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FEN  by Charles IX. He was charged with the difficult task of mitigating Elizabeth's indignation at the atrocity of the St. Bartholomew massacre. He retained his position at the head of the English embassy after the death of Charles IX., and seems to have been a trusted servant of the intriguing regent, Catherine de Medicis. Fenelon wrote a considerable number of works, both military and political. The "Negociations de la Mothe-Fenelon, &c., en Angleterre," published at Brussels in 1731, contains a great deal of interesting information relative to Mary Stewart and the massacre of St. Bartholomew.—R. M., A.  FÉNÉLON,, was born in the castle of Fénélon in Perigord, in the present department of Dordogne, August 6, 1651. As he was sprung of an old and honourable family, his early education, under his pious and intelligent parents, was in keeping with his social position and prospects. The study and imitation of classic literature were the passion of his boyhood, both at home and in the neighbouring university of Calais, as they were the solace and delight of his age. At the age of eighteen, his uncle, the marquis Antoine de Fénélon, summoned him to Paris, and placed him in the college of Plessis. There the young student of fifteen years preached to an audience so as to create enthusiastic admiration. This sudden popularity alarmed his uncle, and the youthful preacher was placed in the quiet seminary of St. Sulpice. In serene and prayerful study did Fénélon remain here for about five years, guided by Tronson, the earnest and enlightened superior, and here, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, he was consecrated to the priesthood. The parish of St. Sulpice was the scene of the abbé de Fénélon's first pastoral labours; and the poor, the erring, and the sick were the chosen objects of his spiritual care. His thoughts then turned to missionary labours, first in Canada and then in the Levant, though he was not permitted to follow out his self-denying projects. But the archbishop of Paris, Harlay, nominated him superior of the Nouvelles Catholiques, a society for the instruction of young protestant female converts, which had been instituted in 1634, and sanctioned by a bull of Pope Urban VIII. Ten years was he employed in this labour, and the experience he acquired in it was embodied in his first work, "Traité de l'education des filles," which was composed at the solicitation of the duchess of Beauvilliers. Louis XIV. who had repealed the edict of Nantes in the vain hope of compelling a uniform faith in his kingdom, next sent him to Poitou to convert his protestant subjects, and on receiving his commission from the king in person, he made only this stipulation, that no dragoons should be sent to co-operate with him. Full well he knew that dragonades, which could only maim and murder, might multiply hypocrites; that the heart refuses to be convinced by force, though it may yield to it; and that the number of professed converts was no adequate compensation for the violence and torture inflicted on thousands of peaceful and industrious citizens. He had, probably through his intercourse with Bossuet, now turned his attention to polemics, as may be seen in his tract composed about this time, "Sur le ministere des pasteurs," in which he denies all claim or right of office to protestant pastors; and insists on tradition, penance, confession, and submission as firmly, though not so ably, as Bossuet himself. Fénélon records that he found "the half-converted Huguenots attached to their religion with a dreadful degree of obstinacy," and adds, that the sight of dragoons makes them willing to recant; the result, however, being that he failed to discover those who were really sincere. Fénélon's experience at Poitou was not lost upon him; for, according to the Chevalier Ramsay's record of his conversations with the pretender (the self-styled James III.), he exhorted the exiled prince never to attempt to change the religion of any portion of his subjects by force. On his return to Paris, he resumed and held for two years longer his former situation as superior of the Nouvelles Catholiques, during which period he did not show himself once at court; Harlay, archbishop of Paris, jealous of his friendship with Bossuet, thwarting every effort for his promotion—as, for example, to the bishoprics of Poitiers of Rochelle. But in 1689 Fénélon was suddenly drawn from his obscurity. Louis had appointed the duke of Beauvilliers, son-in-law of Colbert, tutor to the dauphin his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, and the next day Beauvilliers nominated Fénélon his preceptor. The situation brought him at once into court, and he was permitted, as a special honour, to sit at the same table and ride in the same carriage with his pupil. Without crediting "those miracles of education" done, as the sub-preceptor Fleury reports, on the royal youth, we may well believe that Fénélon did his utmost to inform the mind and cultivate the heart of his pupil, with a vigilance surpassed only by his tenderness, and a skill whetted and sustained by his sense of responsibility to the future and to France. It was for his young charge that he composed his well-known "Fables" and "Dialogues of the Dead." The wit, ease, and grace of Fénélon charmed the court, and madame de Maintenon gave him for a time her confidence. Five years had he discharged his task, to the satisfaction of all who understood what a prince's education ought to be, when the king, who never really liked him, conferred upon him, February 4, 1695, the archbishopric of Cambray. He immediately resigned his place in the abbey of St. Valery, which the king the previous year had conferred upon him. He was consecrated in the chapel of St. Cyr, July 10, 1695, Bossuet taking part in the ceremony.

