Talleyrand

A Bishop Who Didn't Believe

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born in 1754 with a deformed foot that closed the army to him — the family tradition a nobleman's heir was expected to follow — so they disinherited him in favor of a younger brother and put him into the church instead. He was a bishop at thirty-four and an unbeliever throughout. In 1789 he proposed that the state seize the church's lands; in 1790 he said the Mass at the Revolution's first anniversary festival; in 1791, having also ordained bishops loyal to the new state church over Rome, he was excommunicated. He then served the Directory, then Napoleon as foreign minister, then the restored Bourbons, then the July Monarchy — and had a hand in removing several of them. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 he represented a defeated and occupied France, and argued it back into the councils of Europe on the principle of legitimacy, dividing the victors against one another until France was one of them again.

Forty-Seven Years Excommunicated

He died in Paris on 17 May 1838, aged eighty-four. At five that morning, after forty-seven years excommunicated, he signed a retraction and was reconciled with the Church — the wording negotiated in advance, clause by clause, the way he had negotiated everything else in his life. Louis-Philippe, the King of France, came to the bedside to watch him do it. He died that afternoon.