Armand-Jérôme Bignon
Encyclopedia
Life
The lord of Île BelleÎle Belle
Île Belle was a former island in the River Seine. It was located in Yvelines between Hardricourt and Les Mureaux....
and Hardricourt
Hardricourt
Hardricourt is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.-References:*...
, he was made avocat général to the Grand Conseil
Grand Conseil
The term Grand Conseil or Great Council refers two different institutions during the Ancien Régime in France. It also is the name of parliaments in several Swiss cantons.-Part of the King's Council:...
in 1729, maître des requêtes
Maître des requêtes
Masters of Requests are high-level judicial officers of administrative law in France and other European countries that have existed in one form or another since the Middle Ages.-Old Regime France:...
for Soissons in 1737 and president of the Grand Conseil in 1738.
In 1743, on his brother's death he was made royal librarian (a post Armand-Jérôme had inherited in turn from their uncle Jean-Paul Bignon
Jean-Paul Bignon
Jean-Paul Bignon was a French ecclesiastic, statesman, writer and preacher and librarian to Louis XIV of France...
). Armand-Jérôme resigned from it in 1770 in favour of his son Jérôme-Frédéric.
He was elected to the Académie française in 1743 and to the Académie des Inscriptions
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...
in 1751. He was made conseiller d’État in 1762 and prévôt des marchands de Paris in 1764. The scholar Dupuy pronounced his elogy. It was his negligence in the latter post that caused the accidents in the firework display for the marriage of the Dauphin (later Louis XVI) and Marie-Antoinette in May 1770 that left over 300 dead and a greater number of wounded. Even so, he appeared in his box at the Opéra only three days after the disaster, causing all Paris to become indignant.
Under Louis XIII, the prévôt des marchands de Paris and the two premiers échevins were fined for not having repaired a bridge whose collapse killed 4 or 5 people. Under Louis XV, his faults born of a lack of foresight were never punished. Paris thus avenged itself by bon mots against him, including the Latin anagram of his name as Ibi non rem, damna gero (I don't do good, I do evil).
Works
Armand Jérôme Bignon never published anything, though he did leave manuscript memoirs of a journey to Spain and Italy (now held at the Bibliothèque nationale de FranceBibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
).