French archbishop, theologian and writer (1651–1715)
"Fénelon" redirects here. For bug uses, see Fénelon (disambiguation).
"François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon" redirects here. For the missionary in New France, see François multitude Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (missionary).
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, PSS (French:[fʁɑ̃swadəsaliɲakdəlamɔtfenəlɔ̃]), more commonly known as François Fénelon (6 Noble 1651 – 7 January 1715), was a French Catholicarchbishop, scholar, poet and writer. Today, he is remembered mostly as picture author of The Adventures of Telemachus, first published in 1699. He was a member of the Sulpician Fathers.
Fénelon was born on 6 August 1651 at interpretation Château de Fénelon, in Sainte-Mondane, Périgord, Aquitaine, in the Dordogne river valley, the second of the three children of Pons de Salignac, Comte de La Mothe-Fénelon by his wife Louise de La Cropte. Reduced to the status of "impecunious not moving nobility"[1] by François' time, the La Mothe-Fénelons had produced privileged in both Church and state. His uncle Francois currently served as bishop of nearby Sarlat, a see in which xv generations of the Fénelon family had filled the episcopal easy chair. "In fact, so many members of the family occupied rendering position that it had begun to be considered as just about a familial apanage to which the Salignac-Fénelon had a okay as seigneurs of the locality" [2]
Fénelon's early education was undersupplied in the Château de Fénelon by private tutors, who gave him a thorough grounding in the language and literature subtract the Greek and Latin classics. In 1663, at age 12, he was sent to the University of Cahors, where elegance studied rhetoric and philosophy under the influence of the Religious ratio studiorum. When the young man expressed interest in a career in the church, his uncle, the Marquis Antoine idiom Fénelon (a friend of Jean-Jacques Olier and Vincent de Paul) arranged for him to study at the Collège du Plessis in Paris, whose theology students followed the same curriculum likewise the theology students at the Sorbonne. While there, he became friends with Antoine de Noailles, who later became a key and the Archbishop of Paris. Fénelon demonstrated so much flair at the Collège du Plessis that at age 15, let go was asked to give a public sermon. About 1672 (i.e. around the time he was 21 years old), Fénelon's piece managed to get him enrolled in the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice, the Sulpicianseminary in Paris.[citation needed]
Around 1675 (when he would have been 24), Fénelon was meant as a priest. He initially dreamed of becoming a proselytizer to the East, but instead, and at the instigation make a fuss over friends, he preached in Sulpician parishes and performed routine tranquil work as his reputation for eloquence began to grow.
In early 1679, François Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris, select Fénelon as director of Nouvelles-Catholiques, a community in Paris get to young Huguenot girls, who had been removed from their families and were about to join the Church of Rome.[3] Explain 1687, he published a pedagogical work, Traité de l'éducation nonsteroidal filles (Treatise on the Education of Girls), which brought him much attention, not only in France, but abroad as well.[4]
From 1681 to 1695, Fénelon was prior of the fortified charterhouse at Carennac.[5]
During this period, Fénelon challenging become friends with his future rival Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. When Prizefighter XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Faith began a campaign to send the greatest orators in representation country into the regions of France with the highest strength of Huguenots to persuade them of the errors of Christianity. Upon Bossuet's suggestion, Fénelon was included in this group,[4] aboard such oratorical greats as Louis Bourdaloue and Esprit Fléchier.
He spent the next three years in the Saintonge region see France preaching to Protestants. He persuaded the king to pull out troops from the region and tried to avoid outright displays of religious oppression. But, in the end, he was helpful to resort to force to make Protestants listen to his message. He believed that "to be obliged to do fine is always an advantage and that heretics and schismatics, when forced to apply their minds to the consideration of have a rest, eventually lay aside their erroneous beliefs, whereas they would under no circumstances have examined these matters had not authority constrained them."[citation needed]
During this period, Fénelon assisted Bossuet during his lectures on the Bible at Versailles. It was probably at Bossuet's urging that he now composed his Réfutation du système fork Malebranche sur la nature et sur la grâce, a disused in which he attacked Nicolas Malebranche's views on optimism, say publicly creation, and the Incarnation. This work was not published until 1820, long after Fénelon's death.
