Brienne, Étienne-Charles Loménie de

BRIENNE, ÉTIENNE-CHARLES LOMÉNIE DE. - Cardinal, b. in Paris on 9 Oct. 1727, d. 18 Feb. 1794. A characteristic figure of an 18th-century prelate, destined by his family for the ecclesiastical state, in which he lived as a refined and intelligent gentleman, but of scant spiritual feeling, more open to the new ideas spread by the philosophers than to sacred doctrines. Bishop of Condom in 1760, then of Toulouse in 1763, he took the leading part in the Commission of the Regulars (1766-80), which was to reorganize the existence of the religious Orders in France above the pontifical authority and the canonical laws, and which overturned all traditional institutions. He entered the French Academy in 1770, although his literary merits were very slight. Summoned by Louis XVI in 1787 to succeed Calonne as controller general of finances, he attempted to reorganize the administration of the State, but gained only the opposition of those with an interest in waste and unpopularity, so that on 25 Aug. 1788 he had to yield his place to Necker. In compensation, in that year he was transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Sens and created cardinal on 15 Dec. 1788. He did not trouble to come to Rome; he traveled and returned to France at the end of 1789, after the revolution had begun. He took the civic oath at Sens on 28 Apr. 1790 and publicly adhered to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy on 30 Jan. 1791, earning the Pope's reproach (23 Feb.). B. responded by renouncing the cardinalate; but the Sacred College expelled him from its body on 26 Sept. 1791. In the new division of the diocese he was elected bishop of the Yonne; he was also president of the Jacobin club of Sens. Arrested twice under the Convention, he died (apparently) of apoplexy.

Pio Paschini