FLEURY, CLAUDE (164o-1723), French ecclesiastical historian, was born at Paris on Dec. 6, 164o. Educated at the aristocratic college of Clermont (now that of Louis-le-Grand), he was nominated an advocate to the parlement of Paris in 1658, but nine years later, he turned to theology and by 1672 was in orders. The king entrusted to him the education of the princes of Conti and of the count of Vermandois, one of his natural sons, on whose death in 1683 Fleury received for his services the Cistercian abbey of Loc-Dieu, in Rhodez. In 1689 he was ap pointed sub-preceptor of the dukes of Burgundy, of Anjou and of Berry, and thus became intimately associated with Fenelon, their chief tutor. On the completion of the education of the young princes the king appointed him prior of Argenteuil, near Paris (1706), and he resigned that of the abbey of Loc-Dieu. Fleury, who had been made confessor to the young king Louis XV. in 1716, because, as the duke of Orleans said, he was neither Jansenist nor Molinist, nor Ultramontanist, but Catholic, died on July 14, 1723. His great learning was equalled by the modest simplicity of his life and the uprightness of his conduct.
His chief work, the Histoire ecclesiastique, which comes down to 1414 and was completed by others down to 1684, has passed through many editions, the first being that of Paris, 20 vols., 1691, Partial Eng. trs., 1842 ff. His other works include:—Histoire du droit francois (1674, Eng. trs., 1724), Moeurs des Israelites (1681, Eng. trs., 18o5) ; Moeurs des Chretiens (1682, Eng. trs., 1698) ; Traits du choix et de la methode des etudes (1686, 2 vols.) ; Les Devoirs des maitres et des domestiques (1688) ; his Catechisme historique (1679, Eng. trs., 1726) and the Institution du droit ecclesiastique (1687) were put on the Index.
See C. E. Simonetti, Der Character eines Geschichtsschreibers in dem Leben and aus den Schriften des Abts C. Fleury (Gottingen, 1746) ; C. F. P. Jaeger, Notice sur C. Fleury, considers comme historien (Strasbourg, 1847) ; Reichlin-Meldegg, Geschichte des Christentums, i.