DUPANLOUP, FÉLIX ANTOINE PHILIBERT

Bishop of Orléans; b. Saint-Félix in Savoy, Jan. 3, 1802; d. Lacombe (Isère), France, Oct. 11, 1878. He was

an illegitimate child whose mother, Anne Dechosal, was a poor young peasant and whose father was probably one of the higher French nobility. In Paris, where the boy lived with his mother from 1809, his intelligence impressed his teachers, who directed him toward the seminary. There he made valuable contacts in aristocratic and ecclesiastical circles and was ordained (Dec. 12, 1825). While he was a curate in the Parisian church of the Madeleine, his catechetical instructions were extremely successful. Obliged to abandon this work (1834), he thereupon became well known as a preacher. When named superior of the minor seminary of St. Nicholas (September 1837), he was able to utilize anew his pedagogical talents. His role some months later in the deathbed reconciliation of talleyrand-pÉrigord made him famous. His polemical abilities were first revealed in 1844 when he came out in favor of freedom for Catholic secondary education. At first an opponent of lamennais and his followers, he slowly became attracted to mon talembert and his idea that defense of the Catholic Church in modern society is best conducted on the field of constitutional liberties. Thanks to his diplomatic skill, from 1848 he was the chief artisan of the Falloux Law (1850), but his energetic defense of this temporary solution of the school question brought about his rupture with Louis veuillot, leader of the intransigent Catholics.

Dupanloup bowed to the entreaties of his friend Falloux after much hesitation and accepted the See of Orléans (April 1849). Endowed with a keen appreciation of the needs of souls and with the temperament of a leader, although at times too authoritarian, he excelled in his ability to arouse and direct the activity of subordinates. For two decades he dedicated himself to the betterment of his diocese, especially to the intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral improvement of his clergy. His proposed new solutions ranked him a pioneer in religious sociology and sacerdotal spirituality. A rigorous economy in the distribution of time permitted him to remain in close contact with the capital and to keep alert to the problems vexing France and the Church, while initiating numerous apostolic and charitable works in his diocese. All the quarrels that then beset the Church in France found him in the midst of the combat, particularly those concerning ul tramontanism and modern liberties. He sustained, often passionately, the Catholic liberals of the group connected with the Correspondant against the attacks of Veuillot. This made him a very controversial figure in that large segment of the clergy who looked upon Veuillot as an oracle, but it increased his prestige among the elite of French society, even the unbelievers, as was evident by his election to the French Academy (1854).

Dupanloup moved to the forefront of the European politico-religious scene from the time of the Italian war (1859) because of the role he assumed in defense of the papal temporal power by publishing numerous explosive brochures with the aid of friends. Persuaded thenceforth that he had a unique mission to fulfill, he threw himself with redoubled ardor into an unremitting struggle conducted simultaneously on two fronts: against the anti-clericals in defense of the Church and religion, and against the extreme ultramontanes in defense of moderate ideas in the Church. His brochure La convention du 15 septembre et l'encyclique du 8 décembre (1865) appeased the tempest unleashed by the syllabus of er rors and met with favorable reaction throughout the world. His interventions in favor of Poland, Ireland, and the Eastern Churches popularized his name far beyond French borders. At the assemblies of bishops in Rome in 1862 and 1867, Dupanloup organized the resistance of the moderates and thereby avoided anti-liberal, ultramontane declarations at variance with public opinion. He also hoped to profit from his prestige and to enjoy an analogous role at vatican council i; but he intervened maladroitly on the eve of the council's opening with his Observations sur… l'infallibilité au futur concile (Nov. 11, 1869), in which he amassed reasons against the opportuneness of a definition, although he admitted the doctrine. During the sessions he also alienated many otherwise sympathetic persons by the passionate manner in which he tried to alert his episcopal colleagues and, still more debatably, public opinion and the French government, against decisions that, in his mind, threatened a rupture between the Church and modern society. His feverish activity undoubtedly injured his cause more than it helped.

Elected to the French National Assembly (1871) and to the Senate (1875), Dupanloup devoted his closing years mainly to politics. For a while he advocated a restoration of the monarchy as the sole guarantee for the future of the Church; then he tried to orient the Third Republic in a direction as conservative and clerical as possible. This action obtained for the Church immediate advantages, notably the law extending freedom to higher education (1876), but it compromised the Church in the eyes of the radical left. Circumscribed in his contacts with the world, Dupanloup totally lacked appreciation of modern social problems.

His sermons, conferences, and parliamentary speeches were highly esteemed, although their eloquence was diffuse and replete with romantic rhetoric. Dupanloup's published writings, considerable in volume, enjoyed a wide international reading public, but they dealt mostly with matters of merely contemporary interest presented in the form of polemical brochures and pastoral works without great literary value. Most durable were his pedagogical writings, consisting of works on catechetical instruction, education for women (a field in which he was a pioneer), and especially his great six-volume tract, De l'Education (1850–66), which condensed the experience of one whom Ernest Renan called an "educator without equal."

Dupanloup was a man of action, impetuous, superficial in theology, too insistent on the sentimental aspects of religion, yet a great bishop passionately devoted to the Church and possessed with the idea of rebuilding a "Christianity," although his famed liberalism was in fact very moderate. Despite a degree of vanity and a taste for the game of politics, he was a true priest and a highly esteemed director of souls whose powers of inspiration were remarkable.

Bibliography: r. aubert, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–). 14:1070–1122, lists Dupanloup's writings, full bibliog.; "Mgr. Dupanloup et le Syllabus," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 51 (1956) 79–142, 471–512, 837–915; "Mgr. Dupanloup au début du concile du Vatican," Miscellanea historiae ecclesiasticae (Louvain 1961) 96–116. c. de warmont, "F. A. Dupanloup," The XIXth Century 5 (1879) 219–246. f. lagrange, Life of Monseigneur Dupanloup tr. lady herbert, 2 v. (London 1885), detailed but too panegyrical. u. maynard, Mgr. Dupanloup et Mgr. Lagrange son historien (Paris 1884) É. faguet, Mgr. Dupanloup: Un grand évêque (Paris 1914), useful for Dupanloup's personality. c. marcilhacy, Le, Diocèse d'Orléans sous l'épiscopat de Mgr. Dupanloup (Paris 1962), excellent on diocesan activity. s. lÖsch, Döllinger und Frankreich (Munich 1955) 230–347. f. buisson, ed., Dictionnaire de pédagogie et d'instruction primaire, 2 v. in 4 (Paris 1887–88) 1.1:742–747. m. peters, Die Stellungnahme Felix Dupanloups zu den Fragen der Mädchenerziehung und Frauenbildung seiner Zeit (Münster 1929).

[r. aubert]