François Fénelon

François Fénelon

François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (born August 6, 1651 at Fénelon Castle in Périgord , † January 7, 1715 in Cambrai ) was a French archbishop and writer .

Life and work

Fénelon came from an old noble family of Périgord. Since the family had already produced several bishops , he was chosen for an early career as the second youngest of 14 children from two marriages. Nothing for certain is known about his early studies. The assumption by early biographers that he first went to school in Cahors and later in Paris with the Jesuits and studied theology is not proven. Only his studies at the Paris College of Plessis are guaranteed. He had close ties to the St-Sulpice seminary in Paris, which was directed by the Sulpizians and previously founded by Jean Jacques Olier , and he began his priestly career there.

After drawing attention to himself as a young priest with beautiful sermons , in 1678 Fénelon was appointed director of the Institut des Nouvelles Catholiques , a Paris boarding school for the education of young girls from good families whose parents had converted to Catholicism . In 1681 he reflected on his pedagogical practice in the Traité de l'éducation des filles (= treatise on the education of girls, published only in 1687). At the end of 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV in 1598 , which the French Protestants a. a. guaranteed the free practice of their religion, he undertook the first of several mission trips to the then Protestant regions of southwest France, which were apparently only moderately successful.

Around 1686 he wrote the philosophical-theological text Traité de l'existence de Dieu et de la réfutation du système de Malebranche sur la nature et sur la Grace (= treatise on the existence of God for the purpose of refuting Malebranche's system of nature), which was only published after his death and grace). Another early writing is the Démonstration de l'existence de Dieu (= demonstration of the existence of God), which was directed apologetically against the emerging atheism . The work did not appear in full until 1718. The Catholic priest Jean Meslier , who was secretly working on an atheist work, provided his copy with critical marginal notes, which were later published as a script. Fénelon wrote his Dialogues sur l'éloquence (= dialogues about eloquence, 1685) on the preaching art that was central to a cleric of his time .

During these years Fénelon was part of the circle around Jacques Bénigne Bossuet , the contentious leader of the French bishops. In 1688 he was introduced to Madame de Maintenon , the morganatically wedded second wife of Louis XIV. At that time, she was still associating with the mystically pious Madame de Guyon and sympathized with her " quietism ", which apparently appeared to many French as a kind of evasion possibility in the face of one domestic and foreign policy increasingly unpeaceful reality. Fénelon was also deeply impressed by Madame Guyon when he met her in the winter of 1688/89.

In the summer of 1689, at the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon, whose spiritual advisor he had meanwhile become, Louis XIV appointed him tutor of his seven-year-old grandson and possible heir to the throne, the Duc de Bourgogne . This gave him an influential position at court and was certainly decisive for his admission to the Académie française (1693) and for his appointment as Archbishop of Cambrai (1695). However, he does not appear to have been entirely satisfied with this appointment. At least the well-known memoir writer Saint-Simon claims in his memoirs that Fénelon had rather speculated on the vacant Archdiocese of Paris.

For his princely pupil, Fénelon (like so often prince educators before him, e.g. Bossuet) wrote several entertaining and instructive works: first a collection of fables, then the Aventures d'Astinoüs (= the adventures as) and the Dialogues de morts (= Dead dialogues), but above all the extensive adventure, travel and educational novel Les Aventures de Télémaque , fils d'Ulysse (German in the first translation from the hand of August Bohse alias Talander under the title Staats-Roman, which was written 1694–96) of the memorable description of life Telemachi Royal Printzens from Ithaca, and son of Ulyssis, introduces how the Royal and Princely Printzen can be led through a graceful path to state art and moral doctrine by | Franciscum de Salinac de la Mothe-Fenelon Ertz- Bishop of Cambray Breslau: Chr. Bauch, 1700).

In this pseudo-historical and at the same time utopian novel, the author leads the young Odysseus son Telemachus and his teacher mentor (in which Minerva alias Athene is hiding and who is clearly Fénelon's mouthpiece) through various ancient states, most of which are due to their flatterers and Rulers surrounded by false advisors have problems similar to those of war-embroiled and impoverished France in the 1690s. In a prime example, however, he shows how these problems can be solved, thanks to the advice of Mentor, through a peaceful settlement with neighbors and through reforms that stimulate growth , in particular the promotion of agriculture and the suppression of luxury goods production.

