Dupanloup, Félix

(1802-1978)

   prelate, political figure

   Born in Saint-Félix, Savoy, Félix Dupanloup was the bishop of Orléans when, in 1849, as a leader of the liberal Catholics, he took a stand against louis veuillot's ultramontanist newspaper, L'Univers, and, for personal reasons, opposed the definition of papal infallibility (although when that doctrine was proclaimed in 1870, he accepted it). Dupanloup was a member of the commission that developed the law (Falloux Law, 1855) on education and later, as a deputy, helped to pass the law of 1875 on upper-level teaching. At odds with the writers ernest renan, hippolyte taine, and maximilien littré, he tried to overturn the latter's election to the Académie Française, from which he resigned when Littré was elected in 1871. Dupanloup, who became a senator in 1876, is the author of various pedagogic works and catechisms, and of a famous pamphlet in which he supports the papal encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX.