Fénelon – Wikipedia
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon , said fluently Fénelon , nicknamed “The Cambrai Swan”, is a man of church, theologian, pedagogue and French writer, born At the Château de Fénelon in Sainte-Mondane (Quercy, today the Dordogne) and died the in Cambrai.
Preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, Archbishop of Cambrai (1695-1715), he opposed Bossuet and fell into disgrace during the quiller of Quietism, and above all, after the publication of his novel, The adventures of Télémaque (1699), considered a criticism of the policy of Louis XIV and whose literary influence was considerable for more than two centuries [ 2 ] . Fénelon has also written several other works concerning pedagogy or didactic ( Treaty of girls’ education , Fables collection , Dialogues of the dead , notably) [ 3 ] .
Better known as Fénelon, François Armand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon was born at the castle on August 6, 1651.
After first studies in Cahors, he entered the Saint-Sulpice seminar, in Paris, where he was ordained a priest in 1667. His sermons and the publication, in 1687, of his Treaty of girls’ education , written for the girls of Minister Colbert, make him famous.
Presented at the Court of Versailles in 1689, and on the recommendation of Bossuet, he will be chosen by Louis XIV as the tutor of his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy.
His brilliant spirit immediately earned him the admiration of the court and especially the attachment of Mme de Maintenon.
Received in 1693 at the French Academy, he was appointed by the King, in 1695, Archbishop of Cambrai.
Of a gentle and idealistic character, but very voluntary in the background, he exhibited sometimes subtle and amazing literary theories. Thus, his positions in favor of the mystical doctrine of Mrs. Guyon, and the violent controversy which followed with Bossuet in what will be called the quarrel of peace of mind, provoked his fall and his exile of Versailles for Cambrai.
In 1699, the publication of his masterpiece, the Télémaque adventures , famous mythological novel which portrays a kind of monarchy ideal while indirectly condemning the despotic and bellicose royalty of Louis XIV, will complete his disgrace.
However, Fénelon will never cease to work on the reform of France, but the premature death of the Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, in 1712, will put a tragic end to his personal (returning to the court) and collective (putting in place an enlightened government). He will devote the rest of his life to work for the benefit of his diocese of Cambrai which he will travel tirelessly.
He went out on January 7, 1715, a few months before Louis XIV. His fears and his political idealism will make him the precursor of the philosophers of the Enlightenment.
Origin and route [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
Fénelon, born on At the Château de Fénelon in Sainte-Mondane, came from a noble family of Périgord, old but impoverished. He is the son of Pons de Salignac (1601-1663) [ 4 ] , Marquis de la Mothe-Fénelon and the second wife of the latter, Louise de la cropte de Chantérac. Several of the ancestors of Fénelon had taken care of politics, and on several generations some had served as bishops of Sarlat. As he was a cadet (his father having had nine children of his first wife, Isabeau d’Esparbes de Lussan, and three of his second, including Fénelon), he was intended early for an ecclesiastical career, just like his half Homonym Brother from the first bed, François Pons de Salignac Comte de la Mothe-Fénelon, Sulpician and Missionary in Canada.
In his childhood, Fénelon received the teaching of a tutor at the Château de Fénelon, who gave him a solid knowledge of ancient Greek and the classics. In 1667, at the age of sixteen, he was sent to the University of Cahors where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. When the young man expressed his attraction for a career in the church, his uncle, the Marquis Antoine de Fénelon (friend of Jean-Jacques Olier and Saint Vincent de Paul, he had participated in the foundation of the company of the Blessed Sacrament whose principles will deeply influence his nephew) sent him to study at the Plessis college, whose students in theology received the same teaching as those of the Sorbonne. He ran into it with Louis Antoine de Noailles, who later became Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris. Fénelon showed such a talent at the Plessis college which he successfully preached there from the age of fifteen [ 5 ] .
After having, from 1672, studied at the Saint-Sulpice seminar, also close to the Jesuits, he was received doctor of theology at the University of Cahors the and ordered priest to Sarlat, the [ 6 ] . Attracting attention to him by beautiful preaching, he was appointed in June 1679 by the Archbishop of Paris Superior of the Institute of New Catholics, a Parisian boarding school devoted to the “rehabilitation” of young girls of good family whose parents , first Protestants, had been converted to Catholicism [ 7 ] .
