Louis II de Lorraine, cardinal de Guise
French prelate, Cardinal and politician / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Louis II de Lorraine, cardinal de Guise (6 July 1555, Dampierre – 24 December 1588, Château de Blois)[1] was a French prelate, Cardinal and politician during the latter French Wars of Religion. The third son of François de Lorraine, duke of Guise and Anne d'Este Louis was destined for a career in the church. His uncle Cardinal Lorraine resigned his offices of Archbishop of Reims to him in 1574, and the death of his other uncle Louis I de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise passed his ecclesiastical empire on to him upon his death in 1578. At which time the king made him Cardinal. Cardinal Guise actively involved himself in the first Catholic Ligue that rose up in opposition to the generous Peace of Monsieur which brought the fifth war of religion to a close in 1576. The ligue succeeded in resuming the civil war the next year and a harsher peace was concluded. Over the following years of peace, he would feud with Épernon, and receive Henri III's new honour when he was made a chevalier de l'Ordre du Saint-Esprit in 1578 among the first cohort. Finally reaching the ecclesiastical age at which he could assume his responsibilities as Archbishop of Reims in 1583 he entered the city in triumph and oversaw a council at which he pushed for the promulgation of the Tridentine Decrees.
Louis II de Lorraine | |
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Cardinal, Archbishop of Reims | |
Church | Roman Catholic Church |
Archdiocese | Reims |
Appointed | 26 December 1574 |
Term ended | 24 December 1588 |
Predecessor | Charles de Lorraine |
Successor | Nicolas de Pellevé |
Orders | |
Ordination | 2 January 1579 |
Consecration | 13 March 1580 by Nicolas Fumée |
Created cardinal | 21 February 1578 by Pope Gregory XIII |
Personal details | |
Born | 6 July 1555 |
Died | 24 December 1588 (aged 33) Château de Bois |
Parents | François de Lorraine, duke of Guise (father) Anna d'Este (mother) |
Coat of arms |
In 1584, Henri's brother Alençon died, and as the king had no children, the inheritance of the throne was due to default to Henri's distant cousin Navarre, a Protestant. This was intolerable to the Guise family, and Cardinal Guise, and they sought to revive the ligue of 1576, agreeing to establish a new ligue at a council in Nancy in September of that year. On 21 March 1585, the Guise and their allies issued the Péronne Manifesto which denounced the failure of the king to suppress Protestantism, the problems of succession and the king's choice of favourites. Several days earlier the duke of Guise had occupied Châlons-sur-Marne, formerly declaring war on the crown. Cardinal Guise and his brother marched on Reims and succeeded in gaining entry, assuming authority over the religious capital of the kingdom for the ligue. The war with the king would be brought to a conclusion by the Treaty of Nemours in July 1585, by which Henri agreed to a series of humiliating concessions, and promised to pursue a war against heresy. His pursuit of the war was half-hearted, and in 1586 Cardinal Guise met with his brothers at the Abbey of Ourscamp where they affirmed that even if the king made peace with the Protestant Navarre they would defy him and continue the fight regardless. Guise and Cardinal Bourbon the ligueur candidate to succeed Henri, published a remonstrance in which they denounced the court as a sinful place and advocated reform on the lines of the Council of Trent.
In May 1588 Henri pushed for a confrontation with the duke of Guise during the Day of the Barricades. His plan backfired and he was forced to flee the capital, while a coup government calling itself the Seize assumed control of the city. In the wake of this humiliation, Henri was forced into further concessions, among them promising to get the Pope to make Cardinal Guise the Legate of Avignon. The Cardinal now had grander ambitions, and he headed to Troyes where after gaining entry, he effected a ligueur coup and purged the administration of royalists while urging his brother to march on the king in Chartres and force him into a monastery. With Troyes in hand, Cardinal Guise integrated the city into the ligueur Sainte-Union, alongside Chaumont, Reims and Paris, but was frustrated by the reticence of Châlons-sur-Marne. In September Henri called an Estates General and after having assured himself of an appropriately ligueur delegation from Troyes, he left for the meeting at Blois. At the estates, he clashed with Henri, brow-beating the king into deleting parts of his opening address that were critical of nobles who were participating in the ligue. Cardinal Guise was by now increasingly incautious in his contempt for the king, and on 17 December toasted his brother as the king, and joined his Catherine in joking about tonsuring Henri. On 23 December the duke of Guise was assassinated and the Cardinal was arrested. After being interrogated he was butchered in his cell on 24 December. France exploded in outrage over the murder of the duke and his brother. Meanwhile the legal-minded ligueurs recognised the king's folly in having the Cardinal executed, and began campaigning for Sixtus V to excommunicate the king. While Henri sought to justify himself to the Pope as acting in self-defence, the Pope found his excuses insufficient, and was preparing to excommunicate him for the crime, when the king was assassinated on 1 August.