Pierre Bertrand (cardinal)

Pierre Bertrand (1280 – 1348 or 1349) was a French Cardinal, theologian, and canonist.

Pierre Bertrand was born at Annonay in Vivarais. His noble parentage is known to us through the manuscript memoir of Grasset, a Celestine monk of the seventeenth century (Discours généalogique de la noble maison de Bertrand et de leur alliance avec celle de Colombier). The legal profession seems to have been the first aim of his education. He successively studied and taught law in the Universities of Avignon, Montpellier, Orléans, and Paris.

A highly competent lawyer, he soon reached high positions in the Parliament of Paris, the King's Council, and the Queen's Chancery. His interests lay, however, in another direction, and he became a priest.

His priestly career was as successful as his legal success. In rapid succession he was Dean of Puy-en-Valais, Bishop of Nevers, and Bishop of Autun. In 1331 Pope John XXII made him a cardinal. Among his services were several charitable institutions founded at Annonay, and the Collège d'Autun, or Collège Cardinal, established in Paris on behalf of fifteen poor students, five for theology, five for law, and five for the fine arts.

Bertrand defended the rights of the Church both by word of mouth and with his pen. Fournier, in his "Officialitiés du moyen-âge" (Paris, 1880), points out, at the beginning of the Valois dynasty, a strong tendency of the State towards curtailing the Church's traditional rights. In 1329 took place the famous Conférence de Vincennes, where Pierre de Cugnieres, speaking for Philippe de Valois, bitterly complained of undue extension of ecclesiastical privileges (e.g., ordaining clerics for the sole purpose of enjoying the privilegium fori; causes des veuves, or widow's causes drawn to ecclesiastical courts; the free use of censures to enforce the Church's privileges; appeals to the Church from the decision of civil courts, etc.).

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