Noailles, who had become Archbishop of Paris and cardinal meanwhile, and who in 1702 discarded a relic that had long been venerated at Châlons as the umbilical cord of Jesus, was not prepared to withdraw the approbation which he had given to the book, and Jansenism again raised its head.

[2] To put an end to this situation several bishops, supported by Louis XIV himself, asked the Pope to issue a bull in place of the unacceptable brief.

To avoid further scandal, Clement yielded to these humiliating conditions, and in February 1712, appointed a special congregation of cardinals and theologians to cull from the work of Quesnel such propositions as were deserving of ecclesiastical censure.

[3] The Bull begins with Christ's warning against false prophets, especially such as "secretly spread evil doctrines under the guise of piety and introduce ruinous sects under the image of sanctity".

At the first session, Noailles appointed a committee presided over by Cardinal Rohan of Strasburg to decide upon the most suitable manner of accepting the Bull.

But the king and his councillors, seeing in this mode of procedure a trespass upon the "Gallican Liberties", proposed instead the convocation of a national council which would judge and pass sentence upon Noailles and his faction.

The Sorbonne passed a resolution on January 4, 1716, annulling its previous registration of the Bull, and twenty-two Sorbonnists who protested were removed from the faculty.

In consequence on November 1 Clement XI withdrew from the Sorbonne all the papal privileges which it possessed and attempted to deprive it of the power of conferring academic degrees.

But he sent to Rome, Chevalier, the Jansenist Vicar-General of Meaux whom the Pope did not, however, admit to his presence, when it became known that his sole purpose was to wrest the admission from Clement XI that the Bull was obscure and required an explanation.

In a consistory held on June 27, 1716, the Pope delivered a passionate allocution, lasting three hours, in which he informed the cardinals of the treatment which the Bull had received in France, and expressed his purpose of divesting Noailles of the cardinalate.

The following November he sent two new Briefs to France, one to the regent, whose co-operation he asked in suppressing the opposition to the Bull; the other to the acceptants, whom he warned against the intrigues of the recalcitrants, and requested to exhort their erring brethren to give up their resistance.

[3] On March 1, 1717, four bishops (Soanen of Senez, de La Broue of Mirepoix, Colbert of Montpellier and Delangle of Boulogne) drew up an appeal from the Bull to a general council, thus founding the party hereafter known as the "appellants".

Noailles finally made an ambiguous submission on 13 March 1720, by signing an explanation of the Bull Unigenitus, drawn up by order of the French secretary of State, Guillaume Cardinal Dubois, and, later, approved by ninety-five bishops.