604 - Blaise Pascal, France, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

604 - Blaise Pascal, France, 1972.  Dir. Roberto Rossellini.

Since today is Valentine's Day, we shall make you aware that it was Blaise Pascal who said, "The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of."

And yet, if we do that, then we shall also make you aware that he was not talking at all about some sappy romantic sentimentality.

He was talking about the limits of reason and the need for humans to go beyond it in acquiring understanding.  He was talking about matters of faith.

Blaise Pascal was a great reasoner.  He had one of the greatest minds in the history of Western Civilization.  He began his career as a mathematician at age 16 and continued work as a scientist and inventor before eventually turning to theology, the Queen of the Sciences.

He worked with conic sections, vacuums, and pressure.  He invented calulating machines.  He developed Pascal's law in fluid mechanics, Pascal's theorem in projective geometry, and Pascal's triangle in pure math.  Then he developed Pascal's wager in philosophical theology.

His most known work is the book published in 1670 called Pensees, which means Thoughts.

Roberto Rossellini filmed, among other things, stories about historical figures, so it was natural and appropriate for him to film a take on the life of Blaise Pascl


Etienne Pascal is the new Royal Intendant of the Rouen Province.

He arrives and sets up his office.

He is a devout man.  Before work he reads.

"Moses was tending his flock on the mountain of God and the Lord appeared to him as a flame of fire from the midst of a bush.  He saw the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.  Then Moses said, "I will see this great sight,  why the bush is not burnt." - Exodus 3:1-3.

Etienne's secretary was corrupted by a merchant of Rouen.  So he fired him.  Now he needs someone to help him bring the tax register of Rouville parish up to date.

His 17-year-old son Blaise is good with numbers.  He hires him.

Blaise calculates the tallage quickly.  His father is surprised.  He warns him to be careful.

Father Marsenne has sent a book.

Rough Draft of Attaining the Outcome of Intersecting a Cone with a Plane.  By a Lyonnais geometrician named Mr. Girard Desargues,  Scholars find the work to be obscure.  So they refer to it as the Lesson on Darkness.

Blaise will not find the work to be obscure.

Blaise wants to read it.  His father tells him that he will not understand it.  But he understands it.  And he masters it.

While other family members do their chores outside, Blaise stays upstairs in his room calculating.

His sister Jacqueline wonders at his work.  He is spending hours in his room.

She declares, "Your calculations will never rival the beauty of God's creatures."

He replies, "Aren't these also part of creation?"

He stays up all night.

His father is concerned for his health.  And warns him that success could fill him with delusions of grandeur.  Blaise assures his father that he understands the need for humility.

"Father, I know a man is truly great when he knows he is nothing."

"Hold fast to that idea and you will prosper."

His father likes geometry too.  So he takes Blaise's work to study it so that they can discuss it together.  He loves his son and wants to spend time with him.

After reading the work, Etienne secretly sends it to Father Marsenne.

Father Marsenne admires it and intends to publish it.


Mouline, the master tanner of Rouen, comes to call on Etienne.  Mouline cannot pay his tallage.  The townspeople have decided his maid is a witch.  They have stopped buying his tanned hides.

Mouline believes it is a valid accusation due to the spell cast on his son.  The authorities have already arrested her, but there are so many witch trials already scheduled that it will take months before her case comes to trial.  By then he will be ruined.

Perhaps, Etienne Pascal can help move the trial forward and help spare Mouline.

We see the witch trial.

Roberto Rossellini plays it straight.  He does not present the judge, or the jury, or the prosecution, as religious fanatics or hypocrites but as otherwise reasonable people who are stuck in a world of superstition, attempting to find justice according to the limited understanding they have.

He presents the trial itself as absolutely ridiculous.  It is shocking how they think and what they do.  But they are earnestly doing the best they know how.  Blaise himself is confused by it, and his attempts to understand these strange traditions lead him to a more rational approach that dispenses with unfounded superstitions.

Blaise has drawn up plans for a calculating machine.  He has given them to the cabinetmaker in order to build the machine.  He shows his father.  His sister is not interested but his father is.

"God does not condemn those who seek to understand Nature's marvels in order to share them with mankind."


Chancellor Seguier is awakened by his attendant, who then reads to him.

"O righteous Father, the world hath not know thee, but I have known thee., and these have known that thou hast sent me.  And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast love me may be in them, and I in them." - John 17:25-26.

His servants wash his feet.

Father Marsenne has arrived, along with the geometricians, Etienne and Blaise Pascal.

As he is putting on his socks, he has them show them in.

They have brought the calculating machine.  It performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of all whole numbers without error.

Chancellor Seguier is impressed.  He will show it to his majesty the King.  Who himself is the most excellent craftsman in all the land.  When the gunsmith Pomerol retired, he showed his secrets only to the King, whom he believed was the most worthy to learn them.

Seguier has heard of the young Pascal, who wrote the treatise on conic sections, and he says that Cardinal Richelieu has heard of his sister Jacqueline, who has a gift for poetry and acting.  She had been under the patronage of the Duchess of Guillaume when she was 12 or 13 and enchanted Cardinal Richelieu with one of her performances.

