Perhaps the alliterative title of this book may ease some readers into what is the fascinating and yet forbidding world of Port-Royal, a famously austere and controversial convent in seventeenth-century France. As the book's subtitle suggests, much of the focus is on Port-Royal's convent philosophy. But what kind of an adjective is convent? Does it mean whatever philosophy was done in the convent? Or does it mean more specifically a philosophy of convent life that was developed at Port-Royal? The author devotes his attention to both of these meanings; he insists that gender and institutional bias has blinded us to the very existence of philosophy done outside the university, even as he acknowledges that there was often little distinction between philosophy and theology in the writings of the nuns he studies. Three abbesses of Port-Royal are Conley's focus, all members of the Arnauld family: two sisters and a niece of theirs. A prominent family of robe nobility, the Arnauld clan provided these three and other key leaders to the Jansenist movement.

Angélique Arnauld (1591–1661) was the reformer of the convent. Relying largely on her many extant letters, Conley does a good job in showing how she succeeded in transforming Port-Royal from a model of laxness and decadence into a model of rigor, with strict cloister restored, along with a chapter of faults, as well as silence, fasting, a vegetarian diet, and rising at 2:00 a.m. for the divine office. This “astringent piety” (66) included adoration of an inscrutable God, before whom the human being was to annihilate herself, and to whose providence abandon herself. Mère Angélique promoted an Augustinian account of human nature in which sin abounded and virtue was accessible but through grace; salvation was for a small number of elect chosen by God, for reasons beyond human knowing. Apophatic to its core, this theology stressed God's alterity and inaccessibility. Conley admits that the “fideistic framework” (110) of Angélique Arnauld's theology limited the philosophical import of her arguments.

Agnès Arnauld (1593–1671), Angélique's younger sister, promoted similar views. As abbess, she wrote constitutions for Port-Royal, and these were published in Amsterdam, where there was freedom from the kind of state censorship that prevailed in France. While most French convents of the time reflected the social hierarchy of the world that entrants had supposedly left behind when they took the veil, Mère Agnès insisted on social equality at Port-Royal. All were to do manual labor, no matter their blood lines or family connections. Dowries were no longer required for entrance, and the vocational freedom of each potential community member was respected, while family strategies of placing certain daughters in convents were spurned. In her writings, Agnès developed an ethics of resistance to authorities that were seeking to compel the nuns to reject Jansen's version of Augustinianism. The individual consciences of the nuns, and the unalterable adherence of conscience to what it knows to be truth, were defended against attacks by church and state.

Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d'Andilly (1624–1684) was of the next generation, and even more immersed in a siege mentality, as the reign of Louis XIV progressed and became more heavy-handed in its opposition to Port-Royal. A fluent reader of Greek and Latin, and a historian as well as an abbess, this Angélique was better educated than her aunts and also more militant in her defense of what she saw as the embattled and persecuted elect. She did not hesitate to compare her persecuted nuns to martyrs and to the Jews suffering in Babylonian exile. She insisted that doubts must never be entertained by God's chosen ones; gray areas never be acknowledged; compromises never be considered. Good and evil were seen by this Arnauld abbess to stand in total and permanent opposition. The deep chasm between human evil and God's goodness meant that one should receive communion but infrequently—a sacramental practice, or lack of practice, that was lauded in the writings of her relative Antoine Arnauld. Reception of communion was but for the well-prepared and they were to make themselves such through lengthy, rigorous penance and by perfect contrition. Conley deftly points out the danger of hypocrisy at Port-Royal: “Damning the mass of humanity for its pride, the Port-Royal cenacle haughtily presents itself as the vanguard of the humble chosen by God for salvation” (202).

This book is well worth the attention of a broad range of scholars and students. Conley shows clearly how the Arnauld abbesses were rather modern in their promotion of female autonomy and conscience, even as they defended a philosophy and a theology that saw but sin in human nature, and drew heavily on the most pessimistic theses of Augustine and various disciples of his. As Conley points out, Port-Royal was originally a Cistercian convent; it would be interesting to compare its reform with the reform that began in the 1660s at la Trappe, a Cistercian monastery of men. Was there a monastery philosophy of la Trappe? A “mission of love” (xi) is how Conley terms his work on Port-Royal. Though this reviewer certainly does not share in a love for things Jansenist, he is grateful for Conley's elucidation of a very significant chapter in Jansenist history.