Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen

Hyacinthe-Louis De Quelen (8 October 1778 – 31 December 1839) was an Archbishop of Paris.

Quelen was born in Paris, in the Levieux sire de Quélen noble Breton family. His motto "Em Pob Emser Quelen" and the older Breton expression for "Better death than dishonour" figure in stained glass in the Lazarist church in the rue de Sèvres. He was educated at the College of Navarre. Ordained in 1807, he served a year as Vicar-General of Saint-Brieuc and then became secretary to Cardinal Fesch, uncle to Napoleon Bonaparte. When the latter was sent back to his diocese of Lyon by the Bourbon Restoration, de Quelen exercised his ministry at St. Sulpice and in the military hospitals. Under the Bourbons, he became successively spiritual director of the schools in the archdiocese, Vicar-General of Paris, and coadjutor archbishop to the Cardinal de Talleyrand-Périgord, succeeding the latter in 1821.

A good preacher, he was successively favored by Louis XVIII and Charles X, but retained some independence. As a peer of the realm he opposed, on behalf of the middle classes, the conversion of the national debt. At his reception into the Académie française he publicly lauded Chateaubriand, then in disgrace. While blessing the cornerstone of the Chapelle Expiatoire, he requested in vain an amnesty for the exiled members of the Convention. The ordinance of 1828, disbanding the Jesuits and limiting the recruiting of the clergy, was also issued against his advice.

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