Antoine Bonal et l’histoire des évêques de Rodez

Abstract

Antoine Bonal and the history of the bishops of Rodez Antoine Bonal (1548-1627) was the first historian of the Rouergue. Descended from a long line of county, and later royal, officials in Rodez, he wrote a History of the county, the archives of which he was familiar with, and also a History of the diocese. In his History of the Bishops, written before 1619, he tried to establish, on the basis of historical docu¬ ments, a list of the bishops of Rodez since Saint Amans, in order to defend the apostolic succession, and consequently Catholicism itself, against the Protestants. His erudite work deployed the critical methods of humanism, transmitted through the court of Cardinal d’ Armagnac, but its main aim was to defend the Catholic identity of the town of Rodez, a “double” consulate which managed to conceal its divisions at the time of the Catholic League. This History, written by a layman with connections to both the merchants of the borough and to the cathedral canons of the city, was only published at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it has not been fundamentally modified by recent research.