RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Fencing the Tables Ftaelon
chetical addresses, and his eminently gracious personality, he succeeded in winning over large numbers' from the Protestant faith; not that he omitted, indeed, to make use of the promise of pensions and other worldly rewards to facilitate conversion. Against obstinacy, moreover, he frequently resorted to force. Certain " stiff-necked " members of the institution directed by him he caused to be imprisoned as criminals of state, and others were punished by incarceration in the loathsome Hopital General. The results of his ten years' experience as director of the Nouvelles Converties he embodied in his work De I' education des files [new ed., Paris, 1885, Eng. transl., The Education of Daughters, e. g. Dublin, 1841] a book characterized by deep psychologic insight into the mental life of the child, and one that has retained value to the present time. Starting out from the principle that education must content itself, with following and supplementing the workings of nature, he lays it down that the exercise of love directed toward the confidence of the child, and the indirect form of imparting knowledge, are the true methods of the teacher, in opposition to the system of threats, punishments and categorical drill. At the same time he insists upon the importance of a solid grounding in religion, especially in Biblical history. In addition to instruction in religion, languages and history, the young girl should also be prepared for the various duties of domestic life.
After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Fenelon was one of the noted ecclesiastics sent into the provinces " to effect the conversion of the few Huguenots remaining in the country. His labors lay in the districts of Saintonge and Aunis. When he took leave of the king, he begged to be allowed to dispense with the usual military
3. Mission- escort, saying that, after the example ary of the Apostles, he wished to accom- Labors. plish a work of peace and love." Instead of combating heresy by acrimonious debate, he sought rather to attain his aim by the skilful and attractive exposition of the teachings of the Gospel, by the dissemination of Roman versions of the New Testament and missals, and by requiring the attendance of all children at Catholic schools. On the whole, however, he seems to have met with little success; and, impatient at the obstinacy of the heretics, he writes in Feb., 1686 to the secretary of state Seignelay: " The representatives of the king must in no way cease to keep a firm hand on those people, whom the slightest sign of conciliation renders so presumptuous;" then, giving information of the different routes by which the Huguenots were escaping abroad, he insists that the frontiers shall be guarded closely; " to render their sojourn in the country as tolerable as possible and their flight as dangerous as possible is the task." Fenelon's system of converting heretics, like that of the Roman Church of his time, was that the clergy should labor among them by means of preaching and loving persuasion, but invoke against the stubbornly recusant the " salutary pressure " of the
worldly authorities.
After six months' labor in the missionary field, F6nelon returned to his post at the Nouvelles Converties. His remarkable gifts had attracted attention before this, and in 1689, when the duke of Beauvilliers became governor to the grandchildren of Louis XIV., Fenelon was made preceptor to the princes, the eldest of whom, the duke of Burgundy, became his especial charge. 4. Tutorship For eight years Fenelon gave himself of Duke of up with absolute devotion to the edu- Burgundy. cation of the young duke, who, combining unusual talents with a character in the highest degree stubborn, insolent, and pleasure-loving, offered an excellent opportunity for the exercise of Fenelon's splendid pedagogic talents. To train this child into a wise king {roi philosophe), a second St. Louis, was his aim. In combating the vices and supplementing the deficiencies of the lad, he displayed a remarkable resourcefulness that is evidenced especially in the different works he wrote for the young duke. His Contes et fables, his Dialogues des marts, his Demonstration de I 'existence de Dieu, and his Direction pour la conscience d'un roi, all had a didactic purpose, which is present also in the most famous of his works, Les aventures de Telemaque. Fenelon succeeded in gaining an absolute influence over his pupil and in transforming him into a learned, affable, and modest youth. Fenelon's praise was in every mouth for the wonder he had wrought. He enjoyed the highest favor at the court, and as a reward for his services Louis XIV. made him, in 1695, archbishop of Cambrai. Yet his obligations to the king did not prevent him from speaking out boldly in criticism of the policy of Louis XIV. In a letter, the authenticity of which has been demonstrated by the discovery of the original, Fenelon attacks the monarch's vanity, worldliness, and love of power with a boldness that amounts to absolute temerity.
From his splendid position at court Fenelon fell suddenly as a result of the part he played in the conflict over the mystical doctrines of Mme. Guyon. When these were declared heretical by an in estigating commission which included Bossuet and Noailles, Fenelon, dissenting from the majority in certain important reservations, published the Explication des maximes des saints, in which Mme. Guyon's fundamental principles were formulated in a sober and guarded manner. All 5. Cham- love of God, Fenelon laid down, which pionship of was conditioned only by the fear of Mme. punishment or by the desire of earthly Guyon. happiness was only an extremely imperfect copy of the pure unselfish love which consists in the adoration of God for his own sake. " Even though God — indeed an impossible supposition — should destroy the souls of the just or abandon them for eternity to the temptations and pains of this life, or condemn them for all eternity to the pains of hell, these souls would none the less love him and serve him faithfully " The style in which this work is written is dry, dogmatic, without grace or unction; and as the principles laid down are frequently followed by contradictory explanations and qualifications, it contains much that is
Fenelon Ferdinand II