DUPANLOUP, FÉLIX-ANTOINE-PHILIBERT. - Bishop of Orléans, b. at St-Félix in Savoy on 3 Jan. 1802, d. at Lacombe (Savoy) on 11 Oct. 1878. Educated at the minor seminary of St-Nicolas du Chardonnet and then at St-Sulpice, he left it a priest on 18 Dec. 1825. He began his activity as a curate at the Assumption, where he immediately distinguished himself by his exceptional gifts as a catechist, so much so that he was entrusted with the religious instruction of the royal princes. There he founded the Academy of St. Hyacinth, deserving well of the education of youth. He then passed, likewise as a curate, to the Madeleine and then, in 1836, to St. Roch. As early as 1833 he had inaugurated at Notre-Dame those celebrated conferences, which were later to be continued by many illustrious orators. In 1838 he received the retraction and the last confession of Talleyrand. From 1837 to 1845 he was rector of the Chardonnet, acquiring and lavishing there treasures of pedagogical experience. E. Renan, his pupil, unfortunately a renegade, bears witness to this: "Only those who knew St-Nicolas du Chardonnet in the brilliant years from 1838 to 1844 can form an idea of the intense life that developed there. And this life had but a single source, a single principle, Msgr. D. ... He was a stimulator without equal. He had no equal in the art of drawing from each of his pupils the sum of what he could give" (Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, Paris [n. d.], pp. 136-38).
He later gathered his experiences as an educator into a great work, in two parts: De l'éducation en général (3 vols., Paris 1850-62) and De la haute éducation intellectuelle (3 vols., ibid. 1855-57). Versatile as he was, he found time to devote himself also to external apostolate as an effective writer on all the greatest questions of the time: De la pacification religieuse (ibid. 1845); La situation intellectuelle et religieuse du clergé; Les petits séminaires. Etat de la question (ibid. 1847), on freedom of teaching, etc. In 1841 he became professor of sacred eloquence at the Sorbonne and in 1845 vicar general of Msgr. Affre, canon of Notre-Dame and director of L'Ami de la religion. A member in 1849 of the commission charged by Minister Falloux with preparing the law on freedom of teaching, he exercised a decisive influence there.
In Apr. of that same year he was elected to the episcopal see of Orléans. He distinguished himself by his intelligent and tireless zeal in the formation of the clergy, in the education of youth and in the teaching of the catechism. In 1852 in a letter to the professors of his minor seminary he defended the study of the pagan classics against the anxieties of Gaume. On 9 Nov. 1854 he was received into the French Academy. The following year he delivered in the cathedral the panegyric of Joan of Arc, and he delivered another in 1869, in which year he took the first steps in Rome for the introduction of the cause of beatification of the heroine and in 1876 he transmitted to Rome the results of the diocesan informative process.
From 1859 to 1870, by word and by his writings, he was the indomitable champion of the temporal power of the Pope. He was not, however, ultramontane. In 1862 he undertook at the castle of La Roche-en-Brény with Montalembert and Falloux to fight "pro libera Ecclesia in libera patria". This was the programmatic motto of French Catholic liberalism. Eager to reconcile the imprescriptible rights of the Church with the modern soul, he wrote La convention du 15 septembre et l'encyclique du 8 septembre 1864, in which he comments on the Syllabus with lenitive glosses that explain its reasonableness. He received praise from as many as 630 bishops and from Pius IX himself (4 Feb. 1865). Always in the breach, he rejected the attacks of the Duruy ministry on Christian education; he fought the admission of Littré to the Academy; he took part in the Congresses of Malines of 1864 and 1867; in the episcopal meetings of Rome of 1862 and 1867; he continued to be present with pamphlets and pastoral letters in every religious and social debate of his time. A pity that certain Gallican tendencies of his made him, for reasons of expediency, take a hostile attitude toward the definition of pontifical infallibility, whereas he had not failed to uphold and defend it precisely in his doctoral theses in Rome in 1842. He feared that that definition might hinder the conversion of Protestants and compromise the faith, still too weak, of so many Catholics. He therefore published in Nov. 1869 the Observations sur la controverse soulevée relativement à la définition de l'infallibilité au futur concile. He then upheld the inopportuneness of that definition until the last and, on the eve of the definitive session, rather than repeat the non placet in the presence of the Pope, he preferred to return to his diocese. However, as soon as the dogma was defined, he hastened to perform an act of submission.
During the German occupation of Orléans he was the true defensor civitatis: grateful faithful elected him their representative to the National Assembly, where he spoke every time it was a question of defending a religious interest, especially with regard to the freedom of higher education (bill of 1875). He declined the see of Lyon (1875) and instead accepted to be a member of the Senate (1876). Despite his advanced age he continued to struggle with youthful energy against invading unbelief and Freemasonry. He obtained, through his proud protests, that the government should disapprove the celebrations organized in 1878 by the Municipal Council of Paris for the centenary of the death of Voltaire. Leo XIII wished to grant him the purple; but the government raised difficulties and meanwhile D. died suddenly. He was certainly not a great theologian, but in compensation he was a great pastor of souls. Taking this into account, certain of his attitudes are explained, even if not all of them can be justified.
The list of D.'s works is in Herluisson, Liste bibliographique des écrits de mgr D. (Orléans 1878; in Polybiblium, 2 [1888], p. 463 ff., as well as in F. Lagrange, Vie de mgr D. (III, Paris 1894, p. 486 ff.). Subsequently the Journal intime was published, ed. L. Branchereau (2nd ed. Paris 1910) and a selection of the best pages, edited by H. E. Dutoit, D. (collection Choisir, I, ibid. 1933).
Bibliography11 works
Ireneo Daniele