Pierre de Gondi [SEP] position held
Pierre de Gondi
Pierre de Gondi, cardinal de Retz (1533–1616) was a French bishop and cardinal of the Gondi family.
Life.
Born in Lyon, he was a brother of Albert de Gondi (two of whose sons, Henri and Jean-François, succeeded Pierre as bishop of Paris) and a protégé of Catherine de Médicis. In turn, he became bishop of Langres (1565), bishop of Paris (1570), chancellor and grand almoner to Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Charles IX
to a treaty between Florence and Genoa in that year. In the fourteenth century several members of the family sat on the Great Council. Simon de Gondi renounced the Ghibelline party for himself and his house, in 1351; he loaned the Republic 8000 golden florins in a time of extremity. He held extensive lands round Valcava, in the Mugello, where the church bore the Gondi arms inside and out. Of Simon's seven children, his grandson another Simon was the first of the Gondi to hold the position of Grand Prior