BELLAY, JEAN DU

BELLAY, JEAN du. - Cardinal, younger brother of Guglielmo, b. in 1492, d. at Rome in 1560. He began his ecclesiastical career at an early age and in 1526 became Bishop of Bayonne. A close friend of the Constable Anne de Montmorency, he was known and esteemed by Francis I, who sent him as ambassador to England in 1528. He entered into the friendship of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII and became the king’s supporter at the time when relations between the latter and Rome were becoming more strained. In 1530 at the Sorbonne and in 1534 at Rome he vigorously defended the thesis of the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V, with the purely political aim of securing for Francis I a powerful alliance in his struggles against the emperor. In reward for this action he obtained the bishopric of Paris in 1532 and the red hat in 1535. The following year he distinguished himself in organizing the defence of the city during the siege laid to Péronne by imperial troops. On his journey to Rome in 1536 he was accompanied by Rabelais. Bishop of Limoges in 1541, Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1544, Bishop of Le Mans in 1546, he returned to Rome in 1548 to plead in vain, on behalf of Henry II, for an anti-imperial alliance. Opposed by the Cardinal of Lorraine, he retired definitively to Rome in his later years, where he had a magnificent palace and a splendid court frequented by men of letters and artists. At the death of Marcellus II his possible elevation to the papacy was discussed. He left three books of poetry (Paris 1546) and some orations.