DREUX-BRÉZÉ, Pierre-Simon-Louis-Marie de. — French bishop, b. 2 June 1811 at Brézé (Maine-et-Loire, diocese of Angers), d. 5 January 1893 at Moulins. He studied at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice and was ordained priest in 1835.
Vicargeneral to Msgr. Quelen, archbishop of Paris, he was preconized bishop of Moulins on 7 January 1850. During the Second Empire he twice incurred the rigors of the Council of State: the first time, in 1857, for having removed, with the consent of the Pope and with a view to reforming the very disorganized diocesan administration due to the weakness of his predecessor, various parish priests and for having created new parishes without the government’s authorization as required by the Organic Articles; the second time, in 1865, for having ordered the reading in his diocese of the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus. Under the Third Republic he conducted a lawsuit from 1881 to 1887 to prevent the expropriation of property belonging to the major seminary of his diocese.