JOSEPH OF PARIS. - François Le Clerc du Tremblay, also known as the Gray Eminence, b. in Paris on 4 Nov. 1577, d. there on 16 Dec. 1638. Of a noble and wealthy family, he abandoned the 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 he was unable to carry out his plan. Prefect of the Capuchin missions (1626), he promoted their spread in the East, from Greece to Persia, with notable benefit also for 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 did not approve of alliances with the Protestants of Germany and would have wished to draw closer to Austria against Spain. But after the Diet of Regensburg he became the most energetic animator of the struggle against the Empire. It was he who initiated those 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 in large part his work.
Fr. G., of whom the romantic novelists made a legendary figure of a sinister inspirer of intrigues, combined with the ardent faith of those monks who in the Middle Ages preached the Crusades (he was moreover a subtle writer on mysticism, attempting a reconciliation of Ignatian asceticism with Franciscan mysticism), a keen vision of the temporal interests of his homeland. His supreme ideals were religious unity and political unity: to maintain the former he was an implacable opponent of the Calvinists; to secure the latter he placed all the resources of his genius and his sagacity at the service of Richelieu in the war that the latter waged against the Habsburgs. A man of lucid intelligence, a profound connoisseur of the men of the court and of the people, with his unshakable certainty of success he sometimes gave, in moments of doubt and discouragement, precious help to Richelieu, who could always count on him as on the most intimate and trusted of his collaborators.
Of his works, in part still remaining in manuscript, the following 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 the novices, of whom he was master (1604-1605), he wrote the Introduction à la vie spirituelle, Poitiers 1616, Paris 1620, 1626, Le Mans 1897, on mental prayer, recollection during Mass and the Divine Office, the exercise of pure love; for his confreres he treated De la perfection séraphique, Paris 1624; various short treatises are collected in the Pratique intérieur des principaux exercices de la vie chrétienne, Paris 1621, 1626, 1631; he instituted and directed the Benedictine Sisters of Calvary, for whom he composed various short works and exhortations, among them a course of instructions Les dix jours, Toulouse 1913; he fought the quietist doctrines of the "illuminati."
Bibliography11 works
Roberto Palmarocchi-Ilario da Milano