Claude d'Angennes

Claude d'Angennes de Rambouillet (26 August 1538 – 15 May 1601) was Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Le Mans from 1588 until his death in 1601. He was the fifth son of Jacques d'Angennes, seigneur de Rambouillet, and Isabeau Cottereau, dame de Maintenon. D'Angennes studied the Literæ Humaniores in Paris, and afterwards jurisprudence in Bourges, as he at first intended to follow the bar.

After returning to Paris, and being admitted an advocate, he proceeded to Padua to continue his studies in jurisprudence, and went then to the council of Trent to join his brother, Charles d'Angennes de Rambouillet, who was there at the time as bishop of Le Mans. Returning to Paris again, he was made into a conseiller d'église au parlement de Paris (church councilor in the parliament of Paris) by Charles IX in 1566; Three years later, the king sent him as an ambassador to Cosimo de' Medici, duke of Florence, and on his return made him conseiller d'état (state councilor), and in 1570 sent him to Rome on an embassy to Pope Pius V.

In 1577, Henry III gave him the office of président en la cinquième chambre des enquêtes (president in the fifth chamber of investigations), and some months afterwards, in 1578, made him bishop of Noyon. In 1582, he attended a general assembly of the Gallican church, the next year a council held at Reims, and two years afterwards, in 1585, a second general assembly of the Gallican church at Paris, when he defended its liberties in the presence of the king. After the death of his brother the cardinal, he was translated to the see of Le Mans, in the year 1588. who arrived there on the 23d of February, 1589.

Instructing Henry IV In 1593, Henry IV, having at last determined to abjure the Protestant faith, and "enter the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman church," summoned several of his prelates and theologians to instruct him on those points which had kept him separated from the church, and hold conferences with him on these matters. The first of these conferences took place on the morning of the 23d of July; and one of the prelates who attended it was d'Angennes. They discussed certain points, the king made objections, but at last he expressed himself satisfied, and thanked the bishops for having taught him what he knew not before, and protested that he recognised in his conversion the goodness and power of God. The 25th was appointed as the day on which the king should make a solemn abjuration of his errors, and receive the absolution of his heresy and of the censures of the church. On the 24th the papal legate published a declaration, in which he maintained that "Henri de Bourbon, self-styled king of France and Navarre, but declared by the pope Sixtus V heretic, relapsed, impenitent, chief, abettor, and public defender of heretics, could not be absolved by any one but the pope of the penalties incurred by relapsed and impenitent heretics, and therefore that the act of the prelates whom he had assembled would be null and void". Notwithstanding this, on the appointed day, the Archbishop of Bourges received the king's abjuration in the church of the abbey of St. Denis, and after confession granted him absolution, absolving him from the crime of heresy and apostacy, reuniting him to the church of Rome, and admitting him to the sacraments. D'Angennes was one of the prelates who were present at this ceremony, but as the archbishop had granted him absolution, "saving the authority of the holy apostolic chair," Henry sent a solemn embassy to render in his name obedience to the pope, Clement VIII, and ask for the confirmation of the absolution which he had received from the bishops. D'Angennes was one of the deputies, and at their head was Louis de Gonzague, Duke of Nevers. Clement refused to receive the duke as an ambassador from the King of France, and after much difficulty consented to admit him into Rome as a private person, as an Italian, and Catholic prince. The duke entered the city on the 21st of November, and after five unsuccessful audiences left it in the January of the succeeding year. The pope refused absolution to one who he said had formerly applied to the holy chair on the same subject, and after embracing the Catholic faith had abandoned it, and returned to his errors. He alluded to what had happened in the time of Gregory XIII, when Charles IX compelled the King of Navarre to write to the pope, and abjure his heresy.