A remarkable ascent [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
His functions inspired him and, as early as 1681, he cited his educational experience in his Treaty of girls’ education (which was not published until 1687) initially for the use of the Duke and the Duchess of Beauvilliers. At the end of 1685, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1598, on the recommendation of Bossuet, Louis XIV entrusted him with the direction of a mission to Aunis and Saintonge: Convert the Protestants [ 8 ] .
During these years, he was part of the circle that surrounded Bossuet, the fiery spokesperson for the French episcopate. In 1688, he was presented to Madame de Maintenon, the second wife of Louis XIV. She sympathized at the time with Madame Guyon, a mystical and pious woman, and with her quietism. She impressed him deeply when they got to know each other.
Saint-Simon describes it as follows:
“More flirtatious than all women, but in solid, not in misery, his passion was to please, and he had as much care to captivate the valets as the masters, and the smallest people as the characters. For this, he had talents made expressly: a sweetness, an insinuation, natural graces and which flowed from source, an easy, ingenious, flowery, pleasant mind, which he held, so to speak, the tap to pour the quality and The exact amount of them and each person; He proposed and did everything to everyone. »»
In the summer of 1689, on the proposal of Madame de Maintenon, of which he had meanwhile become the spiritual advisor, he was appointed tutor of the Duke of Burgundy, seven years old, grandson of Louis XIV and his possible heir. He was able to teach his pupil “all the virtues of a Christian and a prince”, and inspired him for his person an affection which never denies. In 1690, he was also responsible for the education of the two brothers of the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Berry [ 9 ] .
He thus acquired an influential position at the Court and was admitted to the French Academy (1693) like the other princely tutors.
Disgrace [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
But in 1694, the Affair of Quietism, theological quarrel, opposed him to Bossuet, who had first supported him. In his Explanation of the maxims of saints on inner life , he defended Madame Guyon arrested in 1695 and sentenced to long years of confinement. Both constitute major references of what was called to XVII It is century “inner Christianity, the life of the inner Christian”.
In 1695, he was dismissed from princely education first by a temporary distance to the Archbishopric of Cambrai (named the , confirm it and ordered the [ ten ] ) Before being disgraced. He was then nicknamed “the Cambrai swan”.
In 1697, Bossuet and others, including Mme de Maintenon obtained that the king asked the Pope to condemn Explanation of the maxims of saints on inner life . It was done in 1699. Fénelon submitted with humility and publicly Abjura his mistakes.
Telema [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
For his royal pupil (who, however, was to die in 1712 without having become king, any more than his father died the previous year), Fénelon wrote several fun works and at the same time instructive: first a series of fables, the Adventures of Aristonoüs and the Dialogues of modern dead , but above all, in 1694-1696, an educational novel of adventures and travel The adventures of Télémaque, son of Ulysses .
In this novel that is both pseudo-historic and utopian, he led the young telema, son of Ulysses, flanked by his mentor tutor (obviously the spokesperson for Fénelon) through different states of antiquity, which most Time, by the fault of the bad advisers surrounding the leaders, know problems similar to those of France in the 1690s, plunged into wars which impoverish it, problems which however can be resolved (at least in the novel) thanks to the advice Mentor By means of a peaceful understanding with neighbors, economic reforms that would allow growth, and especially the promotion of agriculture and the cessation of the production of luxury objects.
From 1698, Telema began to circulate at the court in the form of copies, and there was immediately a barely veiled criticism against the authoritarian way of the government of Louis XIV, against its aggressive and bellicose foreign policy and against its mercantilist economic policy, oriented towards ‘export. This work, which Fénelon had not wanted to make public, had been subtracted to him by an unfaithful servant.
At the beginning of 1699, Fénelon lost his job as a tutor and when, in April, his Telema was published (first anonymously and without his authorization), Louis XIV saw there a satire of his reign, stopped the impression and disgraced the author: Fénelon was banished from the court.
The banishment [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
Around 1700, he lived in Belgium for some time in a home, long called “the beautiful house”, being at the limits of the municipalities of pastures and Eugles, then he retired to his arch of Cambrai where, ceasing all activity in theology And in politics, he tried to behave in an exemplary way, in accordance with the teachings of his mentor character (who, in the novel, was none other than Minerva alias Athena, goddess of wisdom which had thus disguised).
During the cruel winter of 1709, he stripped himself of everything to feed the French army which camped near his home. The reputation of its virtues attracted Cambrai a number of foreigners of distinction, among others Andrew Michael Ramsay whom he converted and who left it no longer. He died in 1715 at the age of 63.
