François Fénelon

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

Life and work

Fénelon came from an old noble family of Périgord. Since he was the younger son ( the second youngest of 14 children of his father's two marriages ) had already spawned and the family several bishops, he was diagnosed early for the ecclesiastical career. He first went in Cahors, later in Paris with the Jesuits to school and then studied theology in the elite, led by the Sulpizianern and previously founded by Jean Jacques Olier Paris St -Sulpice Seminary.

After he had made as a young priest attention through beautiful sermons, Fénelon was appointed in 1678 as Director of the Institute of the Nouvelles Catholiques, a Parisian boarding school for the education of young girls of good family, whose parents had converted to Catholicism. In 1681 he reflected his pedagogical practice in the Traité de l' éducation des filles ( = treatise on the education of girls, published in 1687 ). End of 1685, after the lifting of the Edict in 1598 by Henry IV adopted, he undertook a first of several mission trips in that time Protestant regions of southwest France, but was apparently only moderately successful.

Shortly before (1685 ) he had come out with a first theological writing, the anti- Jansenist Traité de l' existence de Dieu et de la Refutation du système de Malebranche sur la nature et sur ​​la Grâce ( = Treatise on the existence of God in order to refute ms system of nature and grace); at the same time he commented on the rhetoric in his Dialogues sur l' Eloquence ( = Dialogues on Eloquence, 1685).

Fénelon counted in these years to circle around Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the militant Primus of the French bishops. In 1688 he was Madame de Maintenon presented, the morganatic wed second wife of Louis XIV These perverted at that time still with the mystical and pious Madame de Guyon and sympathized with their " quietism ," which appeared obviously many Frenchmen as a kind Evasionsmöglichkeit the face of a domestic and foreign policy increasingly discordant reality. Also Fénelon was deeply impressed by Madame Guyon, as he met her in the winter 1688/89.

In the summer of 1689, he was probably at the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon, whose spiritual adviser he had now become, by Louis XIV for educators of his 7- year-old grandson and eventual heir to the throne, the Duc de Bourgogne, was appointed. This gave him an influential position at court and was certainly decisive for its inclusion in the Académie Française ( 1693) and for his appointment as Archbishop of Cambrai, Cambrai ( 1695). However, he does not seem to have been completely satisfied with this appointment. Or at least that of the well-known memoir writer Saint -Simon in his memoirs that Fénelon had rather speculated on the vacant archbishopric of Paris.

For his princely pupil, Fénelon wrote ( as so often Prince educators before him, such as Bossuet ) several entertaining and educational works: first, a collection of fables, then the Aventures d' Astinoüs ( = the adventure As) and the Dialogues de morts ( = dead dialogues ), but especially the peripheral, 1694-96 written adventure, travel and Les Aventures de Télémaque Bildungsroman, fils d' Ulysse ( 1733 in German published as the strange events of Telemachus ).

In this pseudo- historical and at the same time utopian novel, the author leads the young Odysseus 's son Telemachus and his teacher mentor ( in which Minerva alias hides Athena and the clear voice of Fenelon 's ) by various ancient states, usually through guilt of their flatterers and false counselors surrounded rulers have experienced similar problems as the embroiled in wars and impoverished France of the 1690s. He displays a textbook case, as can solve these problems thanks to the advice mentor through peaceful compromise with the neighbors and by growth stimulating reforms, in particular the promotion of agriculture and the suppression of the luxury goods production.

The Télémaque which circulated in copies from 1698 on the farm, was immediately interpreted as a barely coded criticism of the authoritarian, increasingly raised government Louis XIV style, as well as its aggressive, warlike foreign policy and its export-oriented mercantilist economic management that supported the production and export of luxury goods. Fenelon's greatest enemy at court, his former promoter Bossuet, now gained the upper hand after he had pulled him already since 1694 in seemingly theologically motivated wrangling over the quietism and tried in 1697 to convict the Pope a defense, the written Fénelon for Madame Guyon ( and was detained in 1698 ) had, which was promoted by and by a quasi - public enemy.

Beginning in 1699 lost his tutor, Fénelon post, and than in April be Télémaque, anonymously and without his consent, appeared in print, he was banished from court.

He retired to his diocese of Cambrai, where he continued active as a theological and political author and tried to lead an exemplary regiment according to the teachings of his mentor figure.

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

Fenelon's Telemachus was in France in the 18th and 19th century, a widely read YA and is considered an important landmark of the early Enlightenment. Yet, for example, the young Sartre must have read, for in his play Les Mouches ( The Flies ) he puts the figure Jupiter alludes to it in his mouth.

Translations

• Brought, or his father Ulysses seeking Telemachus / d from d Lord of French Fénelon in German verses and with mythological- historical- political and moral Note explained: The events of the Prince of Ithaca. by Benjamin Neukirch. - Onolzbach: Lüders, 3 volumes than Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf