BARRAL, LOUIS-MATHIAS de. - French prelate, b. at Grenoble on 20 April 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 provide for himself, trampling upon the rights of the Pope, B. headed the episcopal deputation which went to Savona in May 1811 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 draft a new concordat. In August 1815 he was compelled to leave his see of Tours because he had 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, Parigi 1891, pp. 377-78; G. Constant, L'Église de France sous le consulat et l'empire, Parigi 1928. On the action carried out at Savona in the presence of Pius VII, cf. I. Rinieri, Napoleone e Pio VII, Torino 1906, passim. Silvio Furlani
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“BARRAL, LOUIS-MATHIAS DE.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II (1949), p. 531. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/barral-louis-mathias-de.