Joseph Pellerin
Encyclopedia
Joseph Pellerin French
Intendant-General of the Navy, first Commissioner of the Navy as well as a celebrated numismatic pioneer.
Pellerin was born at Marly
, near Versailles
the 27 April 1684 and died 30 August 1782 at his château of Plainville
in Picardy
.
In his youth his principal studies were in the modern and classical languages, which included French, English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac as well as others, and it was to his precocious expertise in these that he owed his admission to the offices of the Ministry of the Marine (as the Navy was called in France) in 1706, where he became employed in correspondence. Having in 1709 succeeded (despite the previous failure of trained cryptographers) to decipher some coded letters seized from a Spanish frigate concerning the Archduke Charles of Austria
(one of the pretenders to the Spanish throne, the other being Louis XIV's nephew the Duke of Anjou
; this being the cause of the ongoing Wars of the Spanish Succession
), by this astonishing feat he caught the attention of then Naval Minister Pontchartrain
who named him cabinet secretary.
He enjoyed similar favour in the succeeding ministries: under Louis XIV's legitimated son the Count of Toulouse
he was named Commissioner of the Navy in 1718, and Maurepas
elevated him to General Commissioner, and then First Commissioner. His detailed plans for the invasion of Britain to restore Bonnie Prince Charlie
to the throne (and thus occupy British forces which were greatly hampering French colonial affairs), though supported by Maurepas went unexecuted by Louis XV
(whether out of disregard, pique against Maurepas, personally, or for another reason remains in debate). They may be consulted in the Maurepas Papers at Cornell University
.
After a very successful career he sought an early retirement in 1745 citing health problems due to overwork. In fact he remained on as a greatly valued expert consultant for several years afterwards, his positions having gradually been formally assumed by his son Joseph Jr., who received letters-patent of nobility in recognition of two generations' of his family's service to the crown in 1740.
in 1776 for £300,000 . This magnificent collection, housed in their splendid massive original marquetry and ormolu cases in the Louis Quinze
style still forms a nucleus of the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
and may be viewed in the old buildings on the Rue de Richelieu in Paris
to this day.
Pellerin's study brought great advances to the science of numismatics
. Through the publication of his enormous ten-volume catalogue of ancient Greek coins (Paris: Chez H. L. Guerin & L. F. Delatour, 1762–1778, 10 vol. in-4º. pl), which were in fact a catalogue raisonné of his own immense collection, he brought clarity to this muddied field by being the first to arrange the many thousands of issues geographically as well as chronologically. His identification of many puzzling pieces were a testimony to his rare powers of observation and perspicacity. He could be said to have cleared a path for the famous Eckhel
. Such errors that slipped into his great work were later caught by Khell, Barthélemy
(who was to negotiate the purchase of the collection for the King), Swinton and the Abbé Leblond.
He grew progressively more blind from the time of his retirement from public service and was almost completely blind at the time of his death, a near-centenarian in 1782. He found, however, a way to turn this handicap to profit, working on the succeeding volumes of his opus by day as easily as by night, writing his text on a thin ribbon of paper that he pulled off one spool only to be wound back up onto another to be later transcribed by his secretary. His sense of touch became phenomenally acute and he was able to identify minor variants of certain coins by subtle tactile differences alone. The portrait displayed on the upper right side of this page, from the frontispiece to one of the volumes of his work shows him surrounded by some of his favourite coins and antiquities in 1780, already over 98 years of age!
, court composer to Louis XIV
and one of the great exponents of the French baroque motet
, among his many other masterpieces. His daughter, also called Marie-Anne, married Arnaud I de La Porte
(or De Laporte) in 1737 who later inherited the Pellerin offices after the premature death of Joseph Jr. The La Porte brothers were to prove very influential in the development of French colonial policy, particularly towards New France (Quebec
), Arnaud's younger brother Jean-Baptiste de La Porte-Lalanne being named special envoy to Quebec to look into the civil administration and to check into some alleged financial irregularities there. He later went on to become Commissioner of the French Leeward Islands
, and Saint Domingue (Haiti
).
