Pasquier Quesnel's Jansenist sympathies had led to…

Pasquier Quesnel's Jansenist sympathies had led to his banishment from Paris in 1681.

The controversial theologian had been expelled from the Oratory three years later for refusing to accept the anti-Jansenist decrees it promulgated.

He fled to Brussels where he has lived with the exiled Antoine Arnauld, champion of the Jansenist resistance, who dies in in 1694.

Quesnel's Nouveau Testament en français avec des réflexions morales (1692; “New Testament in French with Thoughts on Morality”), a major contribution to the literature of Jansenism, causes serious repercussions.

It rekindles doctrinal conflicts between the Jansenists and the papacy, which are further complicated by the intervention of Louis XIV.