclin, Les Jansenistes du XVIIIe siecle et la
constitution civile du clerge (Paris: Libraire Universitaire J. Gambier, 1929); Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics, 10-26.
10. Marie-Florine Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront the Modern World: Marie de l'Incarnation
(1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717) (Albany: State Univ. of NewYork Press, 1998), 143.
11. Jean-Robert Argomathe, Le Quietisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973), 32-6.
12. Ibid., 37-9; Arthur Broekhuysen, "The Quietist Movement and Miguel de Molinos," Journal
of Religion and Psychical Research 14, 3 (July 1991): 139-43.
13. For a sustained comparison of Jansenism and Quietism, see Louis Dupre, "Jansenism and
Quietism," Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern, eds. Louis Dupre and Don E. Saliers, vol. 18 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest (New York:
Crossroad, 1989), 121-41.
14. R. N. Frost, "Authority in the Bossuet-Fenelon Debate," Evangelical Theological Society Papers (1992); Louis Cognet, Crepuscule des mystiques: Bossuet, Fenelon (Belgium: Desclke, 1958);
Catharine Randall, "'Loosening the Stays'": Madame Guyon's Quietist Opposition to Absolutism,"
Mystics Quarterly 26, 1 (March 2000): 15-22. See also Linda Timmermans, L'Acces des femmes a la
culture (1598-1715): un ddbat d'idees de Saint Francois de Sales a la marquise de Lambert (Paris:
Champion, 1993), 547-67; Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront the Modern World, 143.
15. Frost, "Authority in Bossuet-F6nelon Debate;" Armogathe, Quietisme, 88-97.
16. Armogathe, Quietisme, 91.
17. "Il s'agit de devoiler au public les abimes ou conduisent les maximes horribles de la Societe."
LE, 4.
18. "Si persuade du crime de ce P.... il n'a pas cru en devoir abandonner la d6fense a un autre."
Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques {hereafter NE} (June 16, 1731), 117.
19. "Le Quietisme fait de progres dans les villes de cette Province oii la direction des Jesuites
prvaut." NE (June 16, 1731), 120.
20. On this Manichaen outlook, see Maire, De la cause de Dieu, 182-204; Catherine Maire,
"L'6glise et la nation: du dp6ot de la verite au depot des lois, la traj6ctoire janseniste au XVIIIe
siecle," Annales: economies, societes, civilisations 46 (1991): 1177-84.
21. Chaudon, Memoire instructif pour demoiselle Catherine Cadiere de la ville de Toulon ... contre
le pere Jean-Baptiste Girard jesuite, recteur du seminaire royal de la Marine dudit Toulon {Hereafter
MI-CC}, vol. 1 of Recueil general des pieces concernant le procez entre la demoiselle Cadiere, de la
ville de Toulon; et le pere Girard, jesuite (La Haye: Swart, 1731), 72; NE (June 16, 1731), 119.
22. Chaudon, Parallkle des sentimens du pere Girard avec ceux de Molinos (Hereafter Parallkle),
vol. 8 of Receuil general, 22.
23. "La volonte se depoiiille de toute propriete pour ne pas empecher les op&rations de Dieu."
Pascal, Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas de Saint-Joseph, prieur des Carmes dechaussez du
couvent de la ville de Toulon ... contre le pere Jean-Baptiste Girard, vol. 5 of Recueil gendral, 99.
24. "Que la priere n'6tant que le moyen de parvenir a Dieu, une fois qu'on y 6toitparvenu, elle
devenoit inutile." Justification de damoiselle Catherine Cadiere contenant un recit fiddle de tout ce
qui s'est passe entre cette damoiselle et le p. Jean-Baptiste Girard (Hereafter Justification), vol. 1 of
Recueil general, 8.
25. Pascal, Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas, 100.

