RENI
771
RENNES
since his death. During the last years of his life he
devoted his time wholly to the "Gazette".
Hatin, Theophrasle Renaudol (Paria, 1883); de h Tourette Thcophrasle Renaudol (Paria, 1884).
Georges Goyau.
Reni, Gnmo, Italian painter, b. at Calvenzano near Bologna, 4 Nov., 1575; d. at Bologna, 18 Aug. 1642. At one time a memoir of Guido would have exalted him to the very highe.st position, especially if it had been ^\Titten in England, for his works were very much in demand among art connoisseurs. His pictures fetched vast sums, and were held in the high- est esteem by the collectors who knew nothing of and cared less for the works of the earlier Italian painters such as Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico. Now for the time the works of this great craftsman are under a cloud, and his extraordinary powers of com- position and conception, and his skill of draughtsman- ship, are in danger of being overlooked by reason of an entire change of fashion. In his early days he was a colourist of great purity, a composer with dramatic f9rce, regarded as one of the greatest masters of his time, and surrounded by pupils; but later on, his very success proved his undoing, and the pictures of his maturity and old age, though marked by facility and skill, evidence a certain monotonous melodrama and a thinness of impasto which has not tended to their permanency.
He was educated first by Calvaert, later on with the Carraeci, and for a while with Ferrantini. He worked with Annibale Carraeci in Rome, assisted in the dec- oration of the Farnese Palace, the Quirinal Palace, several of the churches of Rome, and a chapel for the Borghese family, l)ut his greatest painting in that city is undoubtedly the ceiling decoration of the Palazzo Rospigliosi — Phcebus and the Hours pre- ceded by Aurora. He painted also in Bologna, and commenced what probably would have been his masterpiece in Naples. His works can be studied in Dresden, St. Petersburg, Genoa, Vienna, and especially in England, as many of the famous houses of that country, such as Stafford House, Bridgwater House, Lowther Castle, Blair Castle, Kingston Lacy, Burgliley House, Alton Towers, Charlton Park, Cobham Park, Narford Hall, and Windsor Castle, contain important works by him, while in Italy we find his paintings in Lucca, Milan, Modena, Padua, Pisa, Perugia, Ravenna, Siena, Turin, Venice, and elsewhere. He was a man of great energy, but unfortunately of considerable self-conceit, and of prodigious activity. He was a .skilful engraver and etcher; he worked in silver point and in pastel, painted ceilings and walls in fresco, and numberless panel pictures. In his own time he was perhaps the most popular artist in Italy, and in the eighteenth century occupied a similar position in England. Pres- ently his work will be more appreciated for its own sake than it has been, his faults will be more clearly noticed, and his excellencies have a greater value. Our principal source of information respecting him is a MS. by Oretti in the library in Bologna, from which all authors have taken material, but it has never itself been printed. There are at present two books in hand on this painter, but neither of them are sufficiently complete to be worth quoting.
George Charles Williamson.
Rennes, Archdioce.sb op (Rhedonbnsis), in- cludes the Department of Ille et Vilaine. The Con- cordat of 1S02 re-established the Diocese of Rennes which since then has included (I) the ancient Dio- cese of Rennes with the exception of three parishes given to Nantes; (2) the greater part of the ancient Dioce.se of Dol; (3) the greater part of the ancient Diocese of St. Malo; (4) ten parishes that had formed part of the ancient Diocese of Vannes and Nantes. On 3 January, 1859, the See of Rennes, which the
French Revolution had desired to make a metropoli-
tan, became an archiepiscopal see, with the Dioceses
of Quimper, Vannes, and St. Brieuc as suffragans
Cardinal Place obtained from Leo XIII permission
for the Archbishop of Rennes to add the titles of
Dol and St. Malo to that of Rennes. Rennes was
the capital of Brittany. Under the Roman Empire
Brittany had formed part of the province of Tertia
Lugdunensis (Third Lyonnesse), but from 383 to 509
It was an independent kingdom; afterwards, under
the Merovingians, it ranked as a countship. The
Kingdom of Brittany, founded by Nomenoe about
84o, was short hved, and after 874 Brittany was
parcelled out among a number of counts, the most
important of whom was the Count of Rennes In
992 Geoffrey I, Count of Rennes, took the title of
Duke of Brittany. The solemn and final union of
Brittany with France was the result of the mar-
riage of Francis I to Claudia of France, daugh-
ter of Anne of Brittany and Louis XII. Tradition
names as first apostles of the future Diocese of Rennes,
missionaries of the Latin race, but of an uncertain
date: SS. Maximinus, Clarus, Justus. On the other
hand, when in the fifth and sixth centuries bands of
Christian Britons emigrated from Great Britain to
Armorica and formed on its northern coast the small
Kingdom of Domnonee, the Gospel was preached
for the first time in the future Dioceses of Dol and
Aleth. Among these missionaries were St. Armel,
who, according to the legend, founded in the sixth cen-
tury the town of Ploermel in the Diocese of Vannes
and then retired into the forests of Chateaugiron and
Janz6 and attacked Druidism on the very site of the
Dolmen of the Fairy Rocks (La Roche" aux F^es);
St. Meen (Mevennus) who retired to the solitudes
around Pontrecoet and founded the monastery of
Gael (550), known afterwards as St. Mien's; St.
Lunarius and St. Suliacus who dwelt in the woods
along the banks of the Ranee, and Sts. Samson and
Malo.
I. Diocese of Rennes.— The eariiest historical mention of the See of Rennes dates from 453. One of the four prelates, Sarmatio, Chariato, Rumoridus, and Viventius who in that year took part in the Coun- cil of Angers, was Bishop of Rennes. One Athenius, Bishop of Rennes, took part in the Council of Tours in 461. Mgr Duchesne is of opinion that the St. Amandus reckoned among the bishops of Rennes at the end of the fifth century is the same as St. Amand of Rodez. Among other bishops are the famous St. Melanius (Melaine) who in 511 assisted at the Council of Orleans and had a widespread reputation for sanctity. _ He gave his name to a well-known abbey, which in the twelfth century possessed no less than seventy parish churches. Famous among the annals of Rennes are: St. Desiderius (Didier) whose episcopate is questioned by Mgr Duchesne (e. 682); St. Moderamnus (Moran) who died about 730 in the monastery of Berceto near Lucca; Marbodus, the hymnographer (1096-1123); the Dominican Yves Mayeuc (1.507-41); Arnaud d'Ossat (1. '596- 1600), cardinal in 1599, and prominent in the conversion of Henry IV; Godefrov Brossais Saint Marc (1S4S-78), cardinal in 1875; Charles Place (1878-93), cardinal in 1886; Guillaume Labour^ (1893-1906), cardinal in 1897. Le Coz (1760-1815) during the Revolu- tion was constitutional Archbishop of Rennes. Under the Concordat he became Archbishop of Besangon. In the Middle Ages the Bishop of Rennes had the privilege of crowning the dukes of Brittany in his cathedral. On the occasion of his first entry into Rennes it was customary for him to be borne on the shoulders of four Breton barons.
II. Diocese of St. Mai,o. — The monk Malo (d. about 600) at the end of the sixth century came from Wales at the head of a band of emigrants and founded two monasteries on the coast near the