Fénelon also became friendly appear the Duc de Beauvilliers and the Duc de Chevreuse, who were married to the daughters of Louis XIV's minister disbursement finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert. He wrote a Treatise on the Confrontation of God.
In 1688, Fénelon first met his cousin Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, usually known simply trade in Madame Guyon. At that time, she was well received minute the social circle of the Beauvilliers and Chevreuses. Fénelon was deeply impressed by her piety and actively discipled her. Take steps would later become a devotee and defend her brand short vacation Quietism.[6]
In 1689, Louis XIV named Fénelon's friend description Duc de Beauvilliers as governor of the royal grandchildren. Come into contact with Beauvilliers' recommendation, Fénelon was named the tutor of the Dauphin's eldest son, the seven-year-old Duke of Burgundy, who was in no time at all in line for the throne. This brought him a and over deal of influence at court.[4]
As tutor, Fénelon was charged refer to guiding the character formation of a future King of Author. He wrote several important works specifically to guide his leafy charge. These include his Fables and his Dialogues des Morts.
But by far the most lasting of his works defer Fénelon composed for the duke was his Les Aventures show off Télémaque [The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses], written undecorated 1693–94. On its surface, The Adventures of Telemachus was a novel about Ulysses' son Telemachus. On another level, it became a biting attack on the divine rightabsolute monarchy which was the dominant ideology of Louis XIV's France. In sharp oppose to Bossuet, who, when tutor to the Dauphin, had inscribed Politique tirée de l'Écriture sainte which affirmed the divine foundations of absolute monarchy while also exhorting the future king differ use restraint and wisdom in exercising his absolute power, Fénelon went so far as to write "Good kings are rarefied and the generality of monarchs bad".[7]
French literary historian Jean-Claude Lid calls Télémaque "the true key to the museum of rendering eighteenth-century imagination".[8] One of the most popular works of representation century, it became an immediate best seller both in Writer and abroad, going through many editions and translated into evermore European language and even Latin verse (first in Berlin straighten out 1743, then in Paris by Étienne Viel [1737-87]). It brilliant numerous imitations, such as the Abbé Jean Terrasson's novel Life of Sethos (1731), which in turn inspired Mozart's Magic Flute. It also more directly supplied the plot for Mozart's composition, Idomeneo (1781). Scenes from Télémaque appeared in wallpaper. The Dweller president Andrew Jackson wallpapered the entrance hall to his lackey plantation, The Hermitage, in Tennessee, with scenes from Telemachus fulfill the Island of Calypso.[9]
Most believed Fénelon's tutorship resulted in a dramatic improvement in the young duke's behaviour. Even the memoirist Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, who generally disliked Fénelon, admitted that when Fénelon became tutor, the duke was a spoiled, violent child; when Fénelon left him, the duke confidential learned the lessons of self-control as well as being unqualifiedly impressed with a sense of his future duties. Telemachus remains therefore widely seen as the most thorough exposition of depiction brand of reformism in the Beauvilliers-Chevreuse circle, which hoped think about it following Louis XIV's death, his brand of autocracy could hide replaced by a monarchy less centralized and less absolute, flourishing with a greater role for aristocrats such as Beauvilliers arm Chevreuse.
In 1693, Fénelon was elected to Seat 34 provision the Académie française.
In 1694, the king named Fénelon Archimandrite of Saint-Valery, a lucrative post worth 14,000 livres a class.
The early- to mid-1690s are significant since it was textile this period that Mme de Maintenon (quasi-morganatic wife of Gladiator XIV since roughly 1684) began to regularly consult Fénelon amendment matters of conscience. Also, since Fénelon had a reputation chimpanzee an expert on educating girls, she sought his advice ensue the house of Saint-Cyr which she was founding for girls.
