Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe

(1651-1751)

   prelate, writer, theologian

   François de salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, whose theories and publications, despite the opposition of church and state, eventually became the basis for profound cultural and political changes in France, was born at the château of Fénelon, Périgord, into a noble family. Educated at the seminary of saint-sulpice and the university of Cahors, he was ordained a priest in 1675, and soon was appointed head of the Nouvelles Catholiques, an institute in Paris for the instruction of recent female converts to Catholicism. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was sent to lead a mission among the Protestants in western France. He became a protégé of jacques bénigne bossuet and, in 1689, was appointed tutor to the young duke of Burgundy, a grandson of louis XIV. Fénelon wrote a series of moral lessons for this pupil to instruct him in the obligations and duties of a ruler. In 1695, Fénelon was named archbishop of Cambrai, but he soon became involved in a controversy with Bossuet over the quietist doctrines of Mme guyon. Fénelon himself had been influenced by quietism and its emphasis on the contemplative life, and his Explication des maximes des saints (1697) was strongly criticized by Bossuet as inconsistent with church doctrine and teachings. After an appeal to Rome, sections of the book were condemned by Pope Innocent XII. Fénelon was exiled to his archdiocese by Louis XIV, who sided with Bossuet. Also, Louis XIV had been displeased by Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque (1699), his best-known work. A political novel, it posits that monarchs are the servants of their subjects and, additionally, denounces war and calls for a fraternity of nations. In another work, the influential Traité de l'éducation des filles (1687), Fénelon argued for education for women and later presented a plan for improving the Académie Française, of which he had been a member since 1693. His other political work, Tables de Chaulnes (1711), is also considered a critique of absolutism. In all his writings, Fénelon can be seen as a precursor of the 18th-century utopians.