Port-Royal. La preghiera e la liturgia (1609-1669). I percorsi di spiritualità e l'elaborazione della resistenza.

Throughout the XVII century Port-Royal nuns face various challenges that compromise their overall existence. In 1650s and 1660s, the French Clergy together with the Crown try several times to subdue all their components, and therefore also Port-Royal nuns, to the signature of a Formulaire in ratification of the anti-Jansenist condemnation endorsed by the papacy, especially with Urban VIII, Alexander VII, Clement IX and Clement XI. Port-Royal community rejects to sign, and starts to elabo-rate a mythic narration that combines resistance and martyrology. Port-Royal nuns write many historical documents that are used by the community as an apologetic means also during the persecutions of the early XVIII century. The aim of my doctoral research is the analysis the long and complex forma-tion process of the Port-Royal identity, starting from its origins and its development from 1609 onward, when the reform started, and in 1668-1669, during the so-called «Paix de l'Église», that marks the end of the first anti-jansenist persecutions and the acme of the adherence of the community to the Jansenism. The specific focus is the analysis of the community spiritual life through the analysis of the praying and edify-ing literature of the nuns, that until today has been put aside by historiography. In order to highlight how the community took part to the development of French spirituality of the early XVII century, this work tries to rebuild the image of the spirituality experienced in the monastery, once its identity had been well established. 1. Including Salesian and Oratorian experiences, the reform of mère Angélique grows up during the direction of Saint-Cyran (1633-1643), that harshly stresses the spiritual conduct of the monastery as a whole. 2. Eucharistic adoration became more and more refined, growing as the liturgical centre of the new Istitut du Saint-Sacrement (1633-1647) and endly the model that conforms the communal enterprise of recollec-tion of memories on the reform, and since 1630s it combines the slow development of the self-representation, enhanced by internal traditions and loyalty to the monastic model. It is a remarkable witness of the construction of specific categories of Port-Royal spirituality, before those Jansenist experience in which these categories found their own doctrinal field. 3. Furthermore, regulation of the prayer through oral and written normative devices becomes an important characteristic of the community. 4. The last part of the work focuses on the construction of a unique and shared 'speech' that develops into a true ideology facing the menace or the real suffering of persecu-tions in the second half of the century.