Fénelon, when the decision at Rome was communicated to him, acted as his friends had expected, although some of them had hardly dared hope that even he could rise so magnificently to the occasion. He accepted, simply, sincerely, sweetly, with no reservation or concealment or half-heartedness, what he regarded as, under the circumstances, the voice of God. His brother, the Compte de Fénelon, heard the tidings first in Paris, and started instantly for Cambrai, thinking that the reception of the news through a kindly channel might at least lighten somewhat the blow. He arrived on the Festival of the Annunciation, just as the archbishop was about to preach in the cathedral. However keenly he felt the blow—and he was, of course, human—he was not disconcerted, or cast down, or perplexed. Pausing a little to arrange his thoughts, he threw aside his intended sermon, and preached on the duty of absolute submission to authority. The congregation, among whom the news was already whispered, was most profoundly impressed with the calm dignity, the noble simplicity of their beloved chief pastor; and the eyes of most overflowed with tears of admiration, affection, grief, and respect as they listened to his heartfelt words.
He was not a little harassed, as the days went on, by some zealous, well-meaning folk, who feared that he might not do the best thing, and wrote him long exhortations to submit, telling him of the glory he would find in such humiliation and the heroism he would achieve. He wrote to Beauvilliers: “All this wearies me somewhat; and I am disposed to say to myself, What have I done to all these people that they think I shall find it so difficult to prefer the authority of the Holy See to my own dim knowledge, or the peace of the Church to my own book? However, I am well aware they are right in attributing large imperfections to me and much shrinking from an act of humiliation; therefore I can easily forgive them.” He wrote: “Doubtless it costs one something to humble one’s self; but the least resistance to the Holy See would cost me a hundred-fold more, and I must confess that I can see no room for hesitation in the matter. One may suffer, but one can not have a moment’s doubt.” He also said: “Amid these troubles I have the comfort, little appreciated by the world, but very satisfactory to those who seek God heartily, namely, that my course is clear, and I have nothing to hesitate about.”
His enemies sought in vain to find a flaw in his submission. One of his followers wrote: “Your conduct is a living exemplification of the maxims of the saints;” as indeed it was. The dignified humility with which he met misfortune gave him added reputation. He sent out a pastoral letter, short and affecting, which comforted his friends and afflicted his enemies, falsifying every prediction which they had made of the nice subtleties and distinctions with which he would seek to disguise his defeat. His letters at this time breathed in all cases the most amiable spirit of peace and resignation. But in general he declined all writing and discourse on the subject, and at an early moment dismissed the controversy as far as possible from his thoughts. The Bishop of Chartres wrote to Fénelon that he was delighted with his perfect submission: “I have no words to express how my heart is affected with your humble and generous action.” The pope wrote most kindly, and all the cardinals, except Cassanata, sent messages to Fénelon by the Abbé de Chanterac, conveying their respect and attachment. “It is impossible,” wrote the abbé, “to praise more than they did your submission, your pastoral letter, your letters to the pope, and the whole of your conduct.” As one eminent person wrote from Rome, “He was more glorious than if he had never been condemned.” The Chancellor d’Aguesseau writes that Fénelon’s submission made him the hero of the day. “It stands the solitary example in history of a controversy upon a point of such moment which one single sentence terminated at the instant, without its reproduction in any other form, without any attempt to reverse it by power or elude it by distinctions. The glory of it is due to Fénelon, who was able to see that a very great desire to justify one’s self often does more harm than good, and that the surest way to obliterate wrongs unjustly imputed is to let them be forgotten and die out in silence.”
Fénelon said, “In all this, so far from referring it to my opponents, I see no human agent; I see God only, and I am content to accept what He does.” “In the name of God,” he writes to a friend, “speak to me only of God, and leave men to judge of me as they like. As for me, I shall seek only peace and silence.” He had no resentment toward any one; but he steadily refused, with proper dignity and uncompromising adherence to the right, to utter one syllable which could be perverted into a semblance of retraction. He said that since the head of the Church, with its superior light and authority, had so judged, he must believe himself to have insufficiently explained his meaning, but he declared, in justice to himself, that he never understood the text, or supposed any one else could understand it, save in the sole sense which he had himself assigned to it. While ready at all times to meet his opponents in the humblest and most peaceful spirit, as he declared, he declined to enter into any negotiations that would imply a yielding of what concerned his conscience or his sense of truth in order to win them. He ceased to write and converse upon the subject from this time. But in the discharge of his duties among his own people and in his correspondence, he never ceased to inculcate the doctrine of pure love. He thought it his duty to avoid certain forms of expression, and certain illustrations which had been specifically condemned in the Papal Decree, and which were liable to be misconceived, but he went no further. How could he? Nor do we find that room to wonder, which some have done, at the heartiness and promptness of his submission to what he doubtless felt was, from a human point of view, unjust. He refused to confine himself to the human point of view. He held, with General Charles George Gordon, and many others in our own day, that, however we may rightly struggle to alter events while they are in the process of formation, when once they have come to pass they register a decree of the Almighty, and any reluctance to receive them is rebellion against Him, something not to be thought of by a truly loyal heart. This theory and practice made earth to him very heavenly, and life a triumphant march.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GOOD ARCHBISHOP.