A chapter of Memoirs de Saint-Simon is devoted to his death, in rather complimentary terms.
Sound [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
He was also the tutor of the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV, to which he will try to instill an enlightened education on the realities of power, fighting against “excess war” in particular. He defined for the day when he became king of France a government program, the Chaulnes tables . These, written with the Duke of Chevreuse, advocated the monarchy, the only one capable of maintaining the unity and the cohesion of a great state like France. But this monarchy, according to him, had to entrust the nobility with a broad power: the king rules certainly, but surrounded by councils reconstituting the old curia medieval as imagined by Fénelon and Chevreuse; The king had to experience income from his field. The Estates General must be reunited regularly; Composed of the “best”, they are the only ones authorized to vote the tax, moreover moderate because state expenditure must be moderate, in particular by the maximum limitation of the war. The administration of the kingdom must be unified and at the same time decentralized thanks to the abolition of commissioners and intendants and by the restoration of the powers of officers and local assemblies. The venality of the offices must be abolished: officers and magistrates must be appointed according to their merit and their birth. Fénelon wants, like Saint-Simon, put an end to the ascent of the bourgeoisie by drastically limiting the possibilities of ennobling. Trade must be free. Finally France, abandoning all Gallicanism, makes autonomy and powers to the bishops. THE Chaulnes tables develop the political thought of Telema .
Fénelon will be the favorite author of Louis XVI who will retain from his doctrine that if “original sin has made the inequality necessary to prevent everyone from being the master and the tyrant of all the others” and therefore justifies the primacy of the king , in fact “all men, including the king, are equal of a nature [ 11 ] ».
“Above all, don’t let yourself be bewitched by the diabolical attractions of geometry. »»
Complete works by François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon. Volume V Briand 1810 Letter CXLII (142) p. 106
In France XVIII It is And XIX It is centuries, Telema was one of the books for the most read young people (Aragon and Sartre had read it in their youth). It is sometimes considered to be a precursor of the spirit of the Enlightenment.
We owe him a fairly large number of works, some of which are lost, Louis XIV having burned, on the death of the Duke of Burgundy, several of his writings which were in the prince’s papers.
- Treaty of girls’ education [ twelfth ] (1687);
- Treaty of the Ministry of Pastors , (1688);
- Father Malebranche’s system refutation on nature and grace (1688);
- Letter to Louis XIV (1693) (on the Research-fenelon.com site).
- Explanation of the maxims of saints on inner life (1697);
- The adventures of Télémaque (1699); On gutenberg.org
- Fables composed for the education of the Duke of Burgundy (1700);
- Dialogues of the dead (1712);
- Letter on the occupations of the Academy (1714);
- Demonstration of the existence of God, taken from knowledge of nature and proportionate to the low intelligence of the simplest (1712), and with a second part, 1718, often reprinted, in particular in 1810 with notes by Louis-Aimé Martin;
- Educational fables and opuscles (1718).
- Dialogues on eloquence in general and that of the Chair in particular with a letter written to the French Academy , (1718) [ 13 ] ;
- Examination of the conscience of a king (for the Duke of Burgundy) , printed only in 1734;
- of the Sermons , which for the most part were preach to abundance;
- Spiritual works, 2 volumes Antwerp 1718 (post mortem including spiritual letters, T2) .
Old publications [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
Fénelon’s works were published by Father Querbeuf at the expense of the Clergy of France, Paris, 1787-1792, 9 volumes in-4; But this publication was interrupted by the Revolution.
The only really complete edition is that given Gosselin and Caron, according to the author’s manuscripts and with his Correspondence , 1830, 36 volumes in-8.
Recent edition [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
Fénelon, Works , two volumes (1983 and 1997), Library of La Pléiade, Gallimard. (edition presented, established and annotated by Jacques Le Brun)
- ‘ http://www.archivesportaleurope.net/ead-display/-/ead/pl/aicode/Fr-frad024/type/fa/ID02400AP_00000P_0000094 » (consulted the )
- ‘ The adventures of Télémaque: destinies of a bestseller » , on cairn.info
- Gabriel Compayré , ‘ Fénelon » , on www.inrp.fr (consulted the )
- Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, Fénelon , Perrin, , p. 28 .
- Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, on. Cit. , p. thirty first .
- Regional catalogs of incunable public libraries in France: Libraries of the Lower Normandy Region , Droz bookstore, 1984, 186 pages, [ read online ] , p. 228 .
