BELLAY, Jean du. - Cardinal, younger brother of Guillaume, b. in 1492, d. in Rome in 1560. He began his ecclesiastical career at a very young age and in 1526 became bishop of Bayonne. A close friend of the minister and 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 of Henry VIII and became the king's supporter at the moment when the latter's relations with Rome were becoming more strained. He energetically defended at the Sorbonne in 1530 and in Rome in 1534 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. As a reward for this action of his, he obtained the bishopric of Paris in 1532 and the purple in 1535. The following year, he distinguished himself in organizing the defense of the city during the siege laid to Peronne by the 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 advocate in vain, on behalf of Henry II, an anti-imperial alliance. Opposed by the Cardinal of Lorraine, he withdrew definitively to Rome in his last years, and there he had a superb palace and a splendid court frequented by men of letters and artists. On the death of Marcellus II there was talk of his possible ascent to the pontificate. He left three books of poetry (Paris 1546) and some orations.
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Luigi Michelini Tocci