The Grey Eminence: François Leclerc du Tremblay, O.F.M. Cap. (1577-1638)

Last updated on: December 17, 2009 at 5:53 am by Pat McNamara

The Grey Eminence: François Leclerc du Tremblay, O.F.M. Cap. (1577-1638) 2009-12-17T05:53:00-07:00 Pat McNamara

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François Leclerc du Tremblay, also known as Père Joseph, was a French Capuchin friar, confidant and agent of Cardinal Richelieu. He received a careful classical training, and in 1595 made an extended journey through Italy, returning to take up the career of arms. He served at the Siege of Amiens in 1597, and then accompanied a special embassy to London. In 1599 he renounced the world and joined the Capuchins. He became a notable preacher and reformer. In 1606 he aided Antoinette d’Orleans, a nun of Fontevrault, to found the reformed order of the Filles du Calvaire, and wrote a manual of devotion for the nuns. His proselytizing zeal led him to send missionaries throughout the Huguenot centre. He entered politics at the Conferences of Loudun, when, as the confidant of the queen and the papal envoy, he opposed the Gallican claims advanced by the parlement, which the princes were upholding, and succeeded in convincing them of the schismatic tendency of Gallicanism. In 1612 he became friendly with Richelieu. He was nicknamed “Grey Eminence” for his grey friar’s cloak. In 1627 he assisted at the siege of La Rochelle. He had a dream of arousing Europe to another crusade against the Turks. As Richelieu’s agent, therefore, he worked at the Diet of Regensburg (1630) to thwart the aggression of the Holy Roman emperor, and then advised the intervention of Gustavus Adolphus, reconciling himself to the use of Protestant armies by the theory that one poison would counteract another. Thus the friar became a war minister, and, though maintaining a personal austerity of life, gave himself up to diplomacy and politics. He died in 1638, just as the cardinalate was to be conferred upon him. The story that Richelieu visited him when on his deathbed and roused the dying man by the words, “Courage, Father Joseph, we have won Breisach,” is apocryphal.

(From Wikipedia)

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