BERNIS, François-Joachim de Pierres de. - Cardinal, b. May 22, 1715 at St-Marcel de l'Ardèche, of a noble family, he studied first with the Jesuits, then at the seminary of St. Sulpice. He settled in Paris as the guest of his cousin, the baron of Montmorency. He lived at court. A sensitive and refined spirit, he embodies the typical figure, absurd all things considered, of the Christian Enlightenment thinker: he denies impiety, but believes in the rationalism of his time. "I have reproached myself as a Christian, he would say, but not as an honnête homme." He is among the most suggestive figures of the bourgeois humanitarianism of the century. Voltaire praised his esprit. His poems opened the doors of the French Academy to him in 1744. In 1751 he was sent as ambassador to Venice, where he led a very worldly life. Having returned to Paris, he was ordained a priest (1755) and the following year he left for Vienna.
The situation was very delicate and he sought to temporize diplomatically, until the agreement reached between Prussia and England convinced him to sign the treaty with Maria Theresa at Versailles on May 1, 1756. After the outbreak of hostilities, a year later, he signed with Austria a second treaty more binding than the first, while at the same time he also began negotiations with Spain, Russia and Sweden. But the Seven Years' War was very hard on France, and before long internal troubles were added to it while the financial conditions became ever more worrisome. B., who had been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on June 27, 1757, asked that peace be made and that internal reforms be carried out. His proposals were not only received with great hostility, but he himself was accused of having provoked the war by signing the Treaty of Versailles. In Sept. 1758 he was replaced by Choiseul. On Dec. 13 he left Paris for forced exile in his abbey of Saint-Médard in the diocese of Soissons. On Oct. 2, 1758 he was created cardinal by Clement XIII and was ordained a priest. Recalled to Paris by the king, in 1764, after the death of Pompadour, who had been the most stubborn opponent of his financial reforms, he was consecrated on Aug. 5 Archbishop of Albi. In 1769 he was sent to Rome, where he took part in the Conclave for the election of Clement XIV, and then received from France the assignment of remaining in Rome as ambassador with the particular mission of obtaining the suppression of the Jesuits. The negotiations lasted until the suppression, which took place on Aug. 16, 1773. B. remained in Rome still longer and took part in the Conclave for the election of Pius VI. When the French Revolution broke out and the civil constitution of the clergy was promulgated, he worked as long as he could to delay its condemnation by the Pope, putting forward the conditions in which Louis XVI found himself; he refused the oath, thereby losing all the rich revenues that made his life in Rome particularly splendid, and the office of ambassador. He died on Nov. 2, 1794; he was buried in the church of St. Louis of the French, and in 1803 his body was transported to France.