short, near-sighted, ugly and exceptionally awkward. Retz, however, despite the little inclination which he felt towards clerical life, entered into the disputes of the Sorbonne with vigour, and when he was scarcely eighteen wrote the remarkable Conjuration de Fiesque, a little historical essay, of which he drew the material from the Italian of Augustino Mascardi, but which is all his own in the negligent vigour of the style and the audacious insinuation, if nothing more, of revolutionary principles. Retz received no preferment of importance during Richelieu's life, and even after the minister's death, though he was presented to Louis XIII. and well received, he found a difficulty in attaining the coadjutor ship with reversion of the archbishopric of Paris. But almost immediately after the king's death Anne of Austria appointed him to the coveted post on All Saints' Eve, 1643. Retz, who had, according to some accounts, already plotted against Richelieu, set himself to work to make the utmost political capital out of his position. His uncle, who was old, indolent and absurdly proud, had lived in great seclusion; Retz, on the contrary, gradually acquired a very great influence with the populace of the city. This influence he gradually turned against Mazarin. No one had more to do than Retz with the outbreak of the Fronde in October 1648, and his history for the next four years is the history of that confused and, as a rule, much misunderstood movement. Of the two parties who joined in it Retz could only depend on the bourgeoisie of Paris. The fact, moreover, that although he had some speculative tendencies in favour of popular liberties, and even perhaps of republicanism, he represented no real political principle, inevitably weakened his position, and when the break up of the Fronde came he was left in the lurch, having more than once in the meanwhile been in no small danger from his own party. One stroke of luck, however, fell to him before his downfall. He was made cardinal almost by accident, and under a misapprehension on the pope's part. Then, in 1652, he was arrested and imprisoned, first at Vincennes, then at Nantes; he escaped, however, after two years' captivity, and for some time wandered about in various countries. He made his appearance at Rome more than once, and had no small influence in the election of Alexander VII. He was at last, in 1662, received back again into favour by Louis XIV. and on more than one occasion formally served as envoy to Rome. Retz, however, was glad in making his peace to resign his claims to the archbishopric of Paris. The terms were, among other things, his appointment to the rich abbacy of St Denis and his restoration to his other benefices with the payment of arrears.
The last seventeen years of Retz's life were passed partly in his diplomatic duties (he was again in Rome at the papal election of 1668), partly at Paris, partly at his estate of Commercy, but latterly at St Mihiel in Lorraine. His debts were enormous, and in 167 5 he resolved to make over to his creditors all his income except twenty thousand livres, and, as he said, to “ live for ” them. This plan he carried out, though he did not succeed in living very long, for he died at Paris on the 24th August 1679. One of the chief authorities for the last years of Retz is Madame de Sévigné, whose connexion he was by marriage. Retz and La Rochefoucauld, the greatest of the Frondeurs in literary genius, were personal and political enemies, and each has left a portrait of the other. La Rochefoucauld's character of the cardinal is on the whole harsh but scarcely unjust, and one of its sentences formulates, though in a manner which has a certain recoil upon the writer, the great defect of Retz's conduct: “ Il a suscité les plus grands, désordres dans l'état sans avoir un dessein formé de s'en prévaloir.” He would have been less, and certainly less favourably, remembered if it had not been for his Memoirs. They were certainly not written till the last ten years of his life, and they do not go further than the year 1655. They are addressed in the form of narrative to a lady who is not known, though guesses have been made at her identity, some even suggesting Madame de Sévigné herself. In the beginning there are some gaps. They display, in a rather irregular style and with some oddities of dialect and phrase, extraordinary narrative skill and a high degree of ability in that special art of the 17th century—the drawing of verbal portraits or characters. Few things of the kind are superior to the sketch of the early barricade of the Fronde in which the writer had so great a share, the hesitations of the court, the bold adventure of the coadjutor himself into the palace and the final triumph of the insurgents. Dumas, who has drawn from this passage one of his very best scenes in Vingt and après, has done little but throw Retz into dialogue and amplify his language and incidents. Besides these memoirs and the very striking youthful essay of the Conjuration de Fiesque, Retz has left diplomatic papers, sermons, Mazarinades and correspondence in some considerable quantity.