But with his ecclesiastical honours began his troubles. The mystical writings of Madame Guyon, inspired by the Spanish quietest, Molinos, had already made some noise in France. She and Father Lacombe, her confessor, had been arrested, but on her being soon set free, she was introduced to Madame Maintenon, the duke of Beauvilliers, the duke de Chevreuse, and others of that high circle. Sent by such patronage and by the counsel of Fénélon to St. Cyr, she again taught what were regarded as religious novelties. She loved to speak to ravished listeners of pure love—love exercised without hope of reward or fear of punishment; was ever eager to describe the holy outflow of the soul in true and unaided devotion; rose into ecstasy as she delineated the spiritual beauty of perfection, and joyously and confidently assured her audience of its attainability; and was finally lost to view as she soared away into the high mysteries of entranced experience, imaged in the scenes and dialogues, wooings and raptures, of the Song of Songs. Her spirituality, which was certainly tinged with extravagances, was reckoned a heretical protest against the orthodox Romanism of a cold and superficial age, tending at the same time to undervalue the ordinary services and traditionary doctrines of the church. She was apprehended, tried, imprisoned, and sent, at her own request, to the convent of Visitation at Meaux. Fénélon had all along deeply sympathized with her, censuring some of her expressions and pardoning others as the excess of an ardent piety heightened by the glow of a feminine temperament. He instanced such women as Angela de Foligny, St. Catharine of Sienna, and St. Theresa, who had spoken in similar terms. It was contrived by her prosecutor that Fénélon should be placed in such a position that he must condemn her. He not only demurred, but he resolved to vindicate the form of piety associated with her name, and published his "Maximes des Saintes," a sincere and diluted illustration and defence of Guyonism. Bossuet, who from his mental structure and his cold and hard polemic bias could have no sympathy with such views, at once denounced him to the king; and, to add to his grief, his palace at Cambray was burned, and his books and papers all consumed. On Fénélon's declining a conference with his rival and accuser, who was in a short time to stigmatize him as the Montanus of a new Priscilla, and appealing to the judgment of the pope, he was ordered to leave the court and retire to his see. His Holiness, Innocent XII., was reluctant to proceed to judgment, and while the ten cardinals who formed the commission to try the case seemed in doubt and difficulty, Fénélon and Bossuet exchanged not a few pamphlets and defences. Bossuet's Relation de Quietism was the climax in one direction, and his nephew's attack on Fénélon's moral character was the infamous culmination in another. The king in exasperation sent insolent menaces to Rome, and a condemnation was wrung from the papal court; but the author was not in the bull called a heretic, nor was his book, as is usual in such cases, condemned to the flames. The pope remarked with some acerbity—"Peccavit excessu amoris divini, sed vos peccâstis defectu amoris proximi"—He erred through excess of divine love, you (his enemies) through want of love to your neighbour. When the brief containing the condemnation of twenty-three propositions in his book arrived, Fénélon read it in his own cathedral, and at once submitted—simply, absolutely, and without reservation, regarding, as he said, "the decision of his superiors as an echo of the divine will." In this bitter and protracted controversy, Bossuet was characterized by learning and tactics, Fénélon by candour and eloquence; 