FLEURY, CLAUDE (1640-1723)

This article appears in Volume V10, Page 501 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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FLEURY, CLAUDE (1640-1723) , French ecclesiastical historian, was born at Paris on the 6th of December 1640. Destined for the bar, he was educated at the aristocratic college of Clermont (now that of Louis-le-Grand). In 1658 he was nominated an advocate to the parlement of Paris, and for nine years followed the legal profession. But he had long been of a religious disposition, and in 1667 turned from law to theology. He had been some time in orders when Louis XIV., in 1672, selected him as tutor of the princes of Conti, with such success that the king next entrusted to him the education of the count of Vermandois, one of his natural sons, on whose death in 1683 Fleury received for his services the Cistercian abbey of Loc-Dieu, in the diocese of Rhodez. In 2689 he was appointed sub-preceptor of the dukes of

Burgundy

BURGUNDY

, of Anjou, and of

Berry

, and thus became intimately associated with

Fenelon

FENELON, BERTRAND DE SALIGNAC

, their

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

tutor. In 1696 he was elected to fill the place of La Bruyerein the French

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

; and on the completion of the education of the

young

princes the king bestowed upon him the rich priory of Argenteuil, in the diocese of Paris (1706). On assuming this benefice he resigned, with rare disinterestedness, that of the abbey of Loc-Dieu. About this time he began his

great

GREAT

work

WORK

, the first of the kind in France, and one for which he had been collecting materials for thirty yearsthe Histoire ecclesiastique. Fleury's evident intention was to write a history of the church for all classes of society; but at the time in which his

great

GREAT

work

WORK

appeared it was less religion than theology that absorbed the attention of the clergy and the educated public; and his work accordingly appealed to the student rather than to the popular reader, dwelling as it does very particularly on questions of doctrine, of discipline, of supremacy, and of rivalry between the priest-hood and the imperial power. Nevertheless it had a great success. The first edition, printed at Paris in 20 volumes 4to, 1691, was followed by many others, among which may be mentioned that of Brussels, in 32 vols. 8vo, 1692, and that of Nismes, in 25 vols. 8vo, 1778 to 1780. The work of Fleury only comes down to the year 1414. It was continued by J. Claude Fabre and Goujet down to 1595, in 16 vols. 4to. In consulting the work of Fleury and its supplement, the general table of contents, published by Rondel, Paris, 1758, 1 vol. 4to will be found very useful. Translations have been made of the entire work into Latin, German and Italian. The Latin translation, published at Augsburg. 1758-1759, 85 vols. 8vo, carries the work down to 1684. Fleury, who had been appointed confessor to the

young

' king Louis XV. in 1716, because, as the duke of Orleans said, he was neither Jansenist nor Molinist, nor Ultramontanist, but Catholic, died on the 14th of July 1723. His great learning was equalled by the modest simplicity of his life and the uprightness of his conduct.
Fleury left many works besides his Histoire ecclesiastique. The following deserve

special

SPECIAL

mention:Histoire du droit francois (1674,
I2mo).; Mceurs des Israelites (,68,, 12m0) ; Meeurs des Chritiens (1682, I2mo) ; Traite du choix et de la methode des etudes (1686, 2 vols. I2mo) ; Les Devoirs des mantes et des domestiques (1688, I2mo). A number of the smaller works were published in one volume at Parie in 1807. The Roman Congregation of the Index condemned his Catechisme historique (1679) and the Institution du droit ecclesiastique (1687).
See C. Ernst Simonetti, Der Character.,eines Geschichtsschreibers en dem Leben and aus den Schriften des Abts C. Fleury (Gottingen,; 1746, 4to); C. F. P. Jaeger, Notice sur C. Fleury, considcre eomme~ historien de l'eglise (Strassburg, 1847, 8vo) ; Reichlin-Meldegg, Geschichte des Chrislentums, i.

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