Fenelon, Francois
This French archbishop born in Perigord, was a reflective theologian, and man of letters whose liberal views on politics and education and on ecumenical dialogue with non-Catholics, caused concerted opposition from church and state. His pedagogical concepts and literary works, nevertheless, exerted a lasting influence on French culture.
Descended from a long line of nobility, Fenelon began his higher studies in Paris about 1672 at Saint-Sulpice seminary. Ordained a priest in 1676, he was appointed director of Nouvelles Catholiques (New Catholics), a college for women who instructed converts from French Protestantism. When King Louis XIV heightened the persecution of the Huguenots (French Calvinists) in 1685 by revoking the Edict of Nantes, Fenelon strove to mitigate the harshness of Catholic intolerance by open meetings with the Protestants (1686-87) to present Catholic doctrine in a reasonable light. While unsympathetic to Protestant belief, he equally repudiated forced conversions.
From his pedagogical experiences at Nouvelles Catholiques, he wrote his first important work, TraitE de l'+ducation des Filles (1687; "Treatise on the Education of Girls). Although generally conservative, the treatise submitted innovative concepts on the education of females and criticized the coercive methods of his day.
In 1689, with the support of the renowned bishop Jacques-BEnigne Bossuet, Fenelon was named tutor to Louis, Duke (duc) de Bourgogne, grandson and heir to Louis XIV. For the prince's education, Fenelon composed his best-known work, Les Aventures de TElEmaque (1699), in which the adventures of Telemachus in search of his father, Ulysses, symbolically expressed Fenelon's fundamental political ideas. During the period of his popularity in official circles, Fenelon enjoyed various honours, including his election to the French Academy in 1693 and his nomination as archbishop of Cambrai in 1695.
Anxious about his spiritual life, Fenelon sought an answer from the Quietist school of prayer. Introduced in October 1688 to Quietism's leading exponent, Mme Guyon, Fenelon sought from her some means of personally experiencing the God whose existence he had intellectually proved. But his search for spiritual peace was short-lived. Bossuet and others attacked Mme Guyon's teaching, and a document investigating Quietism's doubtful orthodoxy even obtained Fenelon's signature. But when Bossuet launched a personal attack on Mme Guyon, Fenelon responded with his: "Explanation of the Sayings of the Saints on the Interior Life" (1697). In so defending Mme Guyon's integrity, Fenelon not only lost Bossuet's friendship but also exposed himself to severe public denunciation. As a result, Fenelon's "Sayings of the Saints" was condemned by the pope, and he was exiled to his diocese.
The manuscripts of the works of Francois Fenelon were saved from oblivion by Barbier, a scholar and ex-priest, who after the French Revolution was librarian to the Directory, and later, to Napoleon, for whom he also researched scholarly answers to political and religious problems.