The Memoirs of the cardinal de Retz were first published in a very imperfect condition in 1717 at Nancy. The first satisfactory edition was that which appeared in the twenty-fourth volume of the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat (Paris, 1836). They were then re-edited from the autograph manuscript by Géruzez (Paris, 1844), and by Champollion-Figeac with the Mazarinades, &c. (Paris, 1859). In 1870 a complete edition of the works of Retz was begun by M. A. Feillet in the collection of Grands Écrivains. The editor dying, this passed into the hands of M. Gourdault and then into those of M. Chantelauze, who had already published studies on the connexion of St Vincent de Paul with the Gondi family, &c. (1882). (G. Sa.)
REUBEN, a tribe of Israel named after the eldest “son ”
of Jacob and of Leah. Both the meaning of the name (see Gen.
xxix. 32) and the history of the tribe are extremely obscure. In
one version of the story of Joseph, Reuben appears in a somewhat
favourable light (Gen. xxxvii. 22, 29, xlii. 37), but in
Gen. xxxv. 22 he is charged with a grave offence, which in
Gen. xlix. 4 is given as a reason why the tribe which called
him father did not take in Hebrew history the place proper to
its seniority (cp. 1 Chron. v. 1). Dathan and Abiram were
Reubenites (Num. xvi.; Deut. xi. 6), and in Deut. xxxiii. 6 the
tribe appears as threatened with extinction. In Judg. v. 1 5 seq.
it is described as a pastoral tribe which took no share in the
patriotic movement under Barak and Deborah. The district
allotted to Reuben (Josh. xiii. 15-23; Num. xxxii. 37 seq.) is
detailed in late passages which have little historical value for
the age to which they are attributed. The tribe is represented
as settled E. of the jordan on the Moabite border, but no mention
is made of it in the inscription of the Moabite king Mesha
(see GAD; MOAB). The references to the tribe's wars against
Arabians (1 Chron. v. ro, 18 sqq.) in the time of Saul have
caused much fruitless speculation.
For mythological elements in the tribe's history, see especially E. Stucken, Mittheil. d. vordemsiat. Gesell. (1902), pt. iv. pp. 46 sqq.; and for a full discussion of the biblical data, see H. W. Hogg, Ency. Bib. s.v., also F.. Meyer, Die Ismeliten und 'ihre Nachbarstdmme, PP- 530 5Clq
REUCHLIN, JOHANN (1455-1522), German humanist and Hebraist, was born on the 22nd of February 1455 at Pforzheim in the Black Forest, where his father was an official of the
Dominican monastery. In the pedantic taste of his time the
name was graecicized by his Italian friends into Capnion, a
form which Reuchlin himself uses as a sort of transparent mask
when he introduces himself as an interlocutor in the De Verbo
M irijico. For his native place Reuchlin always retained an
affection; he constantly writes himself Phorcensis, and in the
De Verbo he does not forget to ascribe to Pforzheim his first
disposition to letters. Here he began his Latin studies in the
monastery school, and, though in 1470 he was a short time in
Freiburg, that university seems to have taught him little.
Reuchlin's career as a scholar appears to have turned almost
on an accident; his fine voice gained him a place in the household
of Charles I., margrave of Baden, and by-and-by, having
already some reputation as a Latinist, he was chosen to accompany
to theluniversity of Paris Frederick, the third son of the
prince, a lad some years his junior, who was destined for an
ecclesiastical career. This new connexion lasted but a year or
so, but it determined the course of Reuchlin's life. He now
began to learn Greek, which had been taught in the French
capital since 1470, and he also attached himself to the leader
of the Paris realists, Jean Heynlin, or 5. Lapide (d. 1496), a
