Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord

Education

Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord attended the Jesuit school of La Flèche en Sarthe. He continued at the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris where he graduated with a degree in theology and the law faculty at Reims where he obtained a license in utroque vure that is to say, canon law and civil law.

Ecclesiastical career

Talleyrand-Périgord was ordained a priest in 1761. He returned to the service of the vicar general of the Bishopric of Verdun in 1762. He was elected bishop in partibus of Trajanopolis and was appointed Bishop coadjutor of Reims on December 27, 1766. He was also Grand Almoner of France.

He was elevated to the Archbishopric of Reims on October 27, 1777 and became Abbot commendatory of the abbey Notre-Dame de Cercamp from 1777 to 1789. Having refused to agree to the Concordat of 1801, he refused to resign from the Archbishopric of Reims ; he did so after the Restoration, on November 8, 1816. He became Grand Almoner to King Louis XVIII (1808, during the king's exile), continuing to occupy this position after the Restoration of 1814 and until his death.

Pope Pius VII created him cardinal during the consistory of July 28, 1817. He was then named Archbishop of Paris on October 1, 1817, but was not installed until 1819.

Political career

Talleyrand-Périgord was a member of the Assembly of the Clergy from 1780 to 1788, member of the Assembly of Notables in 1787 and deputy of the clergy to the Estates General of 1789. He was the representative of the Count of Provence (future Louis XVIII) exiled in Poland (1803).

In 1815, he became a Peer of France.

He was one of the main architects of the Concordat of 11 June 1817.

Exiles

Emigrating in 1790, after the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, he stayed successively in Aix-la-Chapelle, Weimar and Brunswick. He had the abbot Nicolas Baronnet (1744–1820), vicar of Cernay-en-Dormois (Marne), as his secretary during this time. He came to England with Louis XVIII living at Gosfield Hall in Essex and Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire. In 1814 he returned to France upon the first Restoration, and in 1815 he followed Louis XVIII back into exile during the Hundred Days.