Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen

Hyacinthe-Louis De Quélen (8 October 1778 – 31 December 1839) was an Archbishop of Paris. He was the fourth archbishop to serve the Paris diocese after the restoration of the French hierarchy in 1802.

Biography De Quélen was born in Paris, in the 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 and the seminary in St. Sulpice.

Ordained in 1807, he served a year as Vicar-General of Saint-Brieuc and then became secretary to Joseph Fesch, uncle to the Emperor Napoleon. When the latter was exiled from his diocese of Lyon under the Bourbon Restoration, de Quélen exercised his ministry at Saint-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 favored by Louis XVIII and then Charles X, but retained some measure of 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. the "Conferences apologétiques de Notre-Dame" and several religious institutes, among which are the nursing Sisters of Bon-Secours.

Legacy Besides the eulogies on Louis XVI (Paris, 1816), on Madame Elizabeth (Paris, 1817), on the Duke of Berry (Paris, 1830), his "Discours de réception à l'académie française" (Paris, 1824), and some 120 pastoral letters, there are the "Manuels pour l'administration des Sacrements de l'Eucharistie et de l'Extrême-Onction: du Baptême des Enfants: du Marriage" (3 vols., Paris, 1837–38) collected in the "Rituel de Paris".