François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon

François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715), French writer, prelate, and liberal theologian, whose theories and publications, despite the opposition of church and state, eventually became the basis for profound political and cultural changes in France.

Fénelon was born August 6, 1651, into a noble family in Dordogne and educated at the University of Cahors and the seminary of Saint Sulpice. He was ordained a priest in 1675 and in 1679 was appointed head of the Nouvelles Catholiques, an institution in Paris for the instruction of women who were recent or prospective converts to Roman Catholicism. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was sent as the head of a mission to convert the Protestants in Saintonge in western France. He became a disciple and favorite of the prelate Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and in 1689 was appointed tutor to Louis, duc de Bourgogne, grandson of King Louis XIV. Fénelon wrote a series of moral lessons designed to instruct his pupil in the duties and obligations of a ruler.

In 1695 Fénelon was made archbishop of Cambrai but soon afterward became involved in a controversy with Bossuet over the quietist doctrines of Madame Guyon. Fénelon had been influenced by quietism, which stressed the contemplative life, and his Explication des maximes des saints (Maxims of the Saints, 1697) was attacked by Bossuet as inconsistent with traditional Christian teachings. The two prelates appealed to Rome, and parts of the book were condemned by Pope Innocent XII in 1699. Fénelon was exiled to his diocese by Louis XIV, who had sided with Bossuet. In addition, Louis had been offended by Fénelon's Télémaque (Telemachus, 1699), the book for which he is best known. A political novel, it states that kings exist for their subjects; it also expresses an ardent denunciation of war and a belief in the fraternity of nations. He died January 7, 1715, in Cambrai.

Fénelon's works show no consistent philosophy that expresses his rebellion against established ideas. In his influential Traité de l'éducation des filles (Treatise on the Education of Girls, 1687), Fénelon followed a middle course between those who believed in higher education for women and those who believed that women should have no education at all.