Cardinal sought out the company of men of learning and experience, and often befriended them. When his former tutor and countryman from Albi, the adventurous philologist and investigator of the antiquities of Constantinople Pierre Gilles, died penniless in Rome in 1555, Cardinal d'Aramagnac arranged from Toulouse to pay the funeral expenses and erect a wall tomb . Gilles' posthumous Antiquities of Constantinople were dedicated to the Cardinal. In 1552 he was appointed lieutenant-general of the king at Toulouse, together with the bishop of Cahors. On 6 January 1554, in the chapel of the château of Pau, he baptized Henry of Navarre, future king of France. In 1560 he was raised to the Archbishopric of Toulouse, the cultural capital of the Languedoc, the occasion for another visit to Rome. In 1565, Pope Pius IV appointed him vice-legate at Avignon, together with the Cardinal de Bourbon. The papal city of Avignon remained faithful in the bloody Wars of Religion that had broken out in earnest in 1562, but in the surrounding Venaissin the Huguenots were solidly implanted in Orange and the neighboring Dauphiné, and fierce fighting ensued. Charles IX appointed his cousin Charles of Burgundy legate, but the man on the site was Armagnac, solidly of the Catholic party. In this position the Cardinal d'Armagnac vigorously defended Catholic interests against the Huguenots; when his cousin Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre and mother of the future Henry IV, declared for the reformed church, he sent her a stiff letter of reproof, which, with her skillful and courageous reply conjoined, was printed and circulated throughout the south. The pope showed his approval of d'Armagnac's administration by promoting him to the Archbishopric of Avignon (1576). Georges d'Armagnac's position among the first nobility of Languedoc, his intelligence and judgment of men and events, and the protection which he granted to the arts and sciences placed him in the first rank of the faithful servants of the 16th-century Church. He was a friend and correspondent of the leading literary figures of his time in France and Italy. References Sources External links Catholic Encyclopedia 1908: "Georges d'Armagnac" Illuminated manuscripts prepared for Georges d'Amboise Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church Lemerle, Frédérique, 2003. Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De Architectura de Vitruve 1500s births 1585 deaths Clergy from Avignon 16th-century French cardinals 16th-century French diplomats French Renaissance humanists Bishops of Lescar Bishops of Rodez Archbishops of Toulouse