RICHELIEU: THE CARDINAL AND HIS ‘CITY’

RICHELIEU: THE CARDINAL AND HIS ‘CITY’

Speaker Brian Freeland will explain the life of Armand-Jean du Plessis (later Cardinal de Richelieu). When he was born, France existed only as a geographical area: neither language nor law provided any unity. Loyalties were feudal, religious and/or regional. Richelieu dictated both the military strategies which provided France with new defensible borders, and inaugurated the unifying reforms which moulded the state’s own national cultural identity. In the process Richelieu discovered the power of cultural propaganda, and sought control of the country’s literary and artistic activities and institutions. Working closely with the royal architect Lemercier, the Cardinal planned buildings of enormous extravagance, including the church at the Sorbonne where he was proviseur, and the magnificent Chateau and ‘walled town’ on the family estate at Richelieu.The Palais-Cardinal in Paris (later the Palais Royale) included a theatre, and he collected paintings and sculptures by many of the outstanding artists of the time, now on view in Paris, Orleans and Tours. He also founded the Academie Francaise.