Retz, Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, cardinal de (1613-79). Ecclesiastic and would-be statesman whose career ended in spectacular disgrace and whose retirement was spent writing the most flamboyant of the many memoirs to have come down to us from the 17th c.
His family, of Florentine origin, had risen to prominence in France through Catherine de Médicis; they had a virtual monopoly of the see of Paris, upgraded in 1622 to an archbishopric. His father was a notably pious general of the galleys. After the death of an elder brother he was destined for the Church, though later describing himself as ‘perhaps the least ecclesiastical soul there ever was’. Even in his brilliant career as a student he brushed with Richelieu; after touring Italy he wrote the politically suspect Conjuration de Fiesque (not published until 1655). In 1643 he was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Paris with the right of succession to his uncle. He zestfully built up influence as a preacher and reforming administrator, and when the civil unrest of the Fronde broke out joined in the rebellion against Mazarin.
The bulk of the Mémoires concerns the complex ebb and flow of hostilities, conspiracies, and negotiations that engulfed France from 1648 to 1652. At one point Mazarin offered Retz the bribe of a red hat, and he was finally made a cardinal in 1652. In the same year he was arrested and imprisoned in Vincennes. He attempted a come-back in 1654, when his uncle died and he had himself installed by proxy as archbishop; but after a few days was transferred as a prisoner to Nantes, where he made a daring escape and fled via Spain to Rome to seek papal protection. Not until 1662 did he formally resign the see and receive permission to return to France, where he was largely exiled to his estates. He remained, however, in contact with many of the leading personalities of Paris, and the anonymous lady to whom he addresses the Mémoires was almost certainly Madame de Sévigné.
The Mémoires are less a confession than a theatrical reconstruction, in which the author plays tragic or comic, but always heroic, roles. The pithy phrase, vivid anecdote, and keenly perceptive character-portraits serve to narrate defeat so that it seems victory. They were published in 1717.
— Peter Bayley
Bibliography
- A. Bertière, Le Cardinal de Retz mémorialiste (1977)
- D. A. Watts, Cardinal de Retz: The Ambiguities of a Seventeenth-Century Mind (1980)
