FÉNELON, FRANÇOIS de SALIGNAC de la MOTHE. - Writer, b. of a noble family on 6 Aug. 1651 in the castle of Fénelon (Périgord), d. 7 Jan. 1715 at Cambrai. He began at the University of Cahors the studies that he completed at the Sorbonne and at the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Ordained a priest in 1674 or 1675, he remained for some years at St. Sulpice, exercising the ministry in that parish. In 1678 he is superior of an educational institute for young Protestant women converted to Catholicism; after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes he is among the most fervent collaborators in the "missions" aimed at the conversion of Protestants: in both offices he shows a tact and a gentle understanding that are the direct methodological inheritance of St. Francis de Sales. As tutor of the Duke of Burgundy, F., a proud scion of an aristocratic tradition, ends up finding himself ill at ease in the monarchical environment (not the least cause of the condemnation of his "quietism" was the opposition of Louis XIV). In 1693 he delivers his speech for admission to the Académie française. In 1695 he is appointed archbishop of Cambrai.
He is among the greatest religious writers of the French seventeenth century for his restless investigation of the human soul, for the subtle and refined anxiety in the "pure love" of God, for his amiability so exquisite and [sunderte]. In his first literary work, Dialogues sur l'éloquence (1679, published posthumously), there already emerges his physiognomy as a friend of truth as an intimate persuasion of mind and heart. The first little work, of great importance in the history of Catholic pedagogy, which gave him a specific notoriety was the Traité de l'éducation des filles (1687), where an educational method is outlined founded on loving kindness and serenity: one must not instill in infantile minds "vaines craintes des fantômes et des esprits", but must instead tend always to outline "une idée agréable du bien et une idée affreuse du mal". Nature is not
[ve conculesta] but helped. Authority can well coexist with a wise freedom.
F. has notable importance in the history of seventeenth-century political thought for Les aventures de Télémaque (composed around 1693-94, but published without his knowledge in 1699, a somewhat prolix novel, but sustained by an enchanting and magical style), for the Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté and for other minor writings: in them F. shows himself to be an anti-contractualist but also an anti-absolutist (demands that arose not only from his concept of Christian "libertas", but also from the anti-monarchical spirits of the noble class to which he belonged): against kings who think only of making themselves feared, those kings who are "les fléaux du genre humain", F. outlines the profile of the excellent king [sarromesso] to natural goodness (it should be remembered that in the Télémaque one is in a fictitious mythological world) and to reason; of the king who comes to have justice exercised in favor of the poor against the rich; happy, exclaims F., the people led by a wise king, but even 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 he obeyed, but one loves to obey him: "il règne dans les cœurs". On an international plane F. advocates the greatest respect toward the community of foreign nations: a particular right of succession or of donation, he says, must yield to the natural law of the security of nations; everything that destroys the balance cannot be just even if it is founded on the written laws of a particular country, precisely because the written laws of one people cannot prevail over the natural law of liberty and common security, impressed in the hearts of all the other peoples.
F. obtained a place of first importance in the turbulent theological Europe of his time, when he entered the lists to defend against Bossuet the quietist theories of Madame Guyon (v.). The struggle between Bossuet and F. was bitter (and Bossuet was certainly not rich in charity toward his adversary. For the various phases of this theological battle, v. QUIETISMO); the definitive word came from Rome: with the brief Cum alias of 12 March 1699 Innocent XII condemned the Explication des maximes des saints (Paris 1697) of F.; various errors were noted by the pontifical brief in F.'s work, ill-sounding phrases, phrases close to heresy: man can love God with a love of pure charity, and without any admixture of the motive of self-interest (neither the fear of punishments nor the desire for rewards having any part in this love); man can love God, but not for merit, nor for perfection; nor for the joy that he feels in loving him. In the stage of holy indifference, man no longer wills salvation as his own salvation, as eternal liberation, as the reward of his own merits, as the greatest of his own 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 that we will for Him. This pur amour alone composes the whole interior life and then becomes the sole principle of all deliberate and meritorious acts. F.'s quietism, however, does not reach the extremes of a Molinos: for F. in contemplation the soul is in the most complete indifference to its own salvation, that is, without the virtue of hope; but with a subtle distinction: in the [annegamento] the soul does indeed lose every hope for its own destiny, but it does not lose perfect hope (which is the disinterested desire of the divine promises) in the higher part, that is, in the direct and intimate acts. Moreover, for F. man in the unitive stage, if he loses every motive of fear and hope, loses neither filial fear nor the hope of the children of God. In certain aspects F. is decidedly contrary to Molinos: he is in fact averse to repressing virtuous acts within oneself; in quiet, he still 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. F. submitted to the condemnation, a condemnation determined not only by certain errors upheld by F. but also by various imprecisions of theological language (haste had in fact been a bad counselor to him: Bossuet was giving to the press, against the Guyonian mysticism, his Instruction sur les états d'oraison; F. in [precederlo] and succeeded in publishing his Explication on 1 Feb. 1697, six weeks before the appearance of Bossuet's work).
