page_title: Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
section_title: Controversy with Fénelon
hierarchical_section_title: Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet / Biography / Bishop of Meaux, 1681–1704 / Controversy with Fénelon
context_page_description: Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist.
  Court preacher to Louis XIV of France, Bossuet was a strong advocate of political absolutism and the divine right of kings. He argued that government was divinely ordained and that kings received sovereign power from God. He was also an important courtier and politician.
  The works best known to English speakers are three great orations delivered at the funerals of Queen Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I of England, her daughter Henriette, Duchess of Orléans, and the outstanding military commander le Grand Condé.
  His work Discours sur l'histoire universelle is regarded by many Catholics as an actualization or new version of the City of God of St. Augustine of Hippo.
context_section_description: Three years later, he was battling with Bishop François Fénelon over the love of God. Fénelon, 24 years his junior, was an old pupil who had suddenly become a rival; like Bossuet, Fénelon was a bishop who served as a royal tutor.
  The controversy concerned their different reactions to the opinions of Jeanne Guyon: her ideas were similar to the Quietism of Molinos, which was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687.  When Mme de Maintenon began questioning the orthodoxy of Mme Guyon's opinions, an ecclesiastical commission of three members, including Bossuet, was appointed to report on the matter.  The commission issued 34 articles known as the Articles d'Issy, which condemned Mme Guyon's ideas very briefly and provided a short treatise on the orthodox, Catholic conception of prayer.  Fénelon, who had been attracted to Mme Guyon's ideas, signed off on the Articles, and Mme Guyon submitted to the judgment.
  Bossuet now composed Instructions sur les états d'oraison, a work that explained the Articles d'Issy in greater depth.  Fénelon refused to endorse this treatise, however, and instead composed his own explanation as to the meaning of the Articles d'Issy, his Explication des Maximes des Saints. He explained his view that the goal of human life should be to have love of God as its perfect object, with neither fear of punishment nor desire for the reward of eternal life having anything to do with this pure love of God.  King Louis XIV reproached Bossuet for failing to warn him that his grandsons' tutor had such unorthodox opinions and instructed Bossuet and other bishops to respond to the Maximes des Saints.
  Bossuet and Fénelon thus spent the years 1697–1699 battling each other in pamphlets and letters until the Inquisition finally condemned the Maximes des Saints on 12 March 1699. Pope Innocent XII selected 23 specific passages for condemnation. Bossuet triumphed in the controversy and Fénelon submitted to Rome's determination of the matter.
caption: Fénelon (1651–1715), Bossuet's final rival
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