RENDU, LOUIS. — Bishop of Annecy, born on 19 December 1789 at Meyrin near Geneva, died on 28 August 1858 at Annecy. Ordained 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 resident canon of Chambéry. Perpetual secretary of the Academy of Savoy, he wrote various geographical and geological memoirs. In 1835 he published a work on the influence of laws upon customs and of customs upon laws, which made him renowned. In 1839 he resumed teaching, charged with reforming education in Savoy. Preconized bishop of Annecy on 27 January 1843, in 1846 he addressed a letter to Frederick William IV of Prussia concerning a union of the Protestants with the Catholic Church, but 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 SS. Maurice and Lazarus because of the imprisonment of Archbishop Fransoni and the government’s conduct toward the Sardinian episcopate. In October 1854, commissioned by Vittorio Emanuele II and together with Charvaz, archbishop of Genoa, and Vibert, bishop of S. Giovanni di Moriana, 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 provide for the state budget by other means. But while the three bishops were staying in Rome, Rattazzi presented to the Chamber the bill against religious corporations, and the mission failed.