Fénelon: The Mystic

By James Mudge, Author of “The Saintly Calling,” “The Best of Browning,” etc.

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS

copyright 1906, by Jennings and Graham

To My Dear Wife. A wise mother of children, A faithful missionary in India, An efficient worker in many Churches.

A WORD TO THE READER

There have been many lives of Fénelon. Four were brought out in the eighteenth century, and two quite extensive ones were issued as recently as 1901. In a few cases they have been written in a spirit of cold, supercilious disparagement and cynical comment by people who evidently had no experience which would qualify them to understand the character they rashly attempted to portray. But the endeavor to pull Fénelon down from the pedestal on which he has so long stood can not succeed. So long as his own writings remain to bear testimony to the high qualities of his mind and soul, his fame is secure. It is the chief regret of the present writer that, owing to the restricted size of the book, he has not been able to give more of Fénelon’s own words. The reader is recommended to procure the “Spiritual Letters” of Fénelon, published in two volumes by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.[1]

It is not claimed that Fénelon was wholly without faults, or was in all respects ahead of his times. How could that be expected? He took, in the main, of course, the Roman Catholic view in the questions that arose regarding heresy and the general affairs of the Church. It is not necessary to defend him for this. We are concerned, in studying such persons, not so much with their dogmatic opinions and beliefs, the result of their environment, as with the spirit of their lives, their attainments in holiness, and the light which they can shed on the best means of growth in grace. It is believed that the present volume will be found helpful to this end. The type of piety exemplified by Fénelon, Fletcher, Faber, and others of this sort, does not appeal with equal force to all, owing to difference of mental and physical constitution. But all, whatever their temperament, can get only good by contemplating such an example as is presented in these pages. They can not feel the quick throbs of his deeply loving heart, and note the sincerity of purpose with which

he served his dear Redeemer, without being stimulated in their zeal, and helped to walk, in their own way, more worthily of the vocation with which they themselves are called. That this may indeed be the outcome for every reader of the following chapters, is the earnest prayer of the author.

JAMES MUDGE.

Jamaica Plain, Mass.

Fénelon: The Mystic

CHAPTER I. FROM YOUTH TO MANHOOD.

Christian perfection, or the highest possibilities of Christian grace and growth, is a theme of intense interest to every true lover of the Lord. There are many ways of promoting it, widely differing in their merits and their helpfulness. Without disparaging other methods, it may be safely said that nothing can be better than example. Christianity centers around a person; and personal experience perennially appeals. Better than abstract discussion is concrete practice. More profitable than speculation and controversy is an actual life on highest levels. There is also a large advantage in beholding such a life in another age and land and Church, thus noting how God can magnify and fulfill Himself in very diverse circumstances, and amid intellectual influences that to us are quite obnoxious.

We invite, therefore, the attention of the thoughtful reader to a man who presents one of the most perfect types of human purity that the world has ever seen; one who for two hundred years has stood among the choicest few of those universally esteemed to be authorities in spiritual things; one endowed with a luster which the lapse of time can not tarnish,—a luster far brighter than can be bestowed by mere worldly honors or temporal prosperity, however high. He not only had a heart filled with the love of God and glowing with pure devotion, but also a mind capable of the closest analysis and the keenest discrimination. He was not only a saint, but also a scholar and a genius, an original thinker as well as a pursuer of holiness. Such combinations are very rare. His thirst for perfection has probably never been surpassed. Seldom, if ever, has such a remarkable combination of high qualities tabernacled in the flesh. He had both modesty and majesty, both simplicity and sublimity, unconquerable firmness in duty, unsurpassed meekness in

