Jacques d'Amboise (bishop)
Encyclopedia
House of Amboise
The House of Amboise was a French noble house, taking its name from Amboise, a town which it possessed as a seigneurie. The oldest of the house's family lines to be attested in the written sources comes from Touraine and dates to 1155...
, an old noble family.
Life
He was the son of Anne de Bueil and Pierre d'AmboisePierre d'Amboise
Pierre d'Amboise was a French nobleman of the House of Amboise. He was a son of Hugh VIII of Amboise, who was killed at the battle of Agincourt, and of Jeanne de Guénand...
, lord of Chaumont
Chaumont-sur-Loire
Chaumont-sur-Loire is a commune in the Loir-et-Cher département in central France.-See also:* Château de Chaumont* Communes of the Loir-et-Cher department...
, as their seventh of eighteen children. Entering the Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...
order he was elected abbot of Jumièges in January 1474, replacing his brother Louis on his appointment as bishop of Albi. Jacques took his oath of loyalty as abbot on 20 February 1474 and took possession of the abbey on 28 May.
In 1485 he succeeded a Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
as abbot of Cluny, rebuilding the Cluny abbots' hôtel in Paris as well as its now-lost chapel and collège. Located beside the Gallo-Roman ruins, the hôtel de Cluny hosted several royal visits and would be inhabited by cardinal Mazarin in 1634. He also built the abbatial palace of Paray-le-Monial
Paray-le-Monial
Paray-le-Monial is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Burgundy in eastern France.-History:Paray existed before the monks who gave it its surname of Le Monial, for when Count Lambert of Chalon, together with his wife Adelaide and his friend Mayeul de Cluny, founded there in...
.
Louis XII of France
Louis proved to be a popular king. At the end of his reign the crown deficit was no greater than it had been when he succeeded Charles VIII in 1498, despite several expensive military campaigns in Italy. His fiscal reforms of 1504 and 1508 tightened and improved procedures for the collection of taxes...
appointed Jacques d'Amboise to it - he held the post from 1505 until his death. He completed the diocese's cathedral and replaced its tiles with a lead roof, as well as richly adding to its library and building a tapistry the choir of which four pieces are now in St Petersburg. In 1515 he built the fountain that bears his arms and name in Clermont
Clermont-Ferrand
Clermont-Ferrand is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of 140,700 . Its metropolitan area had 409,558 inhabitants at the 1999 census. It is the prefecture of the Puy-de-Dôme department...
.
Like his brothers Louis and Georges
Georges d'Amboise
Georges d'Amboise was a French Roman Catholic cardinal and minister of state. He belonged to the house of Amboise, a noble family possessed of considerable influence: of his nine brothers, four were bishops. His father, Pierre d'Amboise, seigneur de Chaumont, was chamberlain to Charles VII and...
, he had a great sense of family : he appointed several of his nephews to church posts, adorned all his works with his family arms in or palé de gules and even inserted prayers for his family name in the eucharistic prayer, when this was actually only allowed to sites of the apostolic college.