Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord

Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord (16 October 1736, Paris - 20 October 1821, Paris) was a French churchman and politician, and the paternal uncle of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838).

Life

Education

• collège de La Flèche at Paris ;
• seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Paris, which he left with a licence in theology ;
• faculty of law at Reims (licence in canon law and civil law) ;

Ecclesiastical career

• ordained priest in 1761 ;
• in the service of the vicar general of the bishopric of Verdun (1762) ;
• Coadjutor bishop of Reims (27 December 1766) ;
• King's Almoner;
• titular bishop of Trajanopolis ;
• archbishop of Reims (27 October 1777) ;
• last abbot of the abbey of Cercamps near Frévent (1777-1789 );
• refusing to agree to the Concordat of 1801, he refused to resign the archbishopric of Reims, and continued to do so until 8 November 1816, after the Bourbon Restoration ;
• Grand Almoner to King Louis XVIII (1808, during the king's exile) ; function still occupied at the time of Lent 1817;
• cardinal (28 July 1817) ;
• archbishop of Paris (1 October 1817, but only installed in 1819).

Political career

• Clergy député at the Estates-General of 1789
• Louis XVIII's representative in Poland (1803)
• pair de France (1815)
• main architect 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. Returning to France upon the first Restoration, he followed Louis XVIII back into exile during the Hundred Days in 1815.

Distinctions

• Commander of the Order of the Holy Spirit

Portraits

• Jacques Wilbault, Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord, Cabinet des Estampes, Paris
• Louis Pierre Deseine, Portrait de monseigneur de Talleyrand Périgord (Alexandre Angélique) archevêque et pair de France, c.1822, bust, Paris, Musée du Louvre
• Jean-Pierre Franque, Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord, cardinal, oil on canvas, after the cardinal's death, Musée du château de Versailles
• Portrait