GIUSEPPE da PARIGI. — Francesco Le Clerc du Tremblay, also known as the Grey Eminence, b. in Paris on 4 November 1577, d. there on 16 December 1638. Of a noble
and wealthy family, he abandoned worldly life to don the habit of the Capuchins at Orléans (1599). In his religious fervor he dreamed of organizing a Crusade to liberate Jerusalem, but was unable to carry out his intention. Prefect of the Capuchin missions (1626), he promoted their expansion in the East, from Greece to Persia, with considerable benefit also to the political interests of France. In 1616 his relations with Richelieu began.
At first he did not share all the minister’s ideas, because he disapproved of the alliances with the Protestants of Germany and would have wished to move closer to Austria against Spain. But after the Diet of Regensburg he became the most energetic advocate of the struggle against the Empire. It was he who initiated the negotiations with the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna (1633), which led to the Treaty of Compiègne. The agreement that Bernard of Saxe-Weimar concluded with France was largely his work.
Fr. G., whom Romantic novelists turned into a legendary figure of a sinister instigator of intrigues, combined the ardent faith of those monks who, in setting out, preached the Crusades (he was also a subtle writer on mysticism, attempting to reconcile Ignatian asceticism with Franciscan mysticism) with an acute understanding of the temporal interests of his homeland. His supreme ideals were religious unity and political unity: to preserve the former he was an implacable adversary of the Calvinists; to secure the latter he placed all the resources of his intelligence and sagacity at Richelieu’s service in the war that the latter waged against the Habsburgs. A man of lucid intelligence and a profound knower of court and popular figures, with his unshakable certainty of success he sometimes, in moments of doubt and discouragement, gave Richelieu invaluable assistance; Richelieu could always rely on him as the most intimate and trusted of his collaborators.
Among his works, some of which remained in manuscript, are remembered: Exercice des bienheureux pratiquable en terre par les âme dévotes et desponillées des affections de la terre, Troyes 1610, Paris 1633, Nîmes 1895; for the instruction of novices, of whom he was master (1604–1605), he wrote Introduction à la vie spirituelle, Poitiers 1616, Paris 1620, 1626, Le Mans 1897, on mental prayer, recollection during Mass and the Divine Office, and the practice of pure love; for his confrères he wrote De la perfection séraphique, Paris 1624; various short treatises are collected in Pratique intérieur des principaux exercices de la vie chrétienne, Paris 1621, 1626, 1631; he founded and directed the Benedictine Sisters of Calvary, for whom he composed various short works and exhortations, including a course of instructions, Les dix jours, Toulouse 1913; he opposed the quietist doctrines of the “illuminati.”
Roberto Palmarocchi-Ilario da Milano