Brienne, Étienne-Charles Loménie de

BRIENNE, ETIENNE-CHARLES LOMÉNIE de. — Cardinal, born in Paris on 9 October 1727, died on 18 February 1794. A characteristic figure of an eighteenth-century prelate destined by his family for the ecclesiastical state, in which he lived as a refined and intelligent gentleman, but with little spiritual sensitivity, more open to the new ideas disseminated by the philosophers than to sacred doctrines. Bishop of Condom in 1760, then of Toulouse in 1763, he played a leading role in the Commission of Regulars (1766–80), which was to reorganize the existence of the religious Orders in France above pontifical authority and canon law, and overturned all traditional arrangements. He entered the French Academy in 1770, although his literary merits were quite slight. Called by Louis XVI in 1787 to succeed Calonne as controller-general of the finances, he attempted to reorganize the administration of the State, but won only the opposition of those interested in wasteful expenditure and unpopularity; consequently, on 25 August 1788, he had to yield his position to Necker. In compensation, that year he was transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Sens and created cardinal on 15 December 1788. He did not trouble to come to Rome; he travelled and returned to France after the Revolution had begun toward the end of 1789. He took the civic oath at Sens on 28 April 1790 and publicly adhered to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy on 30 January 1791, thereby meriting the Pope’s reprimand (23 February). B. responded by renouncing the cardinalate; but the Sacred College expelled him from its ranks on 26 September 1791. In the new division of the diocese he was elected bishop of Yonne; he was also president of the Jacobin club of Sens. Arrested twice under the Convention, he died (apparently) of apoplexy.