The Télémaque , which was circulated in copies at court from 1698, was immediately interpreted as a barely encrypted criticism of the authoritarian , increasingly detached style of government of Louis XIV, as well as of his aggressive, warlike foreign policy and his export-oriented mercantilist economic management, which supported the production and export of luxury goods . Fénelon's greatest opponent at the court, his former patron Bossuet, now gained the upper hand after he had already drawn him into seemingly theologically motivated quarrels about quietism since 1694 and in 1697 tried to have the Pope condemn a defensive text that Fénelon wrote for Madame Guyon who had gradually advanced to become a quasi-public enemy (and was imprisoned in 1698).

Funerary monument in Cambrai Cathedral

At the beginning of 1699 Fénelon lost his post as a tutor, and when his Télémaque appeared in print in April , initially anonymously and without his consent, he was banned from the court.

He retired to his diocese of Cambrai, where he continued to work as a theological and political author and tried to lead an exemplary regime according to the teachings of his character Mentor.

After his death he was buried in the old cathedral of Cambrai . After its destruction in the revolution, his remains were moved to the new cathedral in Cambrai , where an elaborate grave monument was erected for him in 1823/26.

Fénelon's Télémaque was a popular book for young people in France in the 18th and 19th centuries and is considered an important milestone in the early Enlightenment . Still z. B. the young Sartre must have read it, because in his play Les Mouches (The Flies) he puts an allusion to it in the mouth of the character Jupiter.

Wilhelmine von Prussia , Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth , created a landscape park in 1744–1748 with the rock garden in Sanspareil , located on the edge of a village named after him in the district of Kulmbach in Upper Franconia , with natural and artificial backdrops in the narrow space of a wood Introducing the Télémaque locations .

Translations

• The events of the Prince of Ithaca: or Telemachus, looking for his father Ulysses. Translated from the French of Herr von Fénelon into German verse a. with mythological-historical-political, also moral comments explained by Benjamin Neukirch . Onolzbach: Lüders 1727–39, 3 volumes as a digitized edition of the University and State Library in Düsseldorf

literature

• Andrew Michael Ramsay (Chevalier de Ramsay): Histoire de da vie et des ouvrages de Messire François De Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Archevêque de Cambray . François L'Honoré, Amsterdam 1727.
• Louis-Francois de Bausset : Histoire de Fénelon, archevêque de Cambrai, composée sur les manuscrits originaux . Giguet & Michaud, Paris 1808.
• Emanuel de Broglie: Fénelon à Cambrai. D'après sa Correspondance 1699-1715 . Plon, Paris 1884.
• Johannes Kraus, Josef Calvet (ed.): Fénelon. Personality and work . Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, Baden-Baden 1953 (commemorative publication for the 300th anniversary of his birthday).
• Robert Spaemann : reflection and spontaneity. Studies on Fénelon . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1963 (2nd edition: 1990).
• Matthias Claudius: Fenelon. The story of a man who was a Christian. Mosella-Verlag, Düsseldorf undated

Web links

Wikisource: Fénelon  - Sources and full texts (French)

Wikiquote: François Fénelon  - Quotes

Commons : François Fénelon  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Directory of Fénelon's works in VD 17
• Literature by and about François Fénelon in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about François Fénelon  in the German Digital Library
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Article in "Name, title and dates of the French. Literature " (source for the section" Life and Creation ")
• Entry for Archbishop François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon on catholic-hierarchy.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Correspondance de Fénelon . Tome I., edited by J. Orcibal. Klincksieck, Paris 1972, pp. 149-160.
2. ^ Jean Meslier: Notes contre Fénelon. Éditions Coda, Paris 2010 and Georges Minois: History of Atheism. , P. 313.
3. ↑ Olaf Simons, Marteaus Europa or The Roman Before It Became Literature Amsterdam / Atlanta, 2001, pp. 182–189, 454–458. And on the European reception: Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, Avantures de Télémaque, 1 (La Haye, 1699), pierre-marteau.com .

predecessor	Office	successor
Jacques-Théodore de Bryas	Archbishop of Cambrai 1695–1715	Jean d'Estrées