Quélen, Hyacinthe-Louis, Count of

QUÉLEN, Hyacinthe-Louis, Count of. - French prelate, b. 8 Oct. 1778 in Paris, d. there 31 Dec. 1839. Of an ancient Breton family and the younger son of J. Claude de Q., he was destined for the ecclesiastical career and ordained a priest in 1807. Titular Archbishop of Samosata in 1819, he received the coadjutorship, with the right of succession, of Cardinal de Talleyrand-Périgord, Archbishop of Paris.

He indeed succeeded him on 20 Oct. 1821 and was appointed a peer of France on 31 Oct. 1822. He rose up against the principles of Lamennais (v.) in the work Des progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'Église, with a pastoral letter to the clergy and faithful of his diocese on the occasion of the death of Leo XII, and he defined Lamennais, without naming him, as a presumptuous man tending to erect his own personal opinions into dogmas, and accused him of professing doctrines that sowed distrust and hatred between sover-

(phot. Fides)
QUEENSTOWN, DIOCESE of - Reopening of the schools: a nun and a missionary see to the cleaning of the little schoolchildren - Queenstown.

eigns and subjects, and such as to subvert society ab imis. Lamennais seized the occasion to polemicize with the archbishop in his Première et deuxième lettre à Monseigneur l'archevêque de Paris. Once again, after the encyclical Mirari vos and Lamennais's retraction on 5 Nov. 1832, the Archbishop of Paris found himself face to face with Lamennais in long conversations in the archiepiscopal palace, and Q. strove to act as mediator and succeeded in persuading the rebel to submit absolutely and without limitation. But a few months later Lamennais openly detached himself from the Church. Toward the July Revolution and the Orleanist monarchy Q. showed himself constantly hostile, convinced perhaps that the new regime would not last beyond l'espace d'un matin. Various sacrilegious demonstrations, among which particularly serious was that of 14-15 Feb. 1831, followed by the looting of the archbishopric itself, strengthened him in his aversion and hostility toward the new government, so that he never reconciled himself with the July monarchy. His remaining in the archbishopric, after the government's request for the prelate's deposition had been rejected by Gregory XVI in 1831, constituted a thorny obstacle to the normalization and improvement of relations between the Holy See and the France of Louis Philippe. In vain the internuncio Garibaldi strove to persuade the archbishop to recognize the constituted authorities. At most Q. limited himself to congratulating the sovereign when he escaped some assassination attempt.

Silvio Furlani