Polignac, Melchior de

(1661-1742)

   cardinal, diplomat

   Born in Le Puy, Melchior de Polignac was brought to Rome by Cardinal de bouillon (1689) and began his brilliant diplomatic career by playing a role in preventing a rupture between France and the Holy See. As ambassador to Poland, he contributed, after the death of John III Sobieski (1696), to the election of François-Louis, prince de Conti, for the Polish crown. After the failure of this enterprise, he fell into disgrace and had to wait until 1702 to play an important role again. Later he took part in the Congress of Utrecht (1710-13), negotiations that led to the Treaty of utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Compromised under the Regency, however, he was named archbishop of Auch only in 1726. Cardinal Polignac, who was elected to the Académie Française in 1704, left his unfinished Anti-Lucretius... (posthumous, 1745, translated into French in 1813), a Latin poem of nearly 10,000 verses in which he attempts to refute the thinker pierre bayle and the ideas of materialism.