LOMENIE DE BRIENNE, ETIENNE CHARLES DE French politician and ecclesiastic, was born at Paris on Oct. 9, 1727, of a Limousin family, dating from the 15th cen tury. After a brilliant career as a student he entered the Church. In 1752 he was appointed grand vicar to the archbishop of Rouen, in 1762 bishop of Condom, and in 1763 archbishop of Toulouse. In 1770 he became an academician. He was on three occasions the head of the bureau de jurisdiction at the general assembly of the clergy ; he addressed to Turgot a number of memoires on political and social questions, one of them, treating of pauperism, being especially remarkable. As president of the Assembly of Notables (1787) he attacked the fiscal policy of Calonne, whom he succeeded as head of the conseil des finances on May 1, 1787. He made the parlement register edicts dealing with internal free trade, the establishment of provincial as semblies and the redemption of the corvee. To crush opposition to the stamp duty and the proposed new general land-tax the parlement was exiled to Troyes (Aug. 15, 1787), and only returned to Paris on its agreement to an alternative plan prolonging for two years the tax of the two vingtiemes (a direct tax on income). But a further attempt to force the parlement to register an edict for raising a loan of 120 million livres met with deter mined opposition. The struggle of the parlement against the inca
pacity of Brienne ended on May 8 in its consenting to an edict for its own abolition ; but with the proviso that the states-general should be summoned to remedy the disorders of the state. Bri enne, who had been made archbishop of Sens, now had to face almost universal opposition; he was forced to suspend the Cour pleniere which had been set up to take the place of the parlement, and himself to promise that the states-general should be sum moned. On Aug. 29, he had to retire, leaving the treasury empty. On Dec. 15 following, he was made a cardinal, and spent two years in Italy. After the outbreak of the Revolution he returned to France, and took the oath of the civil constitution of the clergy in 1790 (see FRENCH REVOLUTION). He was repudiated by the pope, and in 1791 had to give up the biretta at the command of Pius VI. Both his past and present conduct made him an object of suspicion to the revolutionaries he was arrested at Sens on Nov. 9, and died in prison, on Feb. 16, 1794.
The chief works published by Brienne are: ()raison funebre du Dauphin (1766) ; Compte-rendu au roi (1788) ; Le Conciliateur, in collaboration with Turgot (Rome, Paris, 1754). See also J. Perrin, Le Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne . . . episodes de la Revolution (Sens, 1896).