FÉNELON, François de Salignac de la Mothe. – Writer, born into a noble family on 6 August 1651 at the château of Fénelon (Périgord), died on 7 January 1715 at Cambrai. He began his studies at the University of Cahors, completed them at the Sorbonne and at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. Ordained priest in 1674 or 1675, he remained for some years at Saint-Sulpice, exercising his ministry in that parish. In 1678 he became superior of an educational institution for young Protestant women converted to Catholicism; after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was among the most zealous collaborators in the missions and strove for the conversion of Protestants. In both roles he displayed a tact and gentle understanding that were the direct methodological legacy of Saint Francis de Sales.
Tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, Fénelon, a proud scion of an aristocratic tradition, found himself increasingly ill at ease in the monarchical environment (not least among the causes of the condemnation of his “Quietism” was the opposition of Louis XIV). In 1693 he delivered his discourse on entering the Académie Française. In 1695 he was appointed Archbishop of Cambrai.
He ranks among the greatest religious writers of 17th-century France for his restless inquiry into the human soul, his subtle and refined yearning for the “pure love” of God, and his exquisite and persuasive stillness. In his first literary work, the Dialogues sur l'éloquence (1679, published posthumously), there already emerges his character as a friend of truth as an intimate conviction of mind and heart. The first small work, of great importance in the history of Catholic pedagogy, which brought him specific renown, was the Traité de l'éducation des filles (1687), in which he outlined an educational method founded on quickness of mind and serenity: one must not instil in tender infant minds “vaines craintes des fantômes et des esprits,” but rather strive always to present “une idée agréable” of good and a horrifying idea of evil. Nature must not be crushed but aided; authority can well coexist with wise freedom.
Fénelon holds an important place in the history of 17th-century political thought for Les aventures de Télémaque (composed around 1693–94, but published without his knowledge in 1699, a somewhat prolix novel, yet sustained by an enchanting and magical style), for the Évanement de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté and for other minor writings. In these works Fénelon appears as an anti-contractualist yet also anti-absolutist (concerns that arose not only from his concept of Christian ‘libertas’ but also from the antinomian spirit of the noble class to which he belonged). Against kings who think only of making themselves feared, those kings who are “les Réaux du genre humain,” he sketches the profile of the ideal king, swayed by natural goodness (it should be remembered that in the Télémaque we are in a fictive mythological world) to reason; of the king who ensures that justice is exercised in favour of the poor against the rich. Happy, he exclaims, is the people led by a wise king, but still happier the king who finds happiness in his own virtue: “il tient les hommes par un lien cent fois plus fort que celui de la crainte: c'est celui de l'amour”; not only is obedience given, but love is felt in obeying him: “il règne dans les cœurs.” On the international plane Fénelon advocates the utmost respect for the community of foreign nations: a particular right of succession or donation, he says, must yield to the natural law of the security of nations; anything that destroys the balance cannot be just, even if founded on the written laws of a particular country, precisely because the written laws of one people cannot prevail over the natural law of freedom and common security, impressed upon the hearts of all peoples.
Fénelon occupies a prominent place in the theological Europe of his time when he entered the fray to defend against Bossuet the Quietist theories of Madame Guyon (q.v.). Fierce was the struggle between Bossuet and Fénelon (and Bossuet was certainly not rich in charity toward his opponent). For the various phases of this theological battle, see QUIETISM. The definitive word came from Rome: with the brief Crimi of 12 March 1699, Innocent XII condemned Fénelon’s Explication des maximes des saints (Paris 1697). The papal brief noted in Fénelon’s work various errors, phrases that sounded ill, phrases bordering on heresy: man can love God with a love of charity free from fear and without any admixture of self-interest (having no part in this love either the fear of punishment or the desire for rewards); man can love God, but not for merit, nor for perfection, nor for the joy he feels in loving Him. In the stage of holy indifference, man no longer wills salvation as his own salvation, as eternal deliverance, as the reward of his merits, as the greatest of his interests; but he wills salvation with full will as the glory and good pleasure of God, as a thing that God wills and that He wills us to will for His sake. This “pure love” alone composes the whole of interior life and becomes the sole principle of all deliberate and meritorious acts. Fénelon’s Quietism, however, does not reach the extremes of a Molinos: for Fénelon, in contemplation the soul is in complete indifference to its own salvation, that is, without the virtue of hope; but with a subtle distinction: in its movement the soul loses all hope for its own destiny, yet does not lose perfect hope (which is the disinterested desire for divine promises) in its higher part, that is, in those acts that are direct and intimate. Moreover, for Fénelon, in the unitive stage, if man loses every motive of fear and hope, he does not lose filial fear nor the hope of the children of God. In certain respects Fénelon is decidedly opposed to Molinos: he is indeed averse to repressing virtuous acts within himself; in quietude, he affirms, only one’s own interest is forgotten, but opposition to evil must always remain present; moreover, one must have no contempt for the active life. Fénelon submitted to the condemnation, a condemnation determined not only by certain errors held by Fénelon but also by various imprecisions of theological language (haste had indeed been his bad counsellor: Bossuet was about to publish, against Guyon’s mysticism, his Instruction sur les états d'oraison; Fénelon wished to forestall him and succeeded in publishing his Explication on 19 February 1697, six weeks before Bossuet’s work appeared).