Among the minor works, though no less rich in pathos and intimate light, is the Traité de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu (begun in his youth and finished in 1718); in proving the existence of God F. follows a method that might be defined as ontological: ideas independent of bodies disclose the nature of the soul that receives those of which it is composed; whence comes the idea of "incorporeal" bodies themselves? It is necessary that what is thought in oneself rests upon a sort of "tant de nature corporelle"; but how can one know beings that have no relation of nature with my thinking being? It is necessary without doubt that a being superior to these two natures so different, and which encloses both within its infinity, has joined them in my soul, and has given it the idea of a nature wholly different from that which thinks in me. Other writings of F., always rich in a solid intellectual freedom and in a gentle and at the same time resentful complexity, are the Refutation du système de Malebranche (a youthful work published only in 1820, against absolute optimism, which denies divine freedom), the Traité du ministère des pasteurs (also a youthful work, where he insists on the theme that Protestants do not have an uninterrupted apostolic tradition), the pamphlet on the gnosticism of Clement of Alexandria (P. Dudon, Le gnostique de Clément d'Alexandrie, Opuscule inédit de F., Paris 1930; where the existence, in the ancient Church, of the esoteric doctrine of pure love is maintained), the various pastoral instructions (from 1794 to 1714: they attack with frank persuasion the doctrines of Jansenism, a movement that F. decisively opposed, employing in practice also means that were not entirely honest. A theological aspect on which F. insists in his theoretical polemic is that of the identity between efficacious grace as such, Jansenistic, and necessitating grace, Calvinistic), 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 a free literary taste, which should be rich in clarity, order and simplicity and not in ornaments that enervate the truth. An orator rich in a "douce insinuation", he leaves among his most sensitive pieces the Sermon pour la fête de l'Épiphanie (6 Jan. 1685; splendid for its mystical inspiration: "l'homme s'agite, mais Dieu le mène") and the Discours prononcé au sacre de l'électeur de Cologne (1 May 1707).
Immense was the fortune of F. First of all in the Catholic field, for his pedagogy, for his political thought, for his anti-Rigorism, for his anti-Jansenism, and fundamentally also for his mystical doctrines, which wherever they are not heterodox have been welcomed as a healthy demand against the "pente excessive à raisonner", which (as F. declared to the duke of Chevreuse) is "un obstacle à ce recueillement et à ce silence où Dieu se communique". And, moreover, outside the Catholic field, his anti-Jansenism is pleasing to the libertines, his opposition to religious formalism to the creators of the myth of natural religion, his anti-absolutism to the preparers of democratic thought, his pedagogy to all post-Enlightenment educational thought, and above all his quietism to the mythology of a religion without hells and paradises, passed through his disciple Ramsay into philanthropic-Masonic humanitarianism (of Ramsay the Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. F. de S. de la M. F., Amsterdam 1727, is fundamental). Very great too has been the legacy of F.'s quietism in Romantic mysticism: indeed one may say that the history of Romantic mysticism is parallel and almost always coincident with the fortune of F. and of Madame Guyon. - See pl. LXXV.
Bibliography32 works
Massimo Petrocchi