DREUX-BRÉZÉ, PIERRE-SIMON-LOUIS-MARIE de. - French bishop, b. 2 June 1811 at Brézé (Maine-et-Loire, diocese of Angers), d. 5 Jan. 1893 at Moulins. He studied at the seminary of S. Sulpizio and was ordained priest in 1835.
Vicar general to Msgr. Quèlen, archbishop of Paris, he was preconized bishop of Moulins on 7 Jan. 1850. During the Second Empire he incurred the censures of the Council of State twice: the first time, in 1857, for having removed, with the consent of the Pope and with the intention of reforming the diocesan administration, greatly disorganized by the weakness of his predecessor, several parish priests, and for having created new parishes without government authorization, as required by the Organic Articles; the second time, in 1865, for having ordered in his diocese the reading of the encyclical Quanta cura and of the Syllabus. Under the Third Republic he pursued a lawsuit, from 1881 to 1887, to prevent the expropriation of the property belonging to the major seminary of his diocese.