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26. Ibid.; "Poeme," Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Manuscrits Frangais, {hereafter BNF, Ms.
Fr.}, 23, 859, f. 137.
27. "C'est l'Anatomie que le P. Girard a fait de l'aimable carcasse de sa Devote; on peut dire de lui
qu'il a vfi au doigt et a l'oeil, mais on ne peut pas definir par quel chemin la main est arrivee a cinq ou
six doigts au dessous d'un beau teton, et un peu a dessous d'une jolie cuisse, sans manier ou l'un ou
l'autre." Antifactum critique-comique du pere Girard, ou reponse anticipee aux ecrits que M. Pazery
donnera un jour au public.., par son tres-humble serviteur, le nouveau Chrystome Mathanasias,
vol. 8 in Recueil general, 8.
28. In her work on food in medieval Christianity, Caroline Bynum has demonstrated the centrality of corporeal images, particularly of blood, as a part of Christian worship. According to Bynum,
eating and hunger could signify a desire for union with God, as in the case of Catherine of Siena.
Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1987), 65, 177-8.
29. Kreiser, "Devils of Toulon," 185.
30. Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, trans. Thomas McCrie, Pensees; Provincial Letters, (New
York: Modern Library, 1941), 374-6. See also Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of
Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1988), 229-49.
31. "Mais qui ne sait que chez ces PP. les egaremens des particuliers deviennent en quelque sorte
ceux de toute la Societe." NE (March 20, 1731), 53. On Rhodat, see NE (September 171, 1731),
180.
32. Codified under Justinian, "spiritual incest" outlawed sexual relations between those connected through a spiritual association, such as godparents and godchildren. The term also applied to
spiritual directors and their charges. Louis Haas, "Boccaccio, Baptismal Kinship and Spiritual Incest," Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme 13 (1989): 344.
33. NE (February 6, 1731), 26.
34. Memoire instructif pour le pere Nicolas, 100. Justification, 9.
35. "On hait mortellement les Jesuites." Edmond Barbier, Chronique de la rigence et du rbgne de
Louis XV (1718-1763) ou de Journal de Barbier, 8 vols. (Paris: Charpentier, 1857), 2: 201.
36. "Autre reponse a l'ode apolog&tique pour le pere Girard, commengant par: "Vous qui de
l'equitable astre," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 8; "Poeme," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 56.
37. See for example "L'Entre triomphante du pere Girard jesuite aux enfers suivie de son retour
sur la terre," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 29.
38. Maurice Agulhon and Paul-Albert Fevrier, Histoire de Toulon (Privat: Toulouse, 1980), 139.
39. "Poeme," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 56; "Calotte sur le Parlemen d'Aix. Le dos a dos du
Parlement d'Aix," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 181.
40. Campbell, Power and Politics, 247-50.
41. Les Veritables sentimens de Mademoiselle Cadibre, tels qu'elle les a donnez a son confesseur,
ecrits de sa propre main, pour les rendre publics, vol. 1 of Receuil general, 7.
42. "Si les crimes de l'Accus6 restent impunis, que deviendra la Religion? que deviendront les
Sacremens? que deviendra le Public?" MI-CC, 172
43. Memoire instructif pour le p. Nicolas, 100, MI-CC, 73-4.
44. "Imputation de Mlle. Cadiere, parodie de Corneille," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 28.
45. The notable exception is the lawyer Francois de Maraimberg's 1730 memoire declaring the
parlements to be "'the Senate of the nation, charged with rendering Justice to the subjects of the
King." David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 92.

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46. Catherine-Laurence Maire, "La legende noire des Jesuites," L'Histoire, 84 (December 1978):
38-45.
47. "Ces. . . ruses politiques/Ont corrompu tous les Esprits/ Et par leurs horribles Ecrits/ Et par
leurs impies Ecrits/Les Roys, les magistrates les Princes/Les Royaumes et les provinces/ Tremblent
sous leur autorite." "Autre reponse a l'ode apologetique," BNF, Ms. Fr., 23, 859, f. 8.
48. "J'ay prefere Tarquin a tout autre a cause de son orgueil et de son usurpation a la souverainete."
Le Nouveau Tarquin, comedie en trois actes, vol. 1 of Recueil general, 3.
49. "On a voulu par ce melange de vrais et de faux crimes confondre l'innocent avec le
coupable . . . sinon en France, du moins ailleurs, sinon aujourd'hui, du moins a l'avenir." Anatomie
de l'arrest rendu par le parlement de Provence, le dix octobre 1731. Sur l'affaire de la demoiselle
Cadibre, et du R.P.J.B. Girard, Jesuite. Adresse a M. L. B. par un magistrat d'un autre parlement
(n.p., [1731]), 8.
50. "II ne me parla d'abord que le langage ordinaire, insensiblement il me familiarisa avec un
langage qui m'avoit tofijours ete inconnu, et me donna des id&estoutes nouvelles pour moi, mais tres
flatteuses." Justification, 28.

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