1697-Blaise Pascals Letters Against Jesuits-Cologne Start Price USD 75.00 Current Price USD 95.00 Time Left - Bid Count 1 Buy It Now Price USD 95.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, September 03, 2008 End Time Sunday, September 07, 2008 Location Swampscott, MA See more about '1697-Blaise Pascals Letters Against Jesuits-Cologne' Description   Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Montalte,Louis de (ie Blaise PASCAL) Title LES PROVINCIALES, Ou Lettres Ecrites par Louis de Montalte, a un Provincial de ses Amis et aux RR.PP. Jesuites PlacePub Cologne (imprint is false, probably Amsterdam, Leiden or Paris) Publisher Schoute(n) 10th edition with additions Date 1697 Illustrations Description Duodecimo marbled calf with 5 raised bands gilt & compartment extra gilt with gilt, spine split. Collation: *12; A12-I12; K12-S12; [1-Blank]. (24pp)+432pp (last page misnumbered 230) leaf before title unless it is the original blank bound after the new endpapers. Blaise Pascal, (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he abandoned his scientific work and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées. Pascal was in poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday. The Provincial Letters* Beginning in 1656, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. His method of framing his arguments was clever: the Provincial Letters pretended to be the report of a Parisian to a friend in the provinces on the moral and theological issues then exciting the intellectual and religious circles in the capital. Pascal, combining the fervor of a convert with the wit and polish of a man of the world, reached a new level of style in French prose. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied the Pope himself, provoking Alexander VII to condemn the letters. But that didn't stop all of educated France from reading them. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments. He condemned "laxism" in the church and ordered a revision of casuistical texts just a few years later (1665–66). Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wide praise has been given to the Provincial Letters. Voltaire called the Letters "the best-written book that has yet appeared in France."[17] And when Bossuet was asked what book he would rather have written had he not written his own, he answered, the Provincial Letters of Pascal.[18] *Pascal's attack on the Jesuits which was immediately condemned to be burnt and put on the Prohibited Index Miracle When Pascal was back in Paris just after overseeing the publication of the last Letter, his religion was reinforced by the close association to an apparent miracle in the chapel of the Port-Royal nunnery. His 10-year-old niece, Marguerite Périer, was suffering from a painful fistula lacrymalis that exuded noisome pus through her eyes and nose—an affliction the doctors pronounced hopeless. Then, on March 24, 1657, a believer presented to Port-Royal what he and others claimed to be a thorn from the crown that had tortured Christ. The nuns, in solemn ceremony and singing psalms, placed the thorn on their altar. Each in turn kissed the relic, and one of them, seeing Marguerite among the worshipers, took the thorn and with it touched the girl's sore. That evening, we are told, Marguerite expressed surprise that her eye no longer pained her; her mother was astonished to find no sign of the fistula; a physician, summoned, reported that the discharge and swelling had disappeared. He, not the nuns, spread word of what he termed a miraculous cure. Seven other physicians who had had previous knowledge of Marguerite's fistula signed a statement that in their judgment a miracle had taken place. The diocesan officials investigated, came to the same conclusion, and authorized a Te Deum Mass in Port-Royal. Crowds of believers came to see and kiss the thorn; all of Catholic Paris acclaimed a miracle. Later, both Jansenists and Catholics used this well-documented miracle to their defense. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII referred to the case as proving that the age of miracles had not passed. Pascal made himself an armorial emblem of an eye surrounded by a crown of thorns, with the inscription Scio cui credidi—"I know whom I have believed."[19] His beliefs renewed, he set his mind to write his final, unfinished testament, the Pensées. Place a Bid!