Francois de Salignac de La Mothe - Fenelon, (1651-1715) s a celebrated French bishop and author came of ancient family of noble birth but small means. The most famous of his ancestors was Bertrand de Salignac (d. 1599), who fought at Metz under the Duke Guise and became ambassador to England. Fenelon's early education was provided in the Chateau de Fénelon by a private tutor which provided Fenelon with a thorough grounding in the Greek language and classics. In 1667, at age 12, he was sent to the University of Cahors, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. When the young man expressed interest in a career in the church, his uncle, the Marquis Antoine de Fenelon arranged for him to study at the Collège du Plessis, where Fenelon demonstrated so much talent that at age 15, he was asked to give a public sermon. In about 1675, (when he would have been 24), he was ordained as a priest. In 1678, the Archbishop of Paris, selected Fenelon to head the house of Nouvelles-Catholiques, a community for Protestant converts about to enter the Church of Rome. During this period, Fenelon had become friends with his future rival Jacques-Benigne Bossuet. When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Church began a campaign to send the greatest orators in the country into the regions of France with the greatest concentration of Huguenots to persuade them of the errors of Protestantism. Upon Bossuet's suggestion, Fenelon was included in this group.

He spent three years working as a preacher to the Protestants. He became a friend and colleague of Jacques Bossuet during this time, and produced his successful works Treatise on the Existence of God and Treatise on the Education of Young Girls during this period. In 1688, Fenelon first met Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, usually known simply as "Mme Guyon", who was being well-received in the social circle of the Beauvilliers and Chevreuses. He was deeply impressed by her piety and would later become a devotee and defender of her brand of Quietism. In 1689, Louis XIV named Fenelon's friend the Duc de Beauvilliers as governor of the royal grandchildren. Upon Beauvilliers' recommendation, Fenelon was named the tutor of the Dauphin's eldest son, the 7-year-old Duke of Burgundy, second in line for the throne. As tutor, Fénelon was charged with guiding the character formation of a future King of France. He wrote several important works specifically to guide his young charge. These include his Fables and his Dialogues des Morts. But by far the most lasting of these works was his Les Aventures de Telemaque (English The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses), written in 1693-94. On its surface, it is a novel about Ulysses' son Telemachus, but in reality, it was a biting attack on the divine right absolute monarchy which was the dominant ideology of Louis XIV's France. In sharp contrast to Bossuet, who, when tutor to the Dauphin had written Politique tiree de l'Écriture sainte which affirmed the divine foundations of absolute monarchy while at the same exercising the future king to use restraint and wisdom in exercising his absolute power, in Telemachus, Fénelon went so far as to write "Good kings are rare and the generality of monarchs bad" (p. 254).

Fénelon had met Mme Guyon in 1688 and had subsequently become a fan of her work. In 1697, following a visit by Mme Guyon to Mme de Maintenon's school at Saint-Cyr, the Bishop of Chartres (Saint-Cyr was located within his diocese) expressed concerns about Mme Guyon's orthodoxy to Mme de Maintenon. He was concerned that Mme Guyon's opinions bore striking similarities to Miguel de Molinos' Quietism, condemned by Innocent XI in 1687. As a result, Mme de Maintenon asked for an ecclesiastical commission to exam Mme Guyon's orthodoxy. The commission, after six months of deliberations, delivered its opinion in the Articles d'Issy, 34 articles which briefly condemned certain of Mme Guyon's opinions and set forth a brief exposition of the Catholic view of prayer. These articles were signed by Fénelon and the Bishop of Chartres, as well as by all three members of the commission. Mme Guyon immediately submitted to the decision of the commission.

Louis XIV, shocked that his grandson's tutors held such views, removed Fénelon from his post as royal tutor and ordered Fénelon to remain within the boundaries of the archdiocese of Cambrai. The king chastised Bossuet for not warning him earlier of Fénelon's opinions and ordered Bossuet, de Noailles, and the Bishop of Chartres to respond to the Maximes des Saints. This unleashed two years of pamphlet warfare as the two sides traded opinions. This continued until March 12, 1699, when the Inquisition formally condemned the Maximes des Saints, with Pope Innocent XII listing 23 specific propositions as unorthodox. Fénelon immediately declared that he submitted to the pope's authority in the matter and set aside his own opinion in the matter. With this, the matter dropped. In 1699, The Adventures of Telemachus was published and Louis XIV was enraged by this work, which appeared to question the very foundations of his regime. As a result, even after Fénelon abjured his Quietist views, the king refused to revoke his order forbidding Fénelon from leaving his archdiocese.Fénelon's later years were saddened by the deaths of many of his close friends. Shortly before his death, he asked Louis XIV to replace him with a man opposed to Jansenism and loyal to the Sulpician order. He died on January 7, 1715.