It is now our privilege to bid farewell to the noise of battle, and look at the good archbishop in the peaceful retirement of his great diocese, where, as all admit, his episcopal duties were perfectly performed. Even the most captious carpers and cavilers at Fénelon, who can see little or no good in any other part of his life and try hard to find some unworthy motive at the bottom of the acts that seem so fair, are sore put to it, when they come to this portion, to withhold a meed of hearty praise. They are forced to admit that his misfortunes have helped his character, and that he shines forth with a luster rarely, if ever, equaled. What he would have become spiritually had the world continued to smile upon him is, of course, unknown. Had Louis XIV died and the Duke of Burgundy come to the throne, Fénelon would undoubtedly have reached the cardinalate for which his birth and abilities so well fitted him, and might even have gone higher. But it is not likely that, in the vitiated atmosphere of the court, and surrounded by the temptations inevitably awaiting on unclouded success, his character could have developed as it did in affliction. Some measure of adversity seems to be essential to bring out the best there is in us. His career has been called by some superficial observers “a splendid failure,” but the words have no meaning except in the sense in which they might be used of Jesus of Nazareth and a multitude of others who have stood for the highest ideals and have died nobly fighting against wrong. Fénelon did not falter in his course; he obeyed at eve “the voice obeyed at prime;” he held to the end the supreme purpose which had inspired his earliest reflections. But his years of exile, spent in the single-hearted service of his people, are a more impressive and edifying conclusion to a life begun under the auspices of St. Sulpice than if they had been attended with all the glories of the papal court. His reverses of fortune gave him an admirable opportunity, magnificently improved, to show that his high theories of resignation and self-surrender, and a serene acceptance of everything from God’s hand, could work well in practice. Under the stress of his troubles he gained new depth and breadth of piety, new self-reliance and self-control, larger tranquillity, a more thoroughly compacted character.
Cambrai, to which, he was banished in 1697, and where he spent the last eighteen years of his life, was a town of no great size or beauty, on the river Scheldt, in the extreme north, near the Flemish frontier. It was the ecclesiastical center of the Flemish provinces which were conquered during the early half of the reign of Louis XIV, and confirmed to France by the treaty of Nimwegen in 1678. Formerly a dependency of the chaotic Empire, there still clung around it some of the prestige of departed glories when its bishop’s jurisdiction extended over Brussels, and he governed the territory with almost the power of an independent sovereign, having his own fortresses and garrisons and mint. Fénelon himself ranked both as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and as a Duke of France, and, though possessing no feudal privileges, he was still the principal landholder of the province, with a floating revenue of some hundred thousand francs, perhaps about a hundred thousand dollars in modern money. It was one of the first positions in the kingdom; but it had some serious drawbacks, especially as a place of permanent residence. He had said on receiving the appointment, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit; I am entering on a state of perpetual servitude in a strange land.” The people there were Flemings, not Frenchmen, in their language, their habits, their modes of thought, with little refinement of any kind, their virtues as coarse-fibered as their manners. It was no small privation for a man like Fénelon—born for Olympus as it were, bred to the best society, and fitted to shine in it with so much luster, and in a time when, even more than now, everything centered around the court at the capital—to be shut out from it all, losing the sympathy and friendship which his earlier years had brought him, the daily intercourse with minds that reflected his own thoughts yet inspired and exhilarated him. For one in the flower of his manhood and at the zenith of his capacities, possessing the gift of language in a marvelous degree, with a filled and cultured brain, to be thrown so absolutely out of his element, out of the world of books and intellectual equals, exiled to a remote corner of the realm amid strangers, was a calamity whose gravity, on one side, it would be wrong to overlook. His sufferings, as nature goes, must have been acute. Yet he speedily adjusted himself to the situation, and there is no note of repining. For mere court favors, its dignities, pomps, and pleasures, he had no real love, and his whole life bears witness to the truth of his often repeated assertions, that he had no wish to return to Paris or Versailles; no wish, that is, under the divinely appointed circumstances; for he was able always to find in such circumstances his highest pleasure. Writing to the Duke de Beauvilliers in November, 1699, he says: “I am sorry, dear duke, to be separated from you, the dear duchess, and a very few other friends. But for all else I rejoice in being away; I sing my canticle of thanksgiving for deliverance, and nothing would cost me so much as to have to return.”