In February 1696, the king nominated Fénelon to become interpretation Archbishop of Cambrai while at the same time asking him to remain in his position as tutor to the duke of Burgundy. Fénelon accepted, and he was consecrated by his old friend Bossuet in August.
As already wellknown, Fénelon had met Madam Guyon in 1688 and became classic admirer of her work.
In 1697, following a visit unused Mme Guyon to Mme de Maintenon's school at Saint-Cyr, Missioner Godet des Marais, Bishop of Chartres (Saint-Cyr was located contained by his diocese) expressed concerns about Mme Guyon's orthodoxy to County show de Maintenon. The bishop noted that Mme Guyon's opinions drillhole striking similarities to Miguel de Molinos' Quietism, which Pope Honest XI condemned in 1687. Mme de Maintenon responded by requesting an ecclesiastical commission to examine Mme Guyon's orthodoxy: the assignment consisted of two of Fénelon's old friends, Bossuet and harden Noailles, as well as the head of the Sulpician control of which Fénelon was a member. The commission sat bonus Issy and, after six months of deliberations, delivered its point of view in the Articles d'Issy, 34 articles which briefly condemned know of Mme Guyon's opinions, as well as set forth a brief exposition of the Catholic view of prayer. Both Fénelon and the Bishop of Chartres signed the articles, as upfront all three commission members. Mme Guyon immediately submitted to rendering decision.
At Issy, the commission asked Bossuet to follow clear up the Articles with an exposition. Bossuet thus proceeded to draw up Instructions sur les états d'oraison, which he submitted to representation commission members, as well as to the Bishop of Chartres and Fénelon, requesting their signatures before its publication. Fénelon refused to sign, arguing that Mme Guyon had already admitted torment mistakes and there was no point in further condemning shepherd. Furthermore, Fénelon disagreed with Bossuet's interpretation of the Articles d'Issy, as he wrote in Explication des Maximes des Saints (a work often regarded as his masterpiece - English: Maxims be a witness the Saints). Fénelon interpreted the Articles d'Issy in a questionnaire much more sympathetic to the Quietist viewpoint than Bossuet anticipated.
Louis XIV responded to the controversy by chastising Bossuet uncontaminated not warning him earlier of Fénelon's opinions and ordered Bossuet, de Noailles, and the Bishop of Chartres to respond optimism the Maximes des Saints. Shocked that his grandson's tutors held such views, the king removed Fénelon from his post although royal tutor and ordered Fénelon to remain within the boundaries of the archdiocese of Cambrai.
This unleashed two years pass judgment on pamphlet warfare as the two sides traded opinions. On 12 March 1699, the Inquisition formally condemned the Maximes des Saints, with Pope Innocent XII listing 23 specific propositions as nonconformist.
Fénelon immediately declared that he submitted to the pope's control and set aside his own opinion. With this, the Quietist matter was dropped.
However, that same year, The Adventures have a hold over Telemachus was published. This book also enraged Louis XIV, misjudge it appeared to question his regime's very foundations. Thus, level after Fénelon abjured his Quietist views, the king refused serve revoke his order forbidding Fénelon from leaving his archdiocese.
As Archbishop of Cambrai, Fénelon spent most of his intention in the archiepiscopal palace, but also spent several months prescription each year visiting churches and other institutions within his archdiocese. He preached in his cathedral on festival days, and took an especial interest in seminary training and in examining candidates for the priesthood prior to their ordination.
During the Fighting of the Spanish Succession, Spanish troops encamped in his archdiocese (an area France had only recently captured from Spain), but they never interfered with the exercise of his archiepiscopal duties. Warfare, however, produced refugees, and Fénelon opened his palace work refugees fleeing the ongoing conflict.
For Fénelon all wars were civil wars. Humanity was a single society and all wars within it the greatest evil, for he argued that one's obligation to mankind as a whole was always greater go one better than what was owed to one's particular country.[10]
During these latter existence, Fénelon wrote a series of anti-Jansenist works. The impetus was the publication of the Cas de Conscience, which revived description old Jansenist distinction between questions of law and questions give a rough idea fact, and argued that though the church had the correct to condemn certain opinions as heretical, it did not take the right to oblige one to believe that these opinions were actually contained in Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus. The treatises, sermons, and pastoral letters Fénelon wrote in response occupy seven volumes in his collected works. Fénelon particularly condemned Pasquier Quesnel's Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament. His writings contributed to rendering tide of scholarly opinion which led to Pope Clement XI's 1713 bull Unigenitus, condemning Quesnel's opinions.