society; he was equally eminent for piety and politeness, for morals and manners; he was sympathetic and chivalrous, severe to himself, indulgent to others. In the midst of a voluptuous court he practiced the virtues of an anchorite; with the revenues of a prince at command he hardly allowed himself ordinary comforts. His abilities awaken our admiration, his afflictions excite our compassion. Born among the nobility of earth, he resisted the 11 blandishments of earthly pomp, and became crowned with the far higher nobility of heaven. He was truly humble and truly heroic; good as well as great; skillful in teaching, wise in counsel, master of an elegant style both in composition and discourse; faithful to his friends and kind to his foes; devoted to his native land, generous to his family, a man of peace yet ready to fight for the faith, true to his convictions, tolerant toward those of other beliefs, tenderly affectionate, vigorously diligent; the glory of his country, the joy of mankind, the beloved of the Lord. He had an intense nature, and

was, as has been said, “One whose religion must be more loving than love, his daily life more kind than kindness, his words truer than truth itself.” Lamartine calls him “beautiful as a Raphael’s St. John leaning on the bosom of Christ.” He had the imagination of a woman for dreaming of heaven, and the soul of a man for subduing the earth. The especially feminine qualities were prominent in him, yet he strikes no one as effeminate, and when he felt himself set for the defense of the truth he showed a power that greatly surprised his enemies. “His soul was like a star and dwelt apart,” “alone with the Alone.” And yet he was so deeply interested in the welfare of France and his fellow-men that he has been called a politician; statesman would be the word more befitting the facts, for his ideas as to the measures and policies necessary to make the land prosperous were in the main very wise, and he 12 had no personal ends to serve. In whatever capacity we consider him—poet, orator, moralist, metaphysician, politician, instructor, bishop, friend,

persecuted Christian—he excites our keenest interest, our warmest admiration. He greatly desired to please every one, and succeeded so far as circumstances allowed; but the desire was held in strictest control by a strong sense of duty, which compelled him at times to do and say things most unacceptable to many. He was no courtier, no flatterer, he could not make his own interests the first consideration. He was a prophet in Gomorrah, charged with a message which pressed upon him for utterance, and for the delivery of which the time was short. At the court of Louis XIV—a spot above all others on the face of the earth, perhaps, in that century, disgraced by selfishness, hypocrisy, and intrigue—he bears not a little resemblance to a seraph sent on a divine mission to the shades of the lost. There is endless fascination in his story. He was not without faults, but his faults were those of his age; his virtues were his own. He turned a haughty, irritable, overbearing young prince, an incipient Cæsar Borgia, into the mildest, most docile, obedient of men. He

possessed his soul in peace amid provocations that would have been far too much for most of us. Neither public disgrace nor personal bereavement had power to embitter him. He listened to the voice of God within him, and marched straight on, breast forward. In the language of Herder, “His Church 13 indeed canonized him not, but humanity has.” He is a saint in the eyes of multitudes not attracted by official sanctity; an apostle of liberty that dared withstand the Grand Monarque; a martyr spending half a life in exile, through the machinations of a court faction which dreaded his incorruptible goodness. “Being dead, he yet speaketh.” “One of the noblest men who ever lived,” says Dr. John Henry Kurtz, the distinguished Church historian. Joseph de Maistre exclaims: “Do we wish to paint ideal greatness? Let us try to imagine something that surpasses Fénelon—we shall not succeed.” Let us, then, putting aside imagination, endeavor to rescue from the musty record of the misty past, a lifelike image of this many-sided, multiple, versatile personality.

François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon was born August 6, 1651, at the castle, or chateau, of Fénelon, about three miles from the town of Sarlat, in the department of Southern France, formerly called Perigord, now Dordogne, north of the river Garonne. The De Salignacs were of an ancient and distinguished family, counting in their long pedigree many of the best names of France—bishops, governors, generals, and ambassadors. But it is safe to say that they have derived more luster from the single name of the Archbishop of Cambrai than from all the rest who through several 14 centuries filled lofty stations in camp and court and Church.

