FENELON, FRANCOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE-

born Aug. 6, 1651, Chteau de Fnelon, Prigord, Fr. died Jan. 7, 1715, Cambrai French archbishop, theologian, and man of letters whose liberal views on politics and education and whose involvement in a controversy over the nature of mystical prayer caused concerted opposition from church and state. His pedagogical concepts and literary works, nevertheless, exerted a lasting influence on French culture. Descended from a long line of nobility, Fnelon began his higher studies in Paris about 1672 at Saint-Sulpice seminary. Ordained a priest in 1676, he was appointed director of Nouvelles Catholiques (New Catholics), a college for women who instructed converts from French Protestantism. When King Louis XIV heightened the persecution of the Huguenots (French Calvinists) in 1685 by revoking the Edict of Nantes, Fnelon strove to mitigate the harshness of Roman Catholic intolerance by open meetings with the Protestants (168687) to present Catholic doctrine in a reasonable light. While unsympathetic to Protestant belief, he equally repudiated forced conversions. From his pedagogical experiences at Nouvelles Catholiques, he wrote his first important work, Trait de l'ducation des filles (1687; Treatise on the Education of Girls). Although generally conservative, the treatise submitted innovative concepts on the education of females and criticized the coercive methods of his day. In 1689, with the support of the renowned bishop Jacques-Bnigne Bossuet, Fnelon was named tutor to Louis, Duke (duc) de Bourgogne, grandson and heir to Louis XIV. For the prince's education, Fnelon composed his best-known work, Les Aventures de Tlmaque (1699), in which the adventures of Telemachus in search of his father, Ulysses, symbolically expressed Fnelon's fundamental political ideas. During the period of his popularity in official circles, Fnelon enjoyed various honours, including his election to the French Academy in 1693 and his selection as archbishop of Cambrai in 1695. Anxious about his spiritual life, Fnelon sought an answer from the Quietist school of prayer. Introduced in October 1688 to Quietism's leading exponent, Mme Guyon, Fnelon sought from her some means of personally experiencing the God whose existence he had intellectually proved. But his search for spiritual peace was short-lived. Bossuet and other influential people at court attacked Mme Guyon's teaching, and a document investigating Quietism's doubtful orthodoxy even obtained Fnelon's signature. When Bossuet, however, next launched a personal attack on Mme Guyon, Fnelon responded with Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie intrieure (1697; Explanation of the Sayings of the Saints on the Interior Life). Defending Mme Guyon's integrity, Fnelon not only lost Bossuet's friendship but also exposed himself to Bossuet's public denunciation. As a result, Fnelon's Maximes des saints was condemned by the pope, and he was exiled to his diocese.