Soon “the nuns at Paris, with their numerous and powerful connections, and the recluses at Port-Royal des Champs, together with their pupils and the noble or wealthy families to which the latter belonged, were imbued with the new doctrines of which they became apostles.”  The primary aim was to live up to a common ideal of Christian perfection, and to react against the general corruption by establishing thoroughly moral schools and publishing works denouncing, in strong terms, the glaring errors of the time, the source of which was considered, by both the Abbe of Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, to lie in the Jesuit Colleges and their theology.  Thus was evolved a system of education in every way antagonistic to that of the Jesuits.

At this time the convent at Paris became so crowded that Mere Angelique withdrew to the abbey near Versailles, the occupants of which retired to a neighboring farm, Les Granges; there was opened a seminary for females, which soon attracted the daughters of the nobility.  An astounding literary and agricultural activity resulted, both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary:  by the recluses were written the famous Greek and Latin grammars, and by the nuns, the famous Memoirs of the History of Port-Royal and the Image of the Perfect and Imperfect Sister; a model farm was cultivated, and here the peasants were taught improved methods of tillage.  During the time of the civil wars the convent became a resort where charity and hospitality were extended to the poor peasants.

“The mode of life at Port-Royal was distinguished for austerity.  The inmates rose at three o’clock in the morning, and, after the common prayer, kissed the ground as a sign of their self-humiliation before God.  Then, kneeling, they read a chapter from the Gospels and one from the Epistles, concluding with another prayer.  Two hours in the morning and a like number in the afternoon were devoted to manual labor in the gardens adjoining the convent; they observed, with great strictness, the season of Lent.”  Their theories and practices, and especially their sympathy with Jansenius, whose work Mars Gallicus attacked the French government and people, aroused the suspicions of Richelieu.  When in 1640 the Port-Royalists openly and enthusiastically received the famous work, Augustinus, of Jansenius, the government became the declared opponent of the convent.  Saint-Cyran had been imprisoned in 1638, and not until after the death of Richelieu, in 1642, was he liberated.  After the appearance, in 1643, of Arnauld’s De la Frequente Communion, in which he attacked the Jesuits for admitting the people to the Lord’s Supper without due preparation, two parties formed—­the Jesuits, supported by the Sorbonne and the government, and the Port-Royalists, supported by Parliament and illustrious persons, such as Mme. de Longueville.