Reactions and Legacy
Further information: Formulary controversyThe reaction to the Lettres provinciales was substantial. Pascal's use of wit, humor, and mockery in attacking existing institutions made his work extremely popular. However, its publication was primarily via the underground press, and in 1660 Louis XIV banned the book and ordered it shredded and burned. Pascal himself had to enter clandestinity, living in cheap hostels. Nevertheless, the letters survived and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The extract of the Seventh Letter concerning the "direction of intention" influenced Molière's Tartuffe (Act IV, scene V, 1489–1493).
They were first translated into Latin by Antoine Arnauld, and then into many other languages, including English in 1657 (Les Provinciales, or the Mystery of Jesuitisme, discovered in certain letters written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne between the jansenists and the molinists, London, Royston, 1657) by the Anglican theologian Henry Hammond, while in 1684 a polyglot translation (in French, Latin, Spanish and Italian) was published by Balthasar Winfelt.
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