FENELON , FRANCIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTILE, was b. Aug. 6. 1651, in the chateau Fenelon, province of Perigord, now included in the department of the Dordogne, of a family which has given many celebrities both to the church and to the state in France. His education was conducted at home up to his 12th year, when he was transferred to Cahors, and afterwards to the Plessis college in Paris. At the close of a most blame less collegiate career, he selected the church as his profession, and entered, in his 20th year, the newly founded seminary of St. Sulpice, then under the direction of the cele brated abbe Tronson, where he received holy orders in 1675. Unlike but too many ecclesiastics of his own rank at that period, he gave his whole heart to his sacred call ing. For some time after his ordination, he was employed in attendance at the hos pitals, and in other parochial duties of the parish of St. Sulpice; and in the year 1678, he was named director of an institution recently founded for the reception of female converts to the Roman Catholic faith, in Paris. During his tenure of this office, he wrote his first work, On the Education of Girls, which is still a standard authority; and the gentleness, moderation, and charity with which he discharged his duties towards the young converts, led to his appointment as head of a mission, which, on the revoca tion of the edict of Nantes in 1685, was sent to preach among the Protestant population of Saintonge and Poitou. In 1688, he resumed his duties in the liaison des Nouvelles Converties, at Paris; and in the following year, he was named by Louis XIV. to the highly confidential post of preceptor of his grandson, the young duke of Burgundy. F.'s management of this most important and delicate trust showed how well he understood the true nature and objects of education. All his own instructions, and all the exercises enjoined upon his pupil, were so contrived, as, while they imparted the actual knowl edge which it is the ordinary business of a master to communicate, at the same time served to prepare the mind and the heart of the pupil for what was to be the real business of his life, by impressing upon him a sense of the responsibility which awaited him, of the great principles of truth and justice upon which these responsibilities are founded, and of the hollowness and futility of all earthly glory, power, and happiness, which do not rest upon this foundation. To this wise design of the preceptor we are indebted for many works still popular in educational use; for the Fables,- for the Dialogues of the Dead; for the History of the Ancient Allow-pliers; for the germ at least of the Telemachus; and for the Life of Charlemagne; the manuscript of which last work, unfortunately, was burned in the fire which destroyed the archiepiscopal palace of Cambray in the year 1697. As an acknowledgment of these great merits, he was presented by the king, in 1694, to the abbey of St. Valery, and in the following year, to the archbishopric of Cambray, which he only accepted on the express condition that for 0 months of each year he should be exempted from all du ties as preceptor of the prince, and left at liberty to devote himself exclusively to the care of his diocese. It is to this period of F.'s life that the history of the unhappy controversy about quietism belongs. Without entering into the details of this singular revival of the ancient mysticism (see MYSTICISM), it will be enough to say that two separate schools of quietism are to be distinguished, the moral character, or at least the moral tendency, of which was exceedingly different. See QUIETISM. In one of these, the common mystic. principle of the absorption of the soul in the love and. contemplation of God, led to the conclusion that the soul, in this state of absorption, became entirely passive; that it was thenceforth independent of the external world; that it suffered no contamination from the material actions of the outer man, and that no acts of virtue, not even of prayer, were any longer required. See 3101,r-cos. The other school, while it maintained the theory of passive contemplation and love, yet repudiated the dangerous and immoral consequences which were deduced therefrom. It was exclusively the latter and less objectionable form of quietism. the professors of which for a time claimed, although not the patronage, yet at least the indulgent consideration of Fenelon. He formed, in the year 1687, the acquaintance of the celebrated Madame Guyon, who may be regarded as the foundress of the French school of quietism. See GUYON. The extraordinary piety and exemplary life of this remarkable woman, and his own natural bias towards the tender and lofty spirituality which she professed, appear to have blinded F. to the true nature and to the practical consequences of the system which she followed. Fully convinced of the unfairness of much of the outcry which was raised against her, and which made her responsible for all the principles of the grosser quietism of Molinos, his generous mind was perhaps attracted to her cause by the very injustice of her opponents. He advised her to submit her works to the judgment of Bossuet, who was then in the zenith of his fame, and with whom F. was m the most friendly relations. In the condemnation of the book of Madame Guyon by this prelate, F. acquiesced; but as she made a formal submission to the church, he refused to join in any condemnation of herself personally. Nevertheless, when a com mission was appointed to examine the whole affair, F., although not a member, took a part in the proceedings; and he even suggested certain changes in their report, which he subscribed in common with the rest. To the articles prescribed for her signature by this commission, Madame Guyon readily subscribed; but it was further considered necessary not only to publish a condemnation of her several works, but also to prepare a special exposition of the true doctrine of the church on these questions. When the work of Bossuet on this subject was completed, he submitted it to F. for his approval. This F. not only refused to give, but even composed his own Maxims of the Saints in the Interior Life, in explanation and defense of certain at least of Madame Guyon's doctrines. He submitted his book to the archbishop of Paris, and introduced into it some modifications which were suggested by the diocesan censors, cheerfully agreeing to the stipulation of the archbishop, that it should be kept back from publication until the completion of the rival treatise of Bossuet, On the States of Prayer. An unfortunate violation of this engagement, committed without the knowledge, and in the absence of F., was the last of a long train of causes which led to the painful and disedifying rupture between these two great prelates. F.'s book was received with much clamor,
