Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal de Granvella

GRANVELLA, Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal de (1517-1586), one of the ablest and most influential of the princes of the church during the great political and ecclesiastical movements which immediately followed the appear ance of Protestantism in Europe, was born 20th August, 1517, at Ornans, Burgundy, where his father, Nicolas Perrenot de Granvella, who afterwards became chancellor of the empire under Charles V., was at that time engaged in practice as a junior at the provincial bar. On the completion of his studies in law at Padua and in divinity at Louvain, he for a short time held a canonry at Besançon, but his talents had already marked him for a higher sphere, and he was promoted to the bishopric of Arras when barely twenty-three (1540). In his episcopal capacity he attended several diets of the empire, as well as the opening meetings of the council of Trent; and the influence of his father, now become chancellor, led to his being entrusted with many difficult and delicate pieces of public business, in the execution of which he developed a rare native talent for diplomacy, and at the same time acquired an intimate acquaintance with most of the currents of European politics. One of his specially noteworthy performances was the settlement of the terms of peace after the defeat of the Smalkaldic league at Miihlberg in 1547, a settlement in which, to say the least, some particularly sharp practice was exhibited. In 1550 he succeeded his father in the offices of secretary of state and chancellor of the empire; in this capacity he attended Charles in the war with Maurice, accompanied him in the flight from Innsbruck, and afterwards drew up the treaty of Passau (August 1552). In the following year he conducted the negotiations for the marriage of Mary of England and Philip of Spain, to whom in 1555, on the abdication of the emperor, he transferred his services. In April 1559 Granvella was one of the Spanish commissioners who arranged the peace of Gateau Cambresis, and on Philip's withdrawal from the Netherlands in August of the same year he was appointed prime minister to the regent, Margaret of Parma. The policy of repression which in this capacity he pursued during the next five years secured for him many tangible rewards; in 15GO he was elevated to the archiepiscopal see of Malines, and in 15G1 he received the cardinal's hat; but the growing hostility of a people whose moral and religious convictions he had studiously set him self to trample under foot, ultimately made it impossible for him to continue in the Low Countries; and by the advice of his royal master he in 1564 retired to Franche Comte. Nominally this withdrawal was only of a temporary character, but it proved to be final. The following six years were spent in comparative quiet, which was devoted chiefly to study and to the society of learned men; but in 1570 Granvella, at the call of Philip, resumed public life by accepting a mission to Rome as representative of the interests of Spain in framing the proposed treaty of alliance with Venice and the papal see against the Turks. In the same year he was advanced to the viceroyalty of Naples, a post of some difficulty and danger, which for five years he occupied with ability and success. Summoned to Madrid in 1575, to be president of the supreme council of Italy and afterwards of that of Castile, he still continued to find ample scope for his rare aptitudes. Among the more delicate negotiations of his later years were those of 1580, which had for their object the ultimate union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal, and those of 1584, which resulted in a check to France by the marriage of the Spanish infanta to Duke Philip of Savoy. In the same year he was made archbishop of Besançon, but meanwhile a lingering disease had laid an unrelenting grasp upon his iron frame; he never was enthroned, but died at Madrid, 21st September 1586. His body was removed to Besançon, where his father had been buried before him.

Numerous letters and memoirs of Granvella are preserved in the archives of Besançon. These were to some extent made use of by Prosper Leveque in his Memoires pour serrir (1753), as well as by the Abbe Boisot in the Trcsor dc Granvella. A commission for publishing the whole of the letters and memoirs was appointed by Guizot in 1834, and the result has been the issue of nine volumes of the Papiers d fitat du Cardinal de Granvellc, edited by Weiss (1841-1852). They form a part of the Collection de documents inedits sur VMstoire de France. See also the anonymous Histoire du Cardinal de Granville, attributed to Courchetet D Esnaus (Paris, 1761), and Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic.