Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne

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Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne as Archbishop of Toulouse (oil painting from 1770, Versailles Palace)

Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (born October 9, 1727 in Paris , † February 16, 1794 ibid) was a French politician and cleric .

Life

Brienne belonged to the Limousin family, which can be traced back to the 15th century. After a brilliant career as a student, he embarked on a career in the Church as it seemed the best way to gain a meaningful position. In 1751 he became a doctor of theology , although there were doubts about the orthodoxy of his dissertation . In 1752 he was appointed Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Rouen .

After making a trip to Rome, he became Bishop of Condom (1760) and in 1763 was transferred to the Archdiocese of Toulouse . He had many famous friends, including Turgot , the Abbé Morellet and Voltaire , and in 1770 he became an academic. On three occasions he was chairman of the office of jurisdiction at the general assembly of the clergy; He was also interested in current political and social questions and turned to Turgot with a series of writings on these subjects, one of which is particularly notable on the question of the poor.

In 1787 he was a member of the Notable Assembly ; in this capacity he attacked the financial policy of Calonne , which he succeeded on May 1, 1787 as head of the Ministry of Finance . Once in power he managed to get the parliament to register edicts that revolved around internal free trade, the establishment of provincial assemblies and the replacement of the corvée ( compulsory service tax ). When the Parliament refused to register its edicts on stamp duty and a proposed new general property tax , he persuaded the king to hold a lit de justice to enforce the registration. In order to stifle the opposition to these measures, he persuaded the king to exile the Parlement in Troyes (August 18, 1787). After the Parliament had agreed to extend the tax of the two vingtièmes (twentieth, a direct tax on all types of income) for two years, it renounced the registration of the stamp duty and the territorial tax and called the MPs back to Paris. But a further attempt to force the parliament to register an edict to take out a loan of 120 million livres was met with vehement opposition. Parliament's struggle against Brienne's incompetence ended on May 8 with its consent to its own abolition; but on the condition that the Estates General should be convened to resolve the crisis of the state.

Brienne, who had meanwhile been appointed Archbishop of Sens , now faced almost all-embracing opposition; he was forced to dissolve the Cour plenière, which was to replace Parliament; and he had to promise that the Estates-General would be convened. But even those concessions were not enough to keep him in power, and on August 29 he was forced to resign. After all, during his reign he contributed to the enactment of the Edict of Versailles . The following December 15th he was made cardinal and went to Italy, where he spent two years. After the outbreak of the revolution he returned to France and in 1790 swore the oath on the civil constitution of the clergy .

He was not recognized by the Pope, and in 1791, on the orders of Pius VI. hand over his cardinal's hat. Both his past and present behavior made him a target of suspicion by revolutionaries; he was arrested in Sens on November 9, 1793 and died in prison on February 16, 1794, either from a stroke or from poison.

In 1770 he became a member of the Académie française and in 1787 honorary member of the Académie royale des sciences in Paris.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne. Académie française, accessed on January 15, 2020 (French).
  2. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter L. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 15, 2020 (French).
predecessor Office successor
Louis-Joseph de Montmorency-Laval Bishop of Condom
1760–1763 		Alexandre-César d'Anterroches
Arthur-Richard Dillon Archbishop of Toulouse
1763–1788 		François de Fontanges
Michel Bouvard de Fourqueux President of the Royal Finance Council
May 1, 1787–25. August 1788 		Jacques Necker
personal data
SURNAME Loménie de Brienne, Étienne Charles de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician and cleric
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1727
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1794
Place of death Paris