Provincianes

Lettres provinciales is a work of circumstances about the disputes between the Jansenists and the Jesuits in France in the 17th century. Pascal's ingenuity, elevating the debates from anecdote to category, was able to turn them into a classic work. They are eighteen shocking "open letters", anonymous and clandestine, written by a Parisian, first to a provincial friend to inform him of the treachery of the Sorbonne and the laxity of Jesuit morality, and then to the Jesuits themselves to reproach them for his Machiavellian policy. Pascal denounces the theological-political verbalism, accommodating morality, party spirit and the tactic of disqualification, that is to say, four vices, considered today "from the manual", which make this book permanently relevant.