Among F.'s minor works, yet by no means lacking in breadth and inner light, is the *Traité de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu* (begun in youth and completed in 1718); in this work, F. follows a method in proving the existence of God that might be termed ontological: ideas independent of bodies reveal the nature of the soul, which receives them as incorporeal; whence comes the "corporeal" idea of bodies themselves. It is necessary that what is conceived within itself be a kind of "cloak of corporeal nature"; but how can beings be known that have no natural relation to my thinking being? Without doubt, there must exist a being superior to these two natures so different, one that embraces both within its infinity, having united them in my soul and given me the idea of a nature entirely distinct from that which thinks within me.
Other writings by F., always rich in intellectual freedom and in a sweet yet at the same time resentful complexity, include the *Refutation du système de Malebranche* (a youthful work published only in 1820, directed against absolute optimism and the denial of divine freedom), the *Traité du ministère des pasteurs* (also a youthful work, in which the theme is emphasized that Protestants lack an unbroken apostolic tradition), the pamphlet on the *gnostica* of Clement of Alexandria (*P. Dudon, Le gnostique de Clément d'Alexandrie. Opuscule inédit de F.*, Paris 1930; in which the existence of an esoteric doctrine of pure love in the early Church is argued), various pastoral instructions (from 1704 to 1714; they attack Jansenist doctrines with straightforward conviction, a movement F. opposed decisively, even employing in practice means not entirely fair), and the *Lettres sur l'autorité de l'Église*, *Lettres sur la religion*, *Dialogues des morts*, as well as the *Lettre sur les occupations de l'Académie* (1714), a lucid manifesto of free literary taste, rich in clarity, order, and simplicity rather than in ornamentation serving the truth.
An orator endowed with "douce insinuation," he leaves among his most moving works the *Sermon pour la fête de l'Épiphanie* (6 Jan. 1685; splendid in its mystical inspiration: *"l'homme s'agite, mais Dieu le mène"*) and the *Discours prononcé au sacre de l'élection de Cologne* (10 May 1707).
F.'s influence was immense. First, within the Catholic sphere, for his pedagogy, his political thought, his anti-rigorism, his anti-Jansenism, and also for his mystical doctrines, which, where not heterodox, were received as a wholesome corrective to excessive rationalism—a tendency F. himself described to the Duke of Chevreuse as an obstacle to recollection and silence, where God communicates Himself. Moreover, outside the Catholic sphere, his anti-Jansenism pleased libertines, his opposition to religious formalism commended him to the creators of the myth of natural religion, his anti-absolutism aligned him with the precursors of democratic thought, his pedagogy influenced all post-Enlightenment educational thought, and above all his Quietism contributed to the mythology of a religion without hells or heavens, transmitted through his disciple Ramsay into philanthropic-masonic humanitarianism (Ramsay's *Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. F. de S. de la M. F.*, Amsterdam 1727, is fundamental). The legacy of F.'s Quietism was also immense in Romantic mysticism; indeed, one might say that the history of Romantic mysticism runs parallel and is almost always coincident with the fortunes of F. and Madame Guyon. — *See* pl. LXXV.