Very little is known about his parents or his early life. Pons de Salignac, Count of La Mothe Fénelon, father of Francis, was twice married, having fourteen children by his first wife and three by his second. The eldest of the three was Francis. His mother, Mademoiselle Louise de la Cropte de Saint-Arbre, sister of a celebrated lieutenant who served under Marshal Turenne, is said to have been unusually pious, which we can well believe, and to have perpetuated some of her other traits in her famous son. From his father’s side he doubtless inherited his diplomatic temperament and a goodly degree of worldly wisdom. His peculiar situation in the household could hardly fail to have had something to do with his character. The numerous grown-up sons and daughters of his father’s first marriage took umbrage at the second; hence the precocious and sensitive child had abundant occasion to practice all possible arts of ingratiation to obtain forgiveness for having intruded his existence upon them, and to make it pleasant for his mother. His

constitution was delicate, and he had a sickly childhood; once at least in his early days his life was despaired of, and he only recovered to be for years the victim of sleeplessness and kindred ailments. He was the idol of his old father, who, recognizing his unusual talents, took special pains with his education. It was intrusted at first to a private preceptor, 15 who seems to have been well fitted for his task, and gave to his pupil in a few years a better knowledge of Greek and Latin than is commonly obtained at so early an age, doubtless laying thus the foundation of his exquisitely finished style. At twelve he left the paternal roof for the neighboring University of Cahors (a town about sixty miles north of Toulouse, containing now an obelisk of Fénelon), where he pursued for some three years philosophical and philological studies and took his degrees in the arts.

His father probably died about this time, as we hear nothing further of him, and his uncle, the Marquis Antoine de Fénelon, who had lost his own son, acted henceforth as the father of his nephew. It was a most happy circumstance, for the marquis was deeply religious and of an unsullied private life, as well as very independent in his character. The Grand Condé, greatest general of his time, described him as “equally at home in society, war, and the council chamber.” When M. de Harlai was nominated to the Archbishopric of Paris, the marquis remarked to him, “There is a wide difference, my Right Reverend Lord, between the day when the nomination for such an office brings to the party the compliments of the whole kingdom, and the day on which he appears before God to render Him an account of his administration;” a reflection which, although much needed, could not have been very agreeable to De Harlai, for he was a notorious 16 evil liver, who introduced every species of corruption into the administration of his diocese, and scandalized all by the iniquities also of his private

life. Another indication of the marquis’s truly noble quality is seen in the fact that when M. Olier, the celebrated founder of the Congregation of St. Sulpice, wished to form an association of gentlemen whose courage was past impeachment, to bind themselves with an oath neither to accept any challenge nor act the part of second in any duel—that the practice of dueling might thus be checked—he asked M. de Fénelon to take the post of president of the association, being convinced that there was no one whose reputation was more firmly established both in court and camp.

Under the guidance, then, of this admirable relative, who was so exceptionally well fitted by character, position, and situation to give his nephew the best possible start in life, and who tenderly loved him, young Francis came to Paris in 1666, at the age of fifteen. It was not, of course, the Paris of the present day; but even then it was a great city, reaching back for its beginning to the Roman times, and recognized as the seat of government for at least a thousand years. Under Henry of Navarre (1589-1610) great improvements had been made, and by the accession of Louis XIV—who began to reign nominally in 1643, at the age of five, but really took charge of the kingdom in 1661—through the completion of several bridges, roads, and quays, 17 and the erection of various public and private palaces, a new face had been put on the old city. It was already the focus of European civilization, learning, and eloquence, as well as the center of all that was most attractive and distinguished in France. The best institutions were there, the best

opportunities for advancement, the highest privileges and advantages of every sort; so that to it naturally gravitated all who wished to make the most of themselves under the eye of that Grand Monarch whose favor was life. Francis, therefore, no doubt counted himself greatly blessed at this change, and entered upon his Parisian life—which was to last thirty-one years—with very high, ambitious hopes. His guardian sent him for two years to the Collége du Plessis, then under the rule of M. Gobinet, a first-rate principal. There he speedily distinguished himself as a scholar, and he also gave such tokens of possessing the gift of eloquence that before he was sixteen he was put forward to preach to an admiring audience. It is, perhaps, worth noting that Bossuet—who was so soon to be closely associated with Fénelon, at first in friendship, then in fierce hostility—also preached at the same age, with similar applause, before a brilliant assemblage in Paris.

