DU PERRON, JACQUES DAVY. — Cardinal, theologian and controversialist, diplomat and statesman, called “the Augustine of France.” Born at St-Lô in Normandy on 25 November 1556, died at Paris on 5 September 1618. The son of Calvinists, he studied in Paris the Fathers, the scholastics, and the Catholic and Protestant theologians of his time; he later engaged in public disputations. Having become a Catholic in 1577 and been ordained a priest in 1591, he was elected bishop of Evreux and fought tenaciously against Gallicanism and Calvinism. In 1593 King Henri IV himself, on his advice, abjured Calvinism, and it was precisely during his reign that D. carried out his greatest political and religious activity. He took part in the conferences at Nantes and at St-Denis in 1593; and in 1595 he was sent to Rome to cooperate with d’Ossat in the reconciliation of the Holy See with the king of France. This was successfully achieved on 17 September 1595, and he was appointed the king’s first almoner and a councillor of state.
As a controversialist, he won notable victories in Paris in 1597 and at Fontainebleau on 4 May 1600, in the religious conference in which he completely triumphed over the “pope of the Huguenots,” Du Plessis Mornay (v.). For his merits, he was made a cardinal on 9 June 1604, and on 9 October 1606 he obtained the archdiocese of Sens. After a sojourn in Rome (1606–1607), where he helped resolve the controversy concerning Grace and reconcile the Pope with the Venetian Republic, he returned to France and assumed the direction of the Collège Royal. After the king’s death in 1610, D. became a member of the regency council, but continued his religious polemics. Among his last was the one in which, against the Gallican principles of Parliament, he defended the Pope’s full and direct authority in spiritual matters and indirect authority in temporal matters.
His writings, rich in erudition and learning, published separately and only in part during his lifetime, were collected in several volumes, with a biography, after his death. The Paris edition of 1620–22, in 3 vols., bears the title Les diverses oeuvres de l’ill.me card. D.