RICHER
49
RICHER
opposed the continued agitation. It was, however,
renewed at the end of 1626, owing to a thesis of the
Dominican Tetefort, which maintained that the Decre-
tals formed part of the Scripture. Richeheu again
strove to allay feehng, and in a discourse (while still
affirming that the king held his kingdom from God
alone) declared that "the king cannot make an article
of faith unless this article has been so declared by the
Church in her oecumenical councils". Subsequently,
Richelieu gave .satisfaction to the pope when on 7 De-
cember, 1629, he obtained a retraction from the Galil-
ean Edmond Richer, syndic of the theological faculty,
who submitted his book "La puissance eccl6sias-
tique et politique " to the judgment of the pope. Nine
years later, however, Richelieu's struggles against the
resistance offered by the French clergy to taxes led
him to assume an attitude more deliberately Galilean.
Contrary to the theories which he had maintained in
his discourse of 1614 he considered, now that he was
minister, that the needs of the State constituted a
case of jorce majeure, which should oblige the clergy to
submit to all the fiscal exigencies of the civil power.
As early as 1625 the assembly of the clergy, tired of
the incessant demands of the Government for money,
had decreed that no deputy could vote supplies with-
out having first received full powers on the subject;
Richelieu, contesting this principle, declared that the
needs of the State were actual, while those of the
Church were chimerical and arbitrary.
In 1638 the struggle between the State and the clergy on the subject of taxes became critical, and Richelieu, to uphold his claims, enlisted the aid of the V)rothers Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, who about the middle of 163S published "Les libertcs de I'eglise gaUicane". This book cstabhshed the independence of the Galilean Church in opposition to Rome only to reduce it into servile submission to the temporal power. The clergy and the nuncio complained; eighteen bishops assembled at the house of Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, and denounced to their colleagues this "work of the devil". Richelieu then exaggerated his fiscal exigencies in regard to the clergy ; an edict of 16 April, 1639, stipulated that ecclesiastics and com- munities were incapable of possessing landed prop- erty in France, that the king could compel them to surrender their po.sscssions and unite them to his do- mains, but that he would allow them to retain what they had inconsidcratitjuof certain indemnities which should be calculated in going back to the year 1520. In Oct., 1639, after the murder of an eriuerrj^ of Mar- shal d'Estr^es, the French Ambassador, Estre6s de- clared the rights of the people violated. Richelieu refused to receive the nuncio (October, 1639); a de- cree of the royal council, 22 December, restrained the powers of the pontifical Briefs, and even the canonist Marca proposed to break the Concordat and to hold a national council at which Richelieu was to have been made patriarch. Precisely at this date Richelieu had a whole scries of grievances against Rome: Urban VIII had refused successively to name him Legate of the Holy See in France, Legate of Avignon, and coad- jutor to the Bishop of Trier; he had refu.sed the pur- ple to Father Joseph, and had opposed the annulment of the marriage of Gaston d'Orleans. But Richelieu, however furious he was, did not wish to carry things to extremes. After a certain number of polemics on the subject of the taxes to be levied on the clergy, the ecclesiastical assembly of Mantes in 1641 accorded to the Government (which was satisfied therewith) five and a half millions, and Richelieu, to restore quiet, ac- cepted the dedication of Marca's book "La concorde du sacerdoce et de I'empire", in which certain excep- tions were taken to Dupuy's book. At the same time the sending of Mazarin as envoy to France by LTr- ban VIII, and the presentation to him of the cardinal's hat put an end to the differences between Richelieu and the Holy See. XIII.— 4
Upon the whole, Richelieu's policy was to preserve
a just mean between the parliamentary Galileans and
the Ultramontanes. "In such matters", he wrote in
his political testament, "one must believe neither the
people of the palace, who ordinarily measure the
power of the king by the shape of his crowTi, which, be-
ing round, has no end, nor those who, in the excesses
of an indiscreet zeal, proclaim themselves openly as
partisans of Rome". One may believe that Pierre de
Marca's book was inspired by him and reproduces his
ideas. According to this book the liberties of the
Galilean Church have two foundations: (1) the recog-
nition of the primacy and the sovereign authority of
the Church of Rome, a primacy consisting in the
right to make general laws, to judge without appeal,
and to be judged neither by bishops nor by councils;
(2) the sovereign right of kings which knows no su-
perior in temporal affairs. It is to be noted that
Marca does not give the superiority of a council over
the pope as a foundation of the Galilean liberties.
