Jean Baptist of Belloy

Count de Belloy and of the Empire.

Cardinal-archbishop of Paris.

Inventor of the first Coffee machine. ----

Biography

Archbishop of Paris and cardinal, born the October 9th 1709, with Morangles in the Diocese of Beauvais; deceased with Paris, the June 10th 1808. Although pertaining to an old family having some reputation on the military level, the Belloy young person preferred to follow an ecclesiastical career and made his school studies then theological in Paris, where it was ordered priest and accepted Doctor in Théologie in 1737.

In its ministry it shone more by its virtue than by its scholarship. The softness of its character, its enlightened and moderated zeal, its fidelity inébranlable towards the principles and the traditions of the church, all that characterized it during its life and made immediately its ministry remarkably profitable. Its bishop, the cardinal of Gèvres, appointed it general vicar and archdeacon of the cathedral. In 1751 it was crowned bishop of Glandèves. At the time of famous the Parliament of the French Clergy of 1755, it lined up in the camp of moderate and contributed to restore peace in the Church of France.

In the diocese of Marseilles, the dissensions caused by the bubble Unigenitus had become if sharp that with died of the saint Belsunce bishop, there was an imminent danger of schism. In this critical situation one needed Pasteur of a prudence and from a consumed tact and this is why Belloy was transferred there. Without sacrificing any of its principles nor of its duties, but by employing softness, tact and justice, it gained the confidence of the two parties and restores peace.

In July 1790, the National Assembly issued the removal of the Diocese of Marseilles. The bishop withdrew himself, while sending to the Parliament a letter of protest against the suppression of one of the oldest episcopal sees of France. He withdrew himself with Chambly, small town close to his birthplace, where it remained for the most critical period of the French revolution.

When, in 1801, the pope decided that the French bishops should offer their resignation to facilitate the conclusion of the Concordat, it was the first to be subjected, and its example had a strong influence on the other bishops. Bonaparte, favorably impressed by this act of devotion towards the Church and the State, named it with the head office of Paris although he was nonagenarian.

Its great age did not prevent it from directing its new diocese with an amazing energy and intelligence, reorganizing the parishes, giving them good priests and making a point of visiting itself its flocks. It gave the Crown of Spines to its place of honor in the Ste Chapelle (August 10th 1806).

Napoleon i was satisfied as well as he asked and obtained for him the cardinal's hat, that Pie VII placed on the head of the worthy prelate during a consistory held in Paris, the 1805. To his death the Cardinal of Belloy had spent seventy-five years in the saint ministry for the construction of all and with the obvious satisfaction of Napoleon as well as of Magpie VII, then however engaged in a keen fight. He was buried in Notre-Dame, where the monument that Napoleon made set up in his honor is one of most beautiful of the cathedral.

Others

About 1800, he invents the system of the Percolation coffee and first Cafetière (also called dubelloire).

Partial source

catholic-hierarchy

Memories of the Marchioness of Créquy

Notre Dame de Paris, Monument of the Cardinal Jean-Baptiste de Belloy

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