Claude Fleury
Claude Fleury (6 December 1640, Paris – 14 July 1723, Paris), was a French priest, jurist, and ecclesiastical historian.
Destined for the bar, he was educated at the elite, Jesuit
Fleury's aristocratic teaching duties expanded in 1689 when he was appointed sub-preceptor of the dukes of
About this time he began his great work, the first of the kind in France, and one for which he had been collecting materials for thirty years—the Histoire ecclésiastique. 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 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 priesthood and the imperial power.[1]
Nevertheless, it had a great success. The first edition, printed at Paris in 20 volumes (
Fleury was appointed confessor to the young
Fleury left many works besides his Histoire ecclésiastique. The following deserve special mention:
- Histoire du droit français (1674, 12mo)
- Mœurs des Israelites (1681, 12mo)
- Mœurs des Chrétiens (1682, 12mo)
- Catechisme Historique, contenant en abregé l'histoire sainte et la doctrine Cretienne (1683, 2vo)
- Traité du choix et de la méthode des études (1686, 2 vols 12mo)
- Les Devoirs des maîtres et des domestiques (1688, 12mo)
A number of the smaller works were published in one volume at Paris in 1807. The Roman Congregation of the Index condemned his Catéchisme historique (1679) and the Institution du droit ecclésiastique (1687).[1]
See C Ernst Simonetti, Der Character eines Geschichtsschreibers in dem Leben und aus den Schriften des Abbé C. Fleury (Göttingen 1746, 4to); CFP Jaeger, Notice sur C. Fleury, considéré comme historien de l'eglise (Strassburg, 1847, 8vo); Reichlin-Meldegg, Geschichte des Christentums, I.[1]
Notes
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fleury, Claude". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 501.
