RENDU, LOUIS. - Bishop of Annecy, b. 19 Dec. 1789 at Meyrin near Geneva, d. 28 Aug. 1858 at Annecy. A priest on 19 June 1814, from 1821 to 1829 he was professor of physics, prefect of studies, spiritual director and superior of the college of Chambéry.
When that college was entrusted to the Society of Jesus, he was appointed a full canon of Chambéry. Perpetual secretary of the Academy of Savoy, he wrote various memoirs of a geographical and geological character. In 1835 he published a work on the influence of laws upon customs and of customs upon laws, which brought him renown. In 1839 he took up teaching again with the task of reforming studies in Savoy. Preconized on 27 Jan. 1843 bishop of Annecy, in 1846 he addressed a letter to Frederick
William IV of Prussia for a union of the Protestants with the Catholic Church, which received no reply; R. subsequently had it printed, and it was also published in an Italian version in 1862 by G. Bobbio, Barnabite (Parma 1862). Attached to the dynasty of Savoy, he disapproved of the government's ecclesiastical policy from 1848 onward, refusing in 1850 the cordon of the Order of Sts. Maurice and Lazarus because of the imprisonment of Archbishop Fransoni and the government's conduct toward the Sardinian episcopate. In Oct. 1854, on the commission of Victor Emmanuel II and together with Charvaz, archbishop of Genoa, and Vibert, bishop of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, he went to Rome in search of a modus vivendi with the Holy See, in order to avert the suppression of the religious Orders and to provide in another way for the state budget. But during the three bishops' stay in Rome, Rattazzi presented to the Chamber the bill against the religious corporations and the mission failed.
Bibliography2 works
Silvio Furlani