Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/84

 74 F E N F E N But a train of circumstances was preparing, destined to impair and finally to overthrow his influence at court, and to banish him from all intercourse with his royal pupil. We can only very briefly indicate the causes which led to this result. A system of religious mysticism known as Quietism had been set afloat towards the end of the 17th century by a Spanish priest of the name of Molinos. The system was espoused in France amongst others especially by Madame Guyon, a remarkable woman devoted to the cause of religion, but of an erratic and restless temperament. Her writings on the subject attracted wide attention, and speedily called forth ecclesiastical condemnation. The archbishop of Paris took up a position of violent hostility towards her ; the severe and methodical character of the king was greatly offended by her excesses; and Bossuet was by and by drawn into the circle of her vehement opponents. Strangely it was by Fe&quot;nelon s advice that the subject was first brought under Bossuet s notice. Attracted by Madame Guyon s genuine enthusiasm, and no doubt finding some thing in her view of disinterested mysticism which appealed to his own religious temperament, he recommended her to place her writings iu the hands of the bishop of Meaux, and to abide by his decision. Many conferences were held on the subject, in which Fenelon at first took no part, and during the progress of which he held friendly communication with his old friend, and in fact supplied Bossuet, who professed his ignorance of the mystical writers, with extracts from the fathers and others bearing on the controversy. Therelation of the two friendscontinued apparently cordial ; the atmosphere of the court had not yet changed towards him, for it was at this very time, in the beginning of 1695, that the king nominated Fe nelon for the archbishopric of Cambray; but gradually out of this miserable business there sprung up a host of embittered feelings. After his appointment as archbishop, Fenelon had joined in the conferences at Issy which finally condemned Madame Guyon s doctrines. He scrupled, however, to subscribe her condemnation ; he scrupled also to express approval of a publication of Bossuet attacking these doctrines : and in vindication of his own position and principles he published his Maximes des Saints sur la vie interieure. The result was to kindle into greater fury the storm of controversy, to provoke the jealous and violent animosity of Bossuet, and to fan the suspicions with which the king had always more or less regarded him into such a vehement outbreak as to lead to his permanent banishment from court, and his condemnation at Rome (1699). He sub mitted himself to the pontifical decision. But this did not save him either from the continued anger of Bossuet or from the displeasure of the monarch, which were further excited by the publication, through the treachery of a secretary, of his Telemaque, under the allegorical disguise of which Louis and his courtiers recognized a satire against the absolutist principles of the French Government. Fe nelon himself disclaimed any such intention. &quot;He had,&quot; he said, &quot; introduced all the virtues necessary for a good government, and the faults to which sovereign power is liable, but none were drawn with the slightest approach to any personality or portraiture. The more the book is examined, the more it will be seen that it only expressed principles fully, without attempting to draw any finished character. My only object was to amuse the duke of Bur gundy with a tale of adventure, and to instruct him at the same time, without ever thinking of giving the work to the public &quot; (Corresp., t. iii. p. 247). The remainder of Fdnelon s life was spent in his diocese in ceaseless works of Christian piety and charity. Cambray abounded in Protestants and Jansenists, whom he greatly won by his toleration and evangelical simplicity. It was, moreover, a great thoroughfare for the armies of the time, to the necessities of which, and especially of the sick and wounded, he personally ministered. His own palace was sometimes crowded with invalided officers, who remained his guests for months. He became in consequence endeared to the army and the people. Mingling familiarly with the poorest peasants under his spiritual charge, dis pensing with liberality, yet without ostentation, the duties of Christian hospitality, carrying on an extensive corre spondence with the clergy and some of his old friends at court, he became more honoured in his retirement even than he had been in Paris. &quot; In everything,&quot; says Saint Simon, &quot; he was a true bishop, in everything a grand seigneur, in everything, too, the author of Tilemaque&quot; A curious pic ture is preserved of these later years of Fenelon by a Scotch man of the name of Andrew Ramsay, who had wandered over Holland and Germany in search of something more satisfying than the sectarianism of his native country, or the deism which seemed to him for a time the only alterna tive. Won by the spiritual beauty of Fenelon s character, and the elevation of his teaching, he embraced the Catholic faith, spent much of his time at Cambray, and wrote the first life ever published of his teacher and friend. The last years of the good archbishop s life wera saddened by the loss of most of his friends. &quot; Our best friends,&quot; he said, on hearing of the death of the Due de Beauvilliers in 1714, &quot;are the source of our greatest sorrow and bitter ness.&quot; And again he wrote to a remaining friend, &quot;I O O only live in friendship now, and friendship will be the cause of my death.&quot; He died on the 17th January 1715. Fe nelon is chiefly remembered for the beauty of his character, his tender and mystic devotion, and the charm of his style as a writer. He is not great as a thinker, nor can the substance of his writings be said to have a permanent value. But there is the same subtle delicacy, sensibility, and tenderness and purity of expression in his style as in his character. An exquisite highly-toned and noble genius pervade the one and the other. As a man he is one of the greatest figures in a great time. As a writer he has been placed in prose on the same level with Racine in poetry. In both there ia the same full harmony and clearness, the same combination of natural grace with per fect art. In addition to the -works of Fenelon already noticed, the following deserve to be mentioned : The Dialogues des Marts, congests pour r Education d un Prince, 1712 ; Dialogues sur V Eloquence, &c., 1718 ; Lettrcs sur divers sujcts concernant la religion et la inita- physique, 1718 ; Traite d VExistcnce de Dicu, &c., 1713. There are many collected editions of his works. That of Leclcrc (Paris, 1827-1830), 38 small vols. , is the latest. An excellent life of Fenelon has recently appeared in English (1877) 1&amp;gt;y the same author as the Life of Uossuct mentioned under that article. (J. T. ) FENIANS. Ireland appears to have been the theatre of a great ethnic struggle in the first century of the Christian era, in which certain tribes, known to the Romans as Scots, reduced the other inhabitants to sub jection. The servile clans are called in Irish stoiy Aithech Tuatha, rent-paying tribes, though one of them settled near the river Liffey is specially mentioned as the Tuatli Aithechta, a name believed to have been the origin of the Latinized tribe-name Atticotti. According to Irish tradi tion Scotic power appears to have been fully established in the reign of a king called Tuathal, the Legitimate, who was slain about 160 A.D. Between this prehistoric king s reign and the mission of St Patrick, an interval of about 300 years, was the period of the invasions of Roman Britain by the Picts and Scots, which, though not strictly within the historic period of Irish history, touches upon it so closely that many traditions of the time have come down to us intermingled with a rich and increasing growth of legend embodied in verse and prose tales, known to the