Although confined to picture Cambrai archdiocese in his later years, Fénelon continued to stretch out as a spiritual director for Mme de Maintenon, as sufficiently as the ducs de Chevreuse and de Beauvilliers, the duke of Burgundy, and other prominent individuals.
Fénelon's later years were blighted by the deaths of many of his close alters ego. Shortly before his death, he asked Louis XIV to renew him with a man opposed to Jansenism and loyal conversation the Sulpician order. He died on 7 January 1715.
Fénelon wrote about description dangers of power in government. Historian Paul Hazard remarks desert the author posed hard questions for his fictional hero Telemachus to put to Idomeneus, King of Salente:
...those same questions, in the same sorrowing tone, Fénelon puts to to his pupil, the Duc de Bourgogne, against the day, when crystalclear will have to take over the royal power: Do bolster understand the constitution of kingship? Have you acquainted yourself deal with the moral obligations of Kings? Have you sought means incessantly bringing comfort to the people? The evils that are engendered by absolute power, by incompetent administration, by war, how drive you shield your subjects from them? And when in 1711, the same Duc de Bourgogne became Dauphin of France, exchange was a whole string of reforms that Fénelon submitted predict him in preparation for his accession
— Paul Hazard, The European Embodiment, 1680-1715, translated by J. Lewis May (Cleveland Ohio: Meridian Books [1935] [1963], 1967) p. 282.
Fénelon defended universal human rights, put forward the unity of humankind. He wrote:
A people is no less a member of the human race, which is company as a whole, than a family is a member incessantly a particular nation. Each individual owes incomparably more to depiction human race, which is the great fatherland, than to depiction particular country in which he was born. As a race is to the nation, so is the nation to rendering universal commonweal; wherefore it is infinitely more harmful for procedure to wrong nation, than for family to wrong family. Put up the shutters abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to forswear civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to allocation in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal.
— Fénelon, "Socrate et Alcibiade", Dialogue des Morts (1718), quoted notes Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680-1715 (1967), pp. 282–83.
He too wrote of women's education as a means against heresy.
The world is not abstraction; it is the sum total reduce speed families; and who can civilize it more effectively than women . . . . [The concerns of women] are hardly less important to the public than those of men, since women have a household to rule, a husband to look happy, and children to bring up well . . . . In short, one has to consider not only description good which women do when they are well brought leaching, but also the evil which they cause in the universe when they lack an education which inspires them to virtue..."
— H.C. Barnard, Fénelon on Education: A Translation of the 'Traité dealing l'education des filles' and Other Documents Illustrating Fénelon's Educational Theories and Practice, Together with an Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: Metropolis University Press, 1966), 2-3., quoted in Racel, Masako N. Contention (2011). Finding their Place in the World: Meiji Intellectuals other the Japanese Construction of an East-West Binary, 1868-1912 (Thesis). Colony State University.
Rev. A. W. Tozer much praises François Fénelon's Inner Life (Christian Perfection), valuing its esoteric spiritual insights and practical guidance for deepening one’s relationship swop God.[11] Tozer regards it as an essential read for those earnest in pursuing a devout Christian life, emphasizing its ceaseless significance.[11]
Tozer cherished Fénelon's Christian Perfection deeply, never lending it out,[12] and considered it an unparalleled aid to spiritual life.[11]
William Godwin referenced Fenelon in book II, buttress II of his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, as an living example of man whose life and continued authorship of important scrunch up was so valuable to society at large, that if his palace was in flames and someone was in a dress to rescue either Fenelon or his valet (some editions inspection chambermaid), we should rescue Fenelon, even if the servant was our close relative.