Vineam Domini Sabaoth

Vineam Domini Sabaoth
Created	16 July 1705
Author(s)	Pope Clement XI
Purpose	Declared that "obediential silence" is not a satisfactory response to the Formula of Submission for the Jansenists

Vineam Domini Sabaoth is an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1705 which declared that "obediential silence" is not a satisfactory response to the Formula of Submission for the Jansenists.

In 1701, a written decision was given by faculty of theology scholars at the College of Sorbonne in response to doctrinal questions addressed to them. The questions, from a priest, ostensibly the confessor of a dying ecclesiastic, included whether a priest can absolve a dying penitent in the Sacrament of Penance when the penitent is a priest who confessed that he while condemns the five propositions listed by Pope Innocent X in Cum occasione as heretical; but, since it was not clear to the penitent that these propositions are actually contained in Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus, the penitent thought it sufficient to observe a "respectful silence" (French: silence respectueux) concerning this question of fact, and, with this restriction, signed the Formula of Submission for the Jansenists prescribed by Pope Alexander VII in Regiminis Apostolici.

Forty doctors of the Sorbonne, among them Louis Ellies Dupin, Nicolas Petitpied (), Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Sarrasin, and Noël Alexandre, decided that absolution could not be withheld, since the case was neither new nor extraordinary, and since the penitent's opinion was not condemned by the Church. Though the decision was given secretly on 20 July 1701, Jansenists published the case in July, 1702, with the signatures of the forty doctors of the Sorbonne. Whoever may have been its author, Roulland, a doctor of the Sorbonne, edited it, and Cardinal Louis Antoine de Noailles, archbishop of Paris, knew of its existence before it was published, and is even said to have promised his own signature.

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