FONTENOY, a village of the Netherlands, in the province of Hennegau, and circle of Tournay, containing 580 inhabitants. It is memorable for the battle fought there in 1745, in which the allies commanded by the Duke of Cumberland were defeated by the French under Marshal Saxe.
Fontevraud, or Fontevraux, Order of, in Ecclesiastical History, a religious order, instituted about the latter end of the eleventh century, and taken under the protection of the holy see by Pope Pascal II. in 1106, confirmed by a bull in 1113, and invested by his successors with very extraordinary privileges. The chief of this order was a female, appointed to inspect both the monks and nuns. The order was divided into four provinces, which were those of France, Aquitaine, Auvergne, and Bretagne, in each of which they had formerly several priories.
Fontinalia, or Frontanalia, in Antiquity, a religious feast held amongst the Romans in honour of the deities who presided over fountains or springs. Varro observes that it was the custom to visit the wells on certain days, and to cast crowns into fountains. Scaliger, in his conjectures on Varro, supposes that this was not a feast of fountains in general, as Festus insinuates, but of the fountain which had a temple at Rome, near the Porta Capena, called also Porta Fontinalis; and he adds, that it is of this fountain Cicero speaks in his second book De Legibus. The Fontinalia were celebrated on the 13th of October.