Maury

Maury, JEAN SIFFREIN, French orator and prelate, was born on 26th June 1746 at Valréas (dept. Vaucluse), and, his studies completed at Avignon, he went to Paris. Eloquent éloges on the dauphin, Charles V. of France, St Louis, St Vincent de Paul, and others gained him the abbacy of Frinade, and in 1784 admission to the Academy. In 1786 he was made prior of Lihonsen-Santerre, and in 1789 was sent by the neighbouring clergy to represent them in the States-general. Bold, confident, vehement, gifted with a magnificent voice and an imposing presence, and master of the resources of the skilled orator, Maury was the worthy rival of Mirabeau, and sometimes got the better of him in a parliamentary bout. At the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, he withdrew from public life, and even from France. The pope, admiring his devotion to Louis XVI., summoned him to Rome, made him Archbishop of Nicea in partibus, then cardinal (1794), and, besides bestowing upon him a valuable living, sent him as his nuncio to witness the coronation of the Emperor Francis II. In spite of his zeal for the Bourbons, Maury made his submission to Napoleon in 1804, and Napoleon in return appointed him grand almoner to his brother Jerome, and in 1810 chose him to be Archbishop of Paris. This step cost Maury the favour of the pope; that of the Bourbons he had of course already lost. He consequently died in disgrace on 11th May 1817. Maury wrote Essai sur l'Éloquence de la Chaire (2 vols. 1810), 'one of the best books in the language;' his Œuvres Choisies were published in 5 vols. in 1827. See Lives by his nephew, L. S. Maury (1827), Poujoulat (1835), and Ricard (1887); also Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, vol. iv.