FLECHIER, tIA'shylV, VALENTIN ESPRIT (1632-1710). A French ecclesiastic. He was born at Perms, near Avignon, and educated in the College of the Congregation of Christian at Taraseon. In 1659 he went to Paris and taught for a time, but soon gave himself entirely to preaching. He won great fame as an orator, and particularly by his funeral orations, among which that on Marshal Turenne (1676) is considered his masterpiece. That on Madame Montausier secured his admission to the Academy at the same time with Racine (1673). He also wrote poems in French and Latin, and political com positions, among which were the Carmen Eucha ristievin (1660), celebrating the Peace of the Pyrenees; Cirrus Regius (1662), describing a tournament given by Louis XTV.; and Memoires sur les grands jours de Clermont (first published in 1844), in which he relates in half romantic and half historic form the proceedings of that extraordinary court of justice. In 1685 he was appointed Bishop of Lavaux, and in 1687 of Nimes. The Edict of Nantes had been revoked
two years earlier, and Calvinists were still nu merous in the bishopric, In the troublous times which followed he softened, to the utmost of his power, the rigor of the edicts, and showed him self so sensible to the evils of persecution and so indulgent even of what he regarded as error, that his memory was long held in veneration by the Protestants of the district. In the famine which followed the winter of 1709 he assisted all in his diocese without regard to their religious tenets, declaring that all alike were his children. His works appeared at Mines in ten volumes (1782), and at Paris (2 vols., 1856). His funeral orations have been often printed; that on Marshal Turenne may be found in English in Fish, History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence (New York, 1856), and in Lee, The World's Orators, vol. iv. (New York. 1900). For his life, consult Delaeroix (Paris, 1883).