BELLOY, JEAN-BAPTISTE, de. — Cardinal, born on 9 October 1709 at Morangles (Oise), died on 10 June 1808 in Paris. Bishop of Glandève from 1752 to 1755, when he moved to the see of Marseille, where he remained until the suppression of the bishopric in 1801, when, in obedience to the concordat, he communicated his resignation to Spina. Napoleon’s minister of ecclesiastical affairs, Portalis, intended to give him, despite his extreme old age,
the archiepiscopal see of Aix, but the First Consul appointed him archbishop of Paris, a see which B. took possession of in April 1802. Napoleon held B. in the highest esteem and appointed him senator in September 1802, declaring that “Citizen B. has been, through fifty years of episcopal activity, the model of the Gallican Church. Finding himself at the head of the first diocese of France, he offers us an example of every apostolic and civic virtue.” In January 1803 Pius VII created B. a cardinal with the presbyteral title of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina. The appointment as cardinal was received with jubilation by the people of Paris, since from 1729, the year in which Cardinal de Noailles had died, no archbishop of Paris had again been invested with the purple. In the autumn of 1807 the emperor selected B. to preside over the electoral college of the department of the Seine, an office that in the preceding session had been entrusted to Luciano Bonaparte. In the administration of the diocese B. distinguished himself through his outstanding organizational qualities and his ardent pastoral zeal, although on more than one occasion he proved submissive and yielding to the emperor’s will.