Then he states that she thereby obtained from the Cardinal a pardon for her father, "who had lost our favor."


It is because he is too zealous in his studies.  It has gone to his brain.

Though we are experts at fixing broken bodies, a science learned on the battlefield, we know nothing about such humors.

He is given, while ill, the letters of Saint-Cyran, a disciple of Jansen.

He works on his idea for the vacuum.  Mercury tube.  Air pressure.

He discovers the value of dipping one's feet in brandy, of applying heat to the feet.

Then he turns to philosophy.

"If I seek a void in nature, it is to discover its mirror in the heart of man."

Can you know or love someone through reason alone?

Not the God of the philosophers but the living Christ.

Read the Gospels.

There is an infinity in things beyond our grasp.

Take that away and try to be less superstitious.

"But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken by God, saying, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'"  [God is not the God of the dead but of the living.] - Matthew 22:31-32.

Blaise's sister Jacqueline goes to the Convent of Minims.  Blaise is at first skeptical of their motives, but they prove true to him.  Later he goes to hear Rene Descartes, who is the invited guest.

Pascal and Descartes exchange ideas while there.

He presses through reason to faith.

He will go on to write his Thoughts, as he gets sicker, takes the viaticum, and eventually dies.

The film itself is deceptively simple and straightforward.  Passing from point to point in Pascal's life.  And for a director known as the father of Italian Neo-Realism, there is a bit of a lack of realism in the period costumes.  It often looks like 20th century people dressed in 17th century clothes.

Yet Rossellini wisely takes the time to trust actor Pierre Arditi to speak long passages from the Pensees as extended monologues and soliloquies.  In context.  While grounded in physical behavior.  So that the viewer can witness this mind on fire as he contemplates important ideas.

If you have never read Pensees, take some time to check it out and get to know Pascal for yourself.  It is worth your time.  And check out the movie.

And see a man born into a superstitious society, rejecting it for a life of science and math and reason, who, now free of superstition, through that reason most reasonably returns to the faith of his heritage.

Peace to this house, and to all who dwell therein.


*                              *                              *                              *

Reason seems unsure in its place in the world.

It isn't a chain of reasonings but intuition.
They are not quantifiable.  They are infinite.
But the infinite universe we live in will never cease to be infinite.
The geometric method.

Is it not better to begin with the infinite and move down to the simple?

Only God can know them because only he is infinite.  Christians profess a religion for which they cannot give a reason, and even declare that any attempt to do so would be foolishness.
Certainly, it is in lacking proofs that they are not lacking in sense.
What do you mean?
Since God is infinitely incomprehensible, then understanding him by means of reason is a contradiction in terms.  It is not because our reason is limited that we should have a limited idea of God.  God is, or he is not.  Reason can decide nothing here, except to admit there is an infinity of things beyond understanding.  You are not a skeptic, because skeptics know man has a deep need for certitude, and a man like you would not be satisfied with less.  Nor dogmatic, because we all know that life is uncertain and in constant flux.  Where does that leave us?  God is, or he is not.  To which side shall you incline?  Since this game could be played forever without outcome, you must wager.  It is not optional.  You are embarked.  But neither to the reason nor to the heart is it satisfying to wager on what is finite.  Why?  Because if you wager on what is finite and limited, and you win, you gain nothing, and if you lose, you lose all.  If instead you wager on the infinite, if you win, you gain all, and if you lose, you lose nothing.
But aren't we still uncertain?
Yes, of course, but you hope.  And instead of counting only on your own strength and risking despair, you place your hope in the reality of a superior existence.
And if I lose?
You will have fought the good fight, and will have become a charitable and sincere friend.  And, in the meantime, God might reveal himself to you.

"The year of grace 1654.  Monday, November 23, feast of Saint Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.  The eve of Saint Chrysogonus martyr and others.  From about half-past 10:00 in the evening until about half-past midnight.  Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.  Not of philosophers and intellectuals.  Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace.  God of Jesus Christ.  Deum meum et Deum vestrum.  Your God will be my God.  Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God.  He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.  Greatness of the human soul.  O just Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.  Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.  I have cut myself off from him.  Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.  'My God wilt thou forsake me?'  Let me not be cut off from him forever!  This is eternal life, that they may know you and the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.  Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ.  I have cut myself off from him.  I have run away from him, renounced him, crucified him.  Let me never be cut off from him.  He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.  Sweet and total renunciation.  Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.  Everlasting joy in return for one day's effort on earth."

Hear us, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, and be pleased to send thy holy angel from heaven to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all those who dwell in this house through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

May almighty God have mercy upon you, forgive you your sins and bring you everlasting life.  Amen.

May you be pardoned and absolved of all sins by almighty God.  Amen.

Receive, brother, the viaticum of the body of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  May he keep ou from the malignant foe and bring you to life everlasting.  Amen.

The Lord be with you.
And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

O holy Lord, Father almighty and eternal God,  we pray thee in faith that our brother may benefit from the holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ, thy son, which he receives as an everlasting remedy for body and soul from him who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.  Amen.

May God never abandon me.