that of Bossuet was universally approved; and in the controversy which ensued, all the weight of the displeasure of the court, which F. had provoked by the covert stric tures upon the existing state of things, in which he was believed to have indulged in his works of fiction, was brought to bear against him. He was ordered to submit his book to the judgment of an ecclesiastical tribunal, of which Bossuet was a member. F. refused to accept Bossuet as judge, on the ground that he had already prejudged the cause; and in the end lie appealed to the judgment of the Ifoly See. Unfortunately, even while the affair was pending at Rome, the controversy was still maintained cic France. Bossuet published a succession of pamphlets. Several of the bishops who had espoused the side of Bossuet, issued pastorals in the same sense. F. defended himself vigorously against them all in several publications, explanatory as well of his principles as of the personal imputations in which some of his adversaries did not scruple to indulge. The last blow against the ancient friendship of the great rivals was struck by Bossuet in his celebrated Relation sur le Quietism. F. was wounded to the heart. The copy of Bossuet's pamphlet which first came into his hands is still preserved in the British museum; and the margin is literally filled with remarks, annotations, replies, denials, and rejoinders, in the singularly delicate and beautiful handwriting of the archbishop. The copy now in the British museum is most probably one which, as we learn from his correspondence, he sent to his agent at Rome, and on the margin of which he corrected, for the guidance of his friend. the many false and exag gerated charges of his great antagonist. The substance of these replies he gave to the public in a most masterly defense, written, printed, and published within little more than a fortnight from the appearance of Bossuet's Relation. From this point, the con troversy assumed a more personal, and therefore a more acrimonious character; and it was maintained on both sides till the long delayed decision of the pope brought it to a close, Mar. 12, 1699, by a brief, in the usual form, condemning the 3faxints of the Saints, and marking with especial censure 23 propositions extracted from it. The con duct of F. under this blow constitutes, in the eyes of his fellow-churchmen, one of his highest titles to glory. He not only accepted, without hesitation, the decision of Rome, but he took the very earliest occasion to publish from his own pulpit the brief of his condemnation; he issued a pastoral address to his flock, to apprise them of the judg ment of Rome, and of his own cheerful acquiescence; and he presented to his cathedral a magnificent piece of church-plate, a gold ostensory-, in which the angel of truth is represented -trampling under foot many erroneous works, the most prominent of whick bears the title of Maxims of the Saints! Bossuet is said to have been greatly touched by the conduct of his noble adversary, and to have earnestly desired a reconciliation. But the adverse influence of the king, Louis XIV., and of the court stood in the way. The jealousy with which the political principles of F. were already regarded was heightened about this time into open hostility by the appearance of his I eleinaehus, which was printed from a copy surreptitiously obtained by his servant, and which the king regarded as but a masked satire upon his own court: Sesostris being supposed to repre sent the Grand Monarque himself; Calypso, Madame de Montespan ; Protesilaus, Louvois ;. and Lucharis, Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Louis's anger knew no bounds. F. was strictly restrained within his diocese; measures were taken to give the condemnation of his book every character of publicity; and what wounded him most of all, all intercourse with him, personal or by letter, was forbidden to his old and much loved pupil, the duke of Burgundy. From this date, F. lived exclusively for his flock.. He founded at Cambray a seminary for his archdiocese, which lie made his own especial. charge. He was assiduous in preaching, and in the discharge of the other duties of. his. office; amid the fame Of benevolence, Charity, and enlightened libtlrality is atte'sted, by the order given in the campaign of 1709 to spare the palace and the stores of the archbishop of Cambray. The only later controversy in which he appears is the revival of the Jauseuistic dispute in the well-known form of "The Case of Conscience" (see JANSEN), in which F. engaged earnestly on the side of orthodoxy. Notwithstanding the prohibition of his grandfather, the young duke of Burgundy retained all his old affection for his preceptor; and the highest hopes were entertained as to the future career of the pupil of such a school. These hopes were unfortunately cut short by the premature death of the duke in 1712. F. survived him but a short time. He died Jan. 7,1715.
The works of F. are very voluminous. The latest collected edition extends to twenty 8vo volumes, and embraces every variety of subjects—theology, philosophy, history, literature, ancient and modern, oratory, especially the eloquence of the pulpit, asceti cism, and spirituality in all its branches. His correspondence is very extensive and most interesting. Of his early sermons (one of which was delivered in his 15th year), a volume was printed in 1744. Of his mature discourses, two only have reached us in a finished state. They are of the very highest order of sacred eloquence. Of the rest, we can only judge from the skeletons which it was his habit to prepare with groat exactness, and of which very many have been preserved.. His literary and historical works, many of which were composed for the instruction of his pupil, are filled with allusions and suggestions illustrative of the principles of government and of the relative duties of sovereigns and subjects, far in advance of the time in which he lived. His work on the Temporal Poieer of the Mediceral Popes presents that doctrine in a form which divests it of many of those characteristics which are most objectionable in the eyes of Protestants; and even his spiritual writings in general may be read, and indeed are not unfrequently read, not only without offense, but even with positive advantage, by Christians of all denominations. See card, Bausset's Histoire de Fenelon (3 vols., 1808-9); also the Vie de BosSuet of the same author. See also the life prefixed to the collected edition of the aitvres de Fenelon; the voluminous correspondence contained in that collection; Vie de Fenelon, by M. Gosselin; Wunderlich's F. (1873); and Hunnius, Des Leben F.'s (1873).