FÉNELON, FRANÇOIS

FÉNELON, FRANÇOIS (1651–1715), was a French philosopher, theologian, and educator, and Roman Catholic archbishop of Cambrai. Born in the Château de Fénelon in Périgord, François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, an aristocrat by birth and upbringing, spent the first years of his education at home. After the death of his father in 1663, he was sent to study with the Jesuits at the University of Cahors; then, in 1665, he went to Paris, where he studied philosophy and theology at the College of Le Plessis. Finally, probably in 1672, he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice to prepare for the priesthood.

Ordained at the age of twenty-four, Fénelon worked in the parish of Saint-Sulpice from 1675 to 1678. In 1678 he became superior of the Convent of New Catholics (a position he held until 1689), where he strengthened the faith of young women recently converted to the Catholic church. In August 1689 Louis XIV chose him to be private tutor to his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, a post Fénelon held until 1699. In 1693 he was elected a member of the French Academy and in 1695 was nominated archbishop of Cambrai. Fénelon spent the final years of his life as a successful administrator and zealous bishop.

Fénelon's writings concern pedagogy, literature, politics, philosophy, and theology. In his Traité de l'éducation des filles (1687), for example, foreshadowing Rousseau's Émile, one finds his educational philosophy. His literary ability and political ideas are felicitously woven together in his Les aventures de Télémaque (1699), a mythological novel written for the instruction of the dauphin. Here allegory dissimulates the real import of his views. Fénelon depicts the confused ideal of a monarchy at once absolute, aristocratic, and urbane, while condemning indirectly the despotic and bellicose reign of Louis XIV. The views expressed in this novel redounded inevitably to his discredit in the eyes of the king and his loss of favor at court.

It is the controversy over quietism, however, that has weighed most heavily on the memory of Fénelon, making it difficult to give an objective assessment of him. His undulating and generous nature had made him adopt the principle of the "dévotion idéale" professed by Madame Guyon (1648–1717), a mystic Fénelon had met and befriended in 1688: The soul, completely absorbed by the love of God, becomes indifferent to everything, even its own life and salvation. Feeling obliged, however, to justify himself before the public, Fénelon formally disowned the excesses and consequences of quietism in his L'explication des maximes des saints sur la vie intérieure (1697). Nevertheless, in 1699 the Holy See decided to condemn twenty-three propositions extracted from this book.

Yet, with his aristocratic cast of mind and his poetic makeup, Fénelon exercised a strong influence on his contemporaries and left a mark on the history of spirituality. Original insofar as he adopted a scale of values that was personal to him, he provided a philosophical justification for his attitude toward spiritual matters by establishing as the basis of his spiritual system two notions directly connected with each other: pure love and indifference, the latter being the psychological state in which pure love is born.

Fénelon's life and works witness to the more human and subtle exigencies of French spirituality. He was aware of his own defects yet was too deeply committed to the world to have the courage to deny it. His troubled and sublime spirit needed more the experience of God and less the life of the intellect; more freedom for the soul, more spontaneity, and less dedication to the rewards of piety.

See Also

Quietism.

Bibliography

There have been numerous editions of Fénelon's Œuvres complètes: Paris, 1810; Versailles, 1820–1830; Paris, 1835; Paris, 1851–1852; and Paris, 1854. For general information about Fénelon, the following two biographies are still useful: Paul Janet's Fénelon (Paris, 1892) and Élie Carcassonne's Fénelon (Paris, 1946). Janet's book has been translated into English and edited, with introduction, notes, and index, by Victor Leuliette as Fénelon: His Life and Works (Port Washington, N.Y., 1970). See also Carcassonne's État présent des travaux sur Fénelon (Paris, 1939). For informative articles on Fénelon, see A. Largent's "Fénelon," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 5 (Paris, 1924), and Louis Cognet's "Fénelon," Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, vol. 5 (Paris, 1964).

E. Gerhard Carroll (1987)