Pellerin's grandson, Arnaud II de La Porte
, after a brief stint as Minister of the Navy in 1789 became intendant of the Civil List
in 1790. A close confidante of the beleaguered king, Louis XVI entrusted him with great sums of private money to be distributed toward the moderation of the rapidly radicalising revolutionary fervour. Despite a close collaboration with Mirabeau
, and especially due to the latter's premature death, La Porte's efforts proved to be in vain, and he was arrested and convicted of treason against the Revolution becoming, on the 23rd of August, 1793 the second political victim of that new humane device: the guillotine
. In a macabre gesture, his severed head was then presented to the King, imprisoned in the Temple, as a grisly birthday gift. His services and ultimate sacrifice were recalled during the restoration by the King's younger brother who had been crowned as Louis XVIII
, and Pellerin's great-grandson Arnaud III de La Porte was created a baron in recognition, in 1822. That title remains in the family to this day.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Intendant-General of the Navy, first Commissioner of the Navy as well as a celebrated numismatic pioneer.
Pellerin was born at Marly
Marly-le-Roi
Marly-le-Roi is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre....
, near Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
the 27 April 1684 and died 30 August 1782 at his château of Plainville
Plainville, Oise
Plainville, Oise iis a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise....
in Picardy
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...
.
Youth and career
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI was the penultimate Habsburg sovereign of the Habsburg Empire. He succeeded his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia , Hungary and Croatia , Archduke of Austria, etc., in 1711...
(one of the pretenders to the Spanish throne, the other being Louis XIV's nephew the Duke of Anjou
Philip V of Spain
Philip V was King of Spain from 15 November 1700 to 15 January 1724, when he abdicated in favor of his son Louis, and from 6 September 1724, when he assumed the throne again upon his son's death, to his death.Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of France as a...
; this being the cause of the ongoing Wars of the Spanish Succession
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...
), by this astonishing feat he caught the attention of then Naval Minister Pontchartrain
Louis Phélypeaux (1643-1727)
Louis Phélypeaux , marquis de Phélypeaux , comte de Maurepas , comte de Pontchartrain , known as the chancellor de Pontchartrain, was a French politician....
who named him cabinet secretary.
He enjoyed similar favour in the succeeding ministries: under Louis XIV's legitimated son the Count of Toulouse
Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Comte de Toulouse
Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse , duc de Penthièvre , d'Arc, de Châteauvillain and de Rambouillet , , was the son of Louis XIV and of his mistress Madame de Montespan...
he was named Commissioner of the Navy in 1718, and Maurepas
Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas
Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas was a French statesman.He was born at Versailles, the son of Jérôme Phélypeaux, secretary of state for the marine and the royal household...
elevated him to General Commissioner, and then First Commissioner. His detailed plans for the invasion of Britain to restore Bonnie Prince Charlie
Charles Edward Stuart
Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...
to the throne (and thus occupy British forces which were greatly hampering French colonial affairs), though supported by Maurepas went unexecuted by Louis XV
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
(whether out of disregard, pique against Maurepas, personally, or for another reason remains in debate). They may be consulted in the Maurepas Papers at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
After a very successful career he sought an early retirement in 1745 citing health problems due to overwork. In fact he remained on as a greatly valued expert consultant for several years afterwards, his positions having gradually been formally assumed by his son Joseph Jr., who received letters-patent of nobility in recognition of two generations' of his family's service to the crown in 1740.
Pioneer of numismatics
Pellerin Sr. thus eventually became free to follow his true passion, which was the study of ancient (principally Greek) coins. Tradition has it that he encouraged the sailors of the French Mediterranean Fleet to buy up such ancient coins as they found on offer throughout their range, which he guaranteed to buy back from them at double the purchase price. In this way he gradually accumulated what became the largest and most valuable collection of ancient Greek coins ever to be held in private hands to that date, amounting to 33,500 coins which he ultimately sold to Louis XVILouis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
in 1776 for £300,000 . This magnificent collection, housed in their splendid massive original marquetry and ormolu cases in the Louis Quinze
Louis Quinze
The Louis XV style or Louis Quinze was a French Rococo style in the decorative arts, and, to a lesser degree, architecture.Datable to the personal reign of Louis XV , the style was characterised by supreme craftsmanship and the integration of the arts of cabinetmaking, painting, and...
style still forms a nucleus of the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Bibliothèque 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:...
and may be viewed in the old buildings on the Rue de Richelieu in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to this day.
