Jacques Clément (1567 – 1 August 1589) was a French conspirator and the perpetrator of the regicide of King Henry III.
Early life
He was born at Serbonnes, in today's Yonne département, in Burgundy, and became a lay brother of the Third Order of Saint Dominic.
The League accordingly viewed Protestantism as a dangerous heresy that must be destroyed to prevent a similar religious persecution of the Catholic Church in France. Clément, as a League supporter, often talked, as was advocated by the Catholic League, of the necessity for a war of extermination against the Huguenots. Clément accordingly opposed the King's beliefs, as a , that only a strong and centralised, yet religiously tolerant monarchy with monopoly on political and military power could save France from continued Wars of Religion or even from another Hundred Years War. In retaliation for the recent targeted killings of the Catholic League's leaders; Duke of Guise and his brother, Cardinal de Guise, Clément eventually formed a plan for a decapitation strike of the French government by assassinating Henry III. His ideas were approved by some of the heads of the League, in particular, by the late Duke and Cardinal's sister, Catherine de Guise, Duchess Montpensier. Clément was promised worldly rewards if he survived and eternal bliss for committing tyrannicide if he fell. Having received confidential letters for the king, he left Paris on 31 July 1589 and reached Saint-Cloud, the headquarters of Henry, who was besieging Paris, on 1 August 1589.
Clément was even seen in some circles as a martyr and his actions were praised as tyrannicide by Pope Sixtus V, as well as the Jesuit historian and political philosopher Juan de Mariana, S.J. His praise was such that even the possibility of opening his cause for canonization was discussed.
References
- See E Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome vi. (Paris, 1904).