What was the next step? A noble under Louis XIV had two possible careers open to him, and only two; they were the army and the Church. It is not probable that the matter was long debated, if at all, 18 in Francis’ case. Everything about him, his gifts of speech, his high scholarship, his deep piety, his rather delicate health, pointed to the clerical vocation, and there can be no question but this was with him a divine calling, to which doubtless his heart gave full assent. So he was placed, in 1688, at the seminary of St. Sulpice to be trained for the priesthood.

Since he was to spend no less than ten happy years, in the formative period of seventeen to twenty-seven, in connection with this institution, it may be well that we say a few words about it and its director. It was the principal fruit of the great Catholic revival at the beginning of the century, the embodiment of all the force of that movement—a movement marked by very earnest piety and a somewhat unusual combination of emotionalism and asceticism. It was founded by a group of devoted men sprung from the upper-middle class; and chief among them was M. Olier, a man justly celebrated for his saintly life. He was appointed in 1642 to the parish of St. Sulpice when it was noted as the most depraved quarter of Paris. He labored unremittingly and very successfully to reform this unpromising flock, and the young priests who were associated with him in his task constituted the nucleus of the seminary and community of St. Sulpice. The necessary building to house the institution, to the establishment of which Monsieur Olier gave himself with highest enthusiasm, was completed 19

in 1652—a square edifice capable of receiving one hundred inmates. This became the center of a most wholesome and inspiring activity.

The founder had a very high ideal of sacerdotal character. He would not admit any who embraced the sacred calling from considerations of ambition or expediency, and those admitted were subjected to the sharpest kind of tests. Whatever their birth or condition they were required to perform the menial duties of the house, and to mingle on terms of absolute equality with their fellow-students. The complete immolation of self was set as the paramount aim before those who looked forward to holy orders. The will must be entirely surrendered. The good priest must become the model of all the virtues. All earthly interests and ties must be renounced. The closest union with the Divine was to be cultivated. A very literal interpretation of the teaching of the Master was followed. The pupils were urged to study the Gospels till they could bring the Divine life before them at any moment in a series of mental pictures which should help them in the decision of all perplexing questions of duty, and were exhorted to keep themselves in such a disposition that meditation on that model

life would never seem strange or demand a violent mental revulsion whatever their outward circumstances might be. While the ceremonies of the Church were observed with minute exactness, and occasional austerities were practiced, and learning 20 was not neglected, the main thought was that the perfection of personal character must be secured at all costs; the world was to be abandoned, the flesh crucified, the devil in all his forms resisted, and lessons of humility, obedience, and charity were to be most carefully learned. They were taught that in the silence which succeeds the struggle of self-abandonment they would find Christ coming to them—the Christ who had borne all and understood all, and whose presence was far more worth having than the prizes they had missed or put away.

It can well be believed that this wholly consecrated man, the first superior of St. Sulpice, won to himself so large a share of personal affection and loyalty from his students that when he was removed from its care many feared its collapse. But this was not to be. A suitable successor was found in M. Louis Tronson, a man every way as capable as the first founder—indeed more learned in theology—and fully disposed to continue the traditions of the institution as already laid down; a man who coveted no external recognition, joined in no race for preferment, but gave himself with singleness of eye to the great work intrusted to him by the Master. It was to his care that Francis Fénelon was committed, and he speedily won the enthusiastic affection of the young man. In a few years Fénelon writes concerning his teacher to Pope Clement XI as follows: “Never have I seen his equal for piety and prudence, for love of justice and insight 21 into character. I glory in the thought that I was brought up under his wing.” Fénelon was evidently