FENELON
30
FENELON
founded on scepticism which the eii;litecnth-cent\iry
rationalists cliarged him with. In such matteis he
shared the opinions of all the other great Catholics of
his day. With Bossuet and St. Augustine he held
that " to be obliged to do good is always an advantage,
and that heretics and schismatics, when forced to ap-
ply their minds to the consideration of truth, eventu-
ally lay aside their erroneous beliefs, whereas they
would never have examined these matters had not
authority constrained them".
Before and after his mission at Saintonge, which lasted but a few months (1686-1687), F^nelon formed many dear friendships. Bossuet was already his friend; the great bishop was at the summit of his fame, and was everywhere looked U]5 to as the oracle of the Church of France. F^nelon showed him the utmost deference, visited him at his country-house at Ger- migny, and assisted at his spiritual conferences and his lectures on the Scriptures at Versailles. It was under his inspiration, perhaps even at his request, that Fenelon wrote about this time his "R<;futation du systeme de Maleljranche sur la nature et sur la grace ". In this he attacks with great vigour and at length the theories of the famous Oratorian on optimism, the Creation, and the Incarnation. This treatise, though annotated by Bossuet, Fenelon considered it unwise to publish; it saw the light only in 1820. First among the friends of Fenelon at this period were the Due de Beauvilliers and the Due de Chevreuse, two influential courtiers, eminent for their piety, who had married two daughters of Colbert, minister of Louis XIV. One of these, the Duchesse de Beauvilliers, mother of eight daughters, asked Fenelon for advice concerning their education. His reply was the "Traits de I'^du- cation des filles", in which he insists on education be- ginning at an early age and on the instruction of girls in all the duties of their future condition of life. The religious teaching he recommends is one solid enough to enable them to refute heretics if necessary. He also advises a more serious course of studies than was then customary. Girls ought to be learned without pedantry; the form of instruction should be concrete, sensible, agreeable, and prudent, in a manner to aid their natural abilities. In many ways his pedagogy was ahead of his time, and we may yet learn much from him.
The Due de Beauvilliers, who had been the first to test in his own family the value of the " Traits de I'dducation des filles", was in 1689 named governor of the grandchildren of Louis XIV. He hastened to secure Fenelon as tutor to the eldest of these princes, the Duke of Burgundy. It was a most im- portant post, seeing that the formation of a future King of France lay m his hands; but it was not with- out great difficulties, owing to the violent, haughty, and passionate character of his pupil. Fenelon brought to his task a whole-hearted zeal and devotion. Everything, down to the Latin themes and versions, was made to serve in the taming of this impetuous spirit. Fenelon prepared them himself in order to adapt them the better to his plans. With the same object in view, he wrote his " Fables" and his "Dia- logues des Morts ", but especially his " T^l^maque ", in which work, under the guise of pleasant fiction, he taught the young prince lessons of self-control, and all the duties required by his exalted position. The re- siilts of this training were wonderful. The historian Saint-Simon, as a rule hostile to Fc'nelon, says; "De cct abime sortit un prince, aff^ible, cloux, mod^r(S, hu- main, patient, humble, tout apiilicjue a .ses devoirs." It has been asked in our day if I'enelon did not s\iccoed too well. When the prince grew to man's estate, liis piety seemed often too n'lin(!il; lie was ediiliMually ex- amining himsi'lf, reasoning for anil against, till he was unable to reach a dellnitc decision, his will being para- ly.sed by fear of doing the wrong thing. However, these defects of ch.aracter, against which I'Y'nelon in
his letters was the first to protest, did not show them-
selves in youth. About 16'J5 every one who came in
contact with the prince was in admiration at the
change in him.
To reward the tutor, Louis XIV gave him, in 1694, the Abbey of Saints Valery, with its annual revenue of fourteen thousand livres. The Acaddmie had opened its doors to him, and Madame de Maintenon, the mor- ganatic wife of the king, began to consult him on mat- ters of conscience, and on the regulation of the house of Saint-Cyr, which she had just established for the train- ing of young girls. Soon afterwards the archiepisco- pal See of Cambrai, one of the best in France, fell va- cant, and the king offered it to Fenelon, at the same time expressing a wish that he would continue to in- struct the Duke of Burgundy. Nominated in Febru- ary, 1695, Fenelon was consecrated in August of the same year by Bossuet in the chapel of Saint-Cyr. The future of the young prelate looked brilliant, when he fell into deep disgrace.
The cause of Fenelon's trouble was his connexion with Madame Guyon, whom he had met in the society of his friends, the Beauvilliers and the Chevreuses. She was a native of Orleans, which she left when about twenty-eight years old, a widowed mother of three children, to carry on a sort of apostolate of mysticism, under the direction of Pere Lacombe, a Barnabite. After many journeys to Geneva, and through Provence and Italy, she set forth her ideas in two works, " Le moyen court et facile de faire oraison" and "Les torrents spirituels". In exaggerated lan- guage characteristic of her visionary mind, she pre- . sented a system too evidently founded on the Quietism of Molinos, that had just been condemned by Innocent XI in 1687. There were, however, great divergencies between the two systems. Whereas Molinos made man's earthly perfection consist in a state of uninter- rupted contemplation and love, which would dispense the soul from all active virtue and reduce it to ab- solute inaction, Madame Guyon rejected with horror the dangerous conclusions of Molinos as to the cessa- tion of the necessity of offering positive resistance to temptation. Indeed, in all her relations with Pere Lacombe, as well as with Fenelon, her virtuous life was never called in doubt. Soon after her arrival in Paris she became acquainted with many pious persons of the court and in the city, among them Madame de Maintenon and the Dues de Beauvilliers and Che- vreuse, who introduced her to Fenelon. In turn, he was attracted by her piety, her lofty spirituality, the charm of her personality, and of her books. It was not long, however, before the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr was, began to unsettle the mind of Madame de Maintenon by questioning the or- thodoxy of Madame Guyon's theories. The latter, thereupon, begged to have her works submitted to an ecclesiastical commission composed of Bossuet, de Noailles, who was then Bishop of Chalons, later Arch- bishop of Paris, and M. Tronson, superior of Saint- Sulpice. After an examination which lasted six months, the commission delivered its verdict in thirty- four articles known as the " Articles d'Issy ", from the place near Paris where the commission sat. These articles, which were signed by Fenelon and the Bishop of Chartres, also by the members of the commission, condemned very briefly Madame Guyon's ideas, and gave a short exposition of the Catholic teaching on prayer. Madame Guyon submitted to the condemna- tion, but her teacliing sjircad in iMigland, and Protes- tants, who have had her liooks reprinted, have always expressed sympathy with her views. Cowper trans- lated some of her hymns into iMij^lish ver.se; and her a\it(il>i(>grapliy was iraiislatcd into I'aiglisli by Thomas Digby (London, LSUfj) and Thomas Upham (New York, IK'IH). ller books have been long forgotten in France.
In accordance with the decisions taken at Issy, Bos-
