RENDU, LOUIS. - Bishop of Annecy, b. 19 Dec. 1789 at Meyrin near Geneva, d. 28 Aug. 1858 at Annecy. Ordained priest on 19 June 1814, from 1821 to 1829 he served as professor of physics, prefect of studies, spiritual director and superior of the college at Chambéry.
After entrusting that college to the Society of Jesus, he was named a canon of Chambéry. Perpetual secretary of the Academy of Savoy, he wrote various memoirs of a geographical and geological nature. In 1835 he published a work on *L'Influence des lois sur les mœurs et des mœurs sur les lois*, which brought him renown. In 1839 he resumed teaching with the task of reforming studies in Savoy. Preconized on 27 Jan. 1843 as bishop of Annecy, in 1846 he addressed a letter to Frederick William IV of Prussia proposing a union of Protestants with the Catholic Church, which received no reply; Rendu subsequently published it, and it also appeared in Italian in 1862, edited by G. Bobbio, Barnabite (Parma 1862).
Devoted to the House of Savoy, he disapproved of the government’s ecclesiastical policy from 1848 onward, refusing in 1850 the ribbon of the Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus because of the imprisonment of Archbishop Fransoni and the conduct of the government toward the Sardinian episcopate. In Oct. 1854, at the request of Victor Emmanuel II and together with Charvaz, archbishop of Genoa, and Vibert, bishop of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, he went to Rome to seek a modus vivendi with the Holy See, in order to avert the suppression of religious orders and to address the state’s financial situation in another way. However, during the prelates’ stay in Rome, Rattazzi presented to the Chamber his bill against religious corporations, and the mission failed.