- Henri Gouhier, Fénelon philosopher , Vrin, , p. ten .
- Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, on. Cit. , p. 59 .
- Henri Gouhier, on. Cit. , p. 11 .
- (in) ‘ Archbishop François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon † » , Catholic-Hierarchy .
- “Interview with Jean de Viguerie” , The new history review , n ° 14 September 2004
- François de Fénelon, Girls’ education , tenth edition, text collated on the 1687 edition, with an introduction and educational and explanatory notes, for the use of teachers, by Charles Defodon, Librairie Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1909 [https: // gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5496987b ( read online )
Pierre Larousse « Eloquence of the pulpit (dialogues on the) », Grand Universal Dictionary of XIX It is century , vol. 7 It is , , p. 386-387 ( read online ) .
Archival sources [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
The National Archives of France retain, under the MC/and/LXXI/79 rating, the minute of the inventory of titles and papers of the Fénelon family dated (about 20 handwritten pages).
Sources and bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
Ancient Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
- Marie-Nicolas Bouillet and Alexis Chassang (dir.), “Fénelon” in Universal dictionary of history and geography , ( Lire on wikisource )
- Son Praise was composed by Jean-François de la Harpe, d’Alembert and Father Maury.
- Andrew Michael Ramsay (Chevalier de Ramsay), History of the life and works of Messire François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambray , Amsterdam, François l’Honoré, 1727
- Louis-François de Bausset: History of Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai, composed on the original manuscripts , Paris, Giguet & Michaud, 1808, 3 volumes, 1817, 4 volumes in-8.
- Jean-Edme-Auguste Gosselin, Literary History of Fénelon , 1843.
- P.-Louis Lainé, “Lamothe-Fénelon” , In Genealogical and historical archives of the nobless of France , t. 9, Paris, the author, ( read online ) , p. 401-445
- Emmanuel de Broglie, Fénelon in Cambrai. According to his correspondence 1699–1715. – Paris: Plon, 1884
- Masson, Pierre-Maurice, Fénelon & Ms. Guyon, new and unpublished documents , Paris, Hachette, 1907.
- Father Querbeuf, Fénelon life .
- Fénelon, policy drawn from the Gospel / CHANOISE MOI͏̈SE CAGNAC, 1912 – Academy Prize
- Jean Maubourguet, “Fénelon, prior of Saint-Avit-Sénieur”, in Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , 1928, Tome 55, p. 218-221 ( read online )
Recent bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
- Lucien Bély (you.), Louis XIV dictionary , Paris, Robert Laffont, 2015.
- Michel Dussart, Fénelon faces , Cambrai, Cambrai emulation company, 2015.
- Michel Dussart, Fénelon , Grez, Pardès editions, 2018.
- S. Gendry, “Fénelon en Saintonge. The case of the Minister Mariocheau ”, in Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , 1960, Tome 87, 3 It is delivery, p. 184-186 ( read online )
- Philippe Loiseleur des Longchamps Deville, “Fénelon and Le Quercy”, Proceedings of the French -speaking international conference of Payrac , sept. 1995.
- Jeanne-Lydie Goré, The notion of indifference in Fénelon , PUF, 1956
- Marguerite Haillant, Fenelon and preaching , Eligible. Clinque shocks, 1969.
- Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, Fénelon , Paris, Perrin, 2008.
- Jean Orcibal, Fénelon, his family and his beginnings , Eligible. Klinck joking, 1972
- Aimé Richardt, Fénelon , Paris, In fine, 1994.
- François Varillon, Spiritual works of Fénelon , Paris, Aubier, 1954
Articles [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
- Doctor Charles Lafon, ” Fénelon and his family », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , n O 3, , p. 159-196 ( read online )
- N. Becquart, « The marriage contract of the father and mother of Fénelon (1647) », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , n O 3, , p. 197-200 ( read online )
- P. Barrière, ” Sarladais novelist fenelon », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 222-236 ( read online )
- R. Bézac, « About the sermon on the vocation of the Gentiles », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 237-240 ( read online )
- Joseph Durieux, ” Fénelon and Chactas », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 241-243 ( read online )
- André Chastel, ” Fénelon and classical art », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 244-249 ( read online )
- Jean Secret, « Notes on a few portraits of Fénelon », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 250-252 ( read online )
- Denise Humbert, « Introduction to the catalog of the exhibition “Fénelon and its time” », Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord , t. 78, n O 3, , p. 253-256 ( read online )
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