(For Richelieu's work in Canada see article Canada.)
In 1636 Richelieu founded the Academic Frangaise.
He had great literary pretentions, and had several
mediocre plays of his own composition produced in a
theatre belonging to him. With a stubbornness in-
explicable to-day Voltaire foolishly denied that Rich-
elieu's "Testament politique" was authentic; the re-
searches of M. Hanotaux have proved its authenticity,
and given the proper value to admirable chapters such
as the chapter entitled "Le conseil du Prince", into
which Richelieu, says M. Hanotaux, "has init all his
soul and his genius". [For Richelieu's "Memoires"
see Harlay, Family of: (2) Achille de Harlay.]
Beside.s the works indicated in the articles Leclerc du Trem- BLAY and Maria de' Medici the following may be consulted: Maximes d'etat et fragments politiques du cardinal de Richelieu, ed. Hanotaux (Paris, 1880) ; Letlres, instructions diplomatiques et papiers d'Hat du cardinal de Richelieu, ed. Avenel (8 vols., Paris, 18.53-77); Memoires du cardinal de Richelieu, ed. Horric de Beau- CAIRE, I (Paris, 1908); Lair, Lavoll^e, Bruel, Gabriel de MuN, and Lecestre, Rapports et notices sur Vedition des Me- moires du cardinal de Richelieu preparee pour la societe de I'his- toire de France (3 fasc, Paris, 1905-07); Hanotaux, Hist, du cardinal de Richelieu (2 tomes in 3 vols., Paris, 1893-1903), ex- tends to 1624; Caillet, L' Administration en France sous le mi- nisthe du cardinal de Richelieu (2 vols., Paris, 1863); D' Avenel, Richelieu et la monarchic absolue (4 vols., Paris, 1880-7); Idem, La noblesse fran^aise sow Richelieu (Paris, 1901); Idem, Pri- tres, soldats et juges sous Richelieu (Paris, 1907); Lacroix, Riche- lieu d Lufon, sa jeunesse, son episcopal (Paris, 1890); Geley, Fancan et la politique de Richelieu de 1 6 1 7 d 1G27 (Pari.s, 1884); De Rochemonteix, Nicholas Caussin, confesseur de Louis XIII, et le cardinal de Richelieu (Paris, 1911) ; Perraud, Le cardinal de Richelieu evSque, thiologien et protecleur des lettres (Autun, 1882) ; Valentin, Cardinalis Richelieu scriptor ecclesiasticus (Toulouse, 1900) ; Lodge, Richelieu (London, 189fi) ; Perkins, Richelieu and the Growth of French Power (New York, 1900).
Georges Goyau.
Richer, a monk of Saint-Rcmi (flourished about 980-1000), was the .son of a knight belonging to the Court of Louis IV d'Outre-Mer (reigned 936-54). Richer inherited from his father a love of war and politics. At Saint-Remi he was a pupil of Gerbert's; besides Latin he studied philo.sophy, medicine, and mathematics. Nothing more than these facts is known with certainty concerning his life. The great Gerbert commLssioned him to write a history of France. The only MSS. of his "Historiarum libri IV" was discovered by Pertz (1833) at Bamberg and then published. Richer selected the date 882, with which Hincmar's annals closed, for the starting- point of his history. In his work he depends upon Flodoard (d. 966) . In his eagerness for rhetorical orna- ment Richer frequently loses sight of historical ac- curacy. Notwithstanding this, in Wattcnbach's opinion, the work has great value: "he is our sole informant for the very important period in which the sovereignty passed from the Carlovingians to tlir- Capet ians". He gives a large amount of important information concerning this era. His statements concern both the events of the larger history as well as of the destinies of his church and school at Reims;
