BARRAL, LOUIS-MATHIAS de. - French prelate, b. at Grenoble on 20 Apr. 1746, d. on 6 June 1816. Having become bishop of Troyes in 1790, he refused to take the civil oath prescribed by the constitution. He therefore went into exile, first to Constance and later to England. After the Concordat of 1801, he was appointed bishop of Meaux and in February 1805 archbishop of Tours. When the dispute arose over the appointment of bishops, which Napoleon wished to arrange himself by trampling on the rights of the Pope, B. was head of the episcopal deputation that in May 1811 went to Savona to induce Pius VII to yield to the emperor’s will. In January 1813, together with another group of like-minded bishops, he pressed the Pope to draw up a new concordat. In August 1815 he was forced to leave his see at Tours for having been a member of the Chamber of Peers during the Hundred Days.
BARRAL, LOUIS-MATHIAS DE
BIBL.: F. X. Feller, s. V. in Biographie universelle, I, p. 341; A. Jean, Les évêques de France, Paris 1891, pp. 377-78; G. Constant, L'Église de France sous le consulat et l'empire, Paris 1928. On the action carried out at Savona with Pius VII cf. I. Rinieri, Napoleone e Pio VII, Turin 1906, passim.