BROGLIE, JACQUES-VICTOR-ALBERT de. - French politician and historian, born in Paris on 15 May 1821 and died there on 9 Jan. 1901. In 1843 he began his political career as secretary, successively, at the embassies in Madrid, London, and Rome. Shortly afterwards (1848) he began to publish his first articles on foreign and ecclesiastical policy, with the intention—also shared by his brother, the apologist Augusto Teodoro Paolo—of reconciling modern and liberal ideas with the Catholic faith, traditional in the family. An opponent of Napoleone III, he remained apart from public life during the Second Republic and the Empire (1848-70). He instead played a leading role on the political scene, presiding twice over the ministry (1874 and 1877) during the subsequent period of transition. He later returned to private life (1878), though attempting, unsuccessfully, to hinder the growing anticlericalism of the left-wing governments.
During the two long periods of retirement (1848-70 and 1878-1901) he devoted himself to studies, especially in the historical and critical-literary fields. Besides numerous articles for Le Correspondant and the Revue des Deux Mondes, and besides political and literary speeches, he left works of lasting value. His masterpiece remains L'Eglise et l'Empire romain au IVe siècle (6 vols., Paris 1856-59; 3rd ed., ibid. 1867-68), in which he describes the contrast between the contemporary disintegration of the material unity of the Roman world and the establishment of the moral unity of the Christian world.