ADRIEN-JACQUES-MARIE-CÉSAIRE MATHIEU. — Cardinal, born in Paris on 20 January 1796, died in Besançon on 9 July 1875. Bishop of Langres in 1833, he was elected Archbishop of Besançon the following year; then created cardinal by Pius IX on 30 September 1850. He became ex officio senator of the Second Empire in 1852.
During the July Monarchy he had been among the most influential advisers of the nunciature in Paris and particularly of Monsignor Garibaldi, and played a decisive role in the appointments of French bishops, especially from 1835 to 1843. Of Gallican tendencies, he opposed exemptions from episcopal authority and direct subjection to the Holy See, and for this reason he opposed the restoration of exempt religious congregations. In 1850 he founded in Besançon the large College of St Francis Xavier. In 1865 he was brought before the Council of State for having, contrary to government instructions, read out the Syllabus and the encyclical Quanta cura. In 1863 he published a pamphlet in defence of the temporal power (Le pouvoir temporel des Papes justifié par l'histoire).