Louis I de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise

Louis de Lorraine, cardinal de Guise et prince-évêque de Metz (21 October 1527, in Joinville, Champagne – 29 March 1578, in Paris) was a French Roman Catholic cardinal and Bishop during the Italian Wars and French Wars of Religion. The third son of Claude, Duke of Guise and Antoinette de Bourbon he was destined from a young age for a church career. At the age of 18 he was appointed Bishop of Troyes, a position he could only serve in an administrative capacity as he would not reach the Canonical Age for another 9 years. Having served in this position for 5 years, he transferred to become Bishop of Albi, staying in this role until 1561, when he was replaced due to his lethargic suppression of 'heresy'. From here he moved to become Archbishop of Sens, a see he would hold from 1561 to 1562, during which time a massacre of Protestants would occur in the city. By 1562 he decided to retire from active episcopal involvement. Nevertheless, he would become Prince-Bishop of Metz in 1568, an office he would hold until his death a decade later. While he lacked much interest in spiritual matters and was renowned for his drinking, he built up a considerable empire of abbeys during his life, which he passed on to his nephew Claude, chevalier d'Aumale.

In 1562 he travelled with his brothers to Saverne for a meeting with the Duke of Württemberg at which the family discussed converting to Lutheranism, a prospect that would be destroyed by the Massacre of Wassy perpetrated by François, Duke of Guise on his return to France. At the death of the Duke the following year, he and Aumale engineered his final days to be conservatively orthodox. In the years of peace that followed the first war of religion, he was the only member of his family who remained at court, representing the militant Catholic cause, something he would continue to do after the Peace of Longjumeau while other counsellors were trying to secure the peace. He crowned Henri III in 1575, and continued to advocate for committed prosecution of the civil wars in his final years, before dying in 1578.