A masterclass in public speaking

BY MARGARET MOLLETT

Although François Fénelon ­ (1651-1715), archbishop of Cambrai, France, has been discovered for his spiritual writings, his Dialogues in Eloquence appears to be unknown in Christian circles – but it holds pride of place in academic collections on rhetorical theory.

Already as a young preacher, Fénelon encountered difficulties in preaching to the average congregation. He disliked the “ornamentation, epigrams, riddles and pomposity” that typified preaching in France at the time.

The study of St Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine and writings of other Church Fathers acquainted him with ancient Greek rhetoric, and soon he was moved to revitalise and adapt it to pastoral needs.

With a maestro’s touch Fénelon coupled audience differences with religious and moral truth in a way both natural and tasteful. A sermon had three purposes – “proof, portraiture, movement”.

Fénelon regarded philosophers as working only to convince, “but the orator must go beyond, using every source capable of arousing sentiments; only then will the orator secure willful adherence to demonstrated truth”.

In his Dialogues in Eloquence, he turned to Plato: “Any speech that leaves you cold, which only acts to amuse you and which does not affect your feelings, your heart, is not eloquent, however beautiful it may seem.”

For Fénelon solid proof required interesting the listener, then using his passions for the purpose in mind.

“One inspires him to anger at ingratitude, to horror of cruelty, to pity for misery, to love of virtue, and so on. There you have what Plato calls acting upon the soul of the listener and moving his feelings.”

A few pages later, he wrote: “To portray is not only to describe things but to represent their surrounding features in so lively and so concrete a way that the listener imagines himself almost seeing them. And that painting ought to be a genuine likeness. It is necessary that everything in it represent vividly and naturally the sentiments of him who is speaking and the nature of the things he speaks of.”

And later: “To succeed in painting the passions, one must study the movements which they produce – what the eyes do, what the hands do, what the whole body does, and what its posture is; what the voice does in a man wounded by grief or struck with surprise at the sight of a wondrous thing.

“Nothing speaks so fully as the face. It expresses everything. But of the whole face, the eyes make the chief effect. A single glance thrown to good purpose will strike to the depths of the heart.”

Fénelon observed that if the preacher closes his eyes, it is because he is in a hurry to speak and his memory is working too much. Preachers who learn their sermons by heart “can lose the thread of their discourse and keep repeating themselves like the schoolboy who doesn’t know his lesson.” Fénelon insisted: stick to your notes, stick to your pulpit. Put differently: no winging, no walkabout.

Grounded in Scripture, Fénelon criticised sermons that were “reasonings of philosophers”.

“Sometimes we only cite the Scripture as an afterthought for the sake of appearance or ornament. Then it is no longer the word of God; it is the word and the contrivance of men.”

A contemporary described Fénelon this way: “He possessed a natural eloquence, grace and finesse, and a most insinuating, yet noble and appropriate courtesy; an easy, clear, agreeable utterance; a wonderful power of explaining the hardest matter in a lucid, distinct manner.

“He was a man who never sought to seem cleverer than those with whom he conversed, who brought himself insensibly to their level, putting them at their ease, and enthralling them so one could neither leave him, nor mistrust him, nor help seeking him again.”

Next month: Cardinal Newman aims at the bull’s eye