ARMAGNAC, GEORGES d'. — Cardinal, born probably in 1507, died on 5 June 1585. He received an excellent education, especially at the court of the king of Navarre. He was protected by Margherita d'Angoulême, sister of Francesco I. He owed to her favor his election as bishop of Rodez (1530) and his appointment as governor of the lands of Armagnac and Rouergue. In 1536 he was sent as ambassador to Venice. The struggle between Francesco I and Carlo V was then at its height, and d'A. was to obtain Venice’s alliance or at least its neutrality. In 1538 he returned to France, but two years later he was sent as ambassador to Rome, where he remained until 1545. He had already been made a cardinal a year earlier (19 December 1544). On returning to his homeland, he was transferred to the archbishopric of Tours, which he held until 1551. Between 1547 and 1560 he returned to Rome three more times. After 1560 he confined his activity to southern France, remaining always a friend of the house of Navarre. Indeed, it was he who baptized the future Enrico IV. Having become bishop of Toulouse (1551), he fought Calvinist heresy firmly yet with moderation. He took part in the Colloquy of Poissy (autumn 1561). From 1565 to 1585 he assisted the cardinal of Bourbon in the legation of Avignon. Amid the tangled events of the Wars of Religion, d'A. succeeded in maintaining a relative tranquility in the principality. He was a friend and correspondent of the finest French and Italian men of letters of the time.
A humanist himself and a lover of books, he left one of the finest libraries of the century. Unfortunately, his correspondence, comprising more than a thousand letters, and his dispatches are still largely unpublished and scattered among various archives in Italy and France. They would, it seems, constitute a source of the greatest historical importance.
BISL.: Pastor, V. pp. 482, 486; VI, pp. 6, 344; VII, pp. 14, 16, 24, 27, 377, 461; VIII, p. 338; X, p. 166; Ch. Samaran, s. V. in DHG, IV, coll. 263-67; E. G. Ledos, s. V. in Dictionn. de biographie française, III (1936), coll. 677-79. Ireneo Daniele