He by no means settled down into “a state of passive quietism,” as some ignorantly prate, wholly misconceiving both quietism and the man. The slightest scanning of the records shows how beautifully and zealously active his last years were. If ever a man threw himself into the interests of others, or made the deep love of God, which he breathed as his native air, take loving shape in strenuous acts, it was Fénelon. He was quiet, even as was Madame Guyon, and as all other high saints have been, in so far as to rest with an absolute, unhesitating, unquestioning faith in God’s keeping, asking nothing save that His will might be perfected in him; but he was most active and energetic in body, soul, and spirit for his neighbor’s good. The unremitting labors which he undertook, and which his vast diocese if properly administered demanded, involved a life of the most regular industry. He gave but a short time to sleep, and his working hours began early, so that he had done nearly a day’s work before saying mass. His habit was to say this in his own chapel, after a long time spent previously in prayer, except on Saturdays, when he said it in the cathedral, remaining there to hear the confessions of penitents of any and every class who chose to present themselves. He not infrequently preached in the cathedral, but seems to have preferred the town churches, in some one of which he always preached the Lenten discourses. He made no effort at oratory, aiming chiefly to be plain and intelligible, excluding from his sermons superfluous ornaments as well as obscurity and difficult reasonings. He preached from the heart rather than from the head, and generally without notes, but not without much meditation and prayer. He used to say, “I must spend much time in my closet in order to be prepared for the pulpit, and to be sure that my heart is filled from the Divine fountain before I pour out the streams upon the people.” He declared against the practice of committing sermons to writing and then learning them by heart.
To his clergy he was a father and brother in God, gathering them about him as constantly as possible for instruction and inspiration, moving among them with the utmost wisdom, correcting, advising, assisting. One of his first cares was the improvement of the seminary for completing the education of those who were preparing for the Church. It had been at Valenciennes, but he removed it to Cambrai, that it might be under his own eye. It was his great desire to reconstruct it on the lines of the seminary at St. Sulpice, where he himself had been so profited, and to intrust the supervision of the students to priests who were members of that congregation; but he found insuperable obstacles to this scheme in the fear of M. Tronson lest any direct connection between St. Sulpice and Cambrai might draw down upon the former the king’s displeasure. So Fénelon appointed to the head of it his intimate friend, the Abbé de Chanterac, formerly his agent at Rome, saying, “He has the wit, the piety, and the wisdom to govern it peacefully.” But Fénelon devoted great personal care to the students, examining them himself, and endeavoring to estimate their individual capacities. Besides the instruction he gave them during periods of retreat, and at the chief festivals, he conducted conferences once a week, listening with infinite patience to their difficulties and replying with the kindness of a father. No priest proceeded to ordination until he had been five times examined by Fénelon himself. In short, no pains were spared to make the priests of this diocese an example to their degenerate colleagues.
In the general administration of his diocese he concentrated all his powers, allowing nothing to escape him, erring, if at all, on the side of mercy and toleration, finding it difficult to believe many of the charges brought against his clergy, and only convinced by the most conclusive evidence. He abstained from unnecessary acts of authority, avoided all unnecessary display, removed what was blamable by meekness and moderation, improved with prudence and sobriety what was good. His administration was uniformly wise, strict in some respects, and yet on broad and liberal lines. There was no harrying of Protestants or Jansenists, no bureaucratic fussiness, no seeking after popularity, but every man, great or small, was treated exactly as was becoming. Between him and his flock, his chapter, or his clergy, there was no discord. Though by his indefatigable zeal he soon made the district committed to his charge the model of a well-regulated diocese, his biographers do not record of him a single instance of what are generally called acts of vigor, or a single instance of gaudy virtue. The peace of heaven was with him, and was communicated to all around. All local customs, down to the humblest, were handled with a delicate touch, and pardonable eccentricities of usage were never dealt with severely. In the matter of patronage he was careful that no outsider, and still less no relative of his own, should swoop down on the richest livings and secure by interest what the natives naturally looked upon as their own by right. He traveled throughout the district, making tours of inspection several times a year, and so coming into touch with every corner, preaching more than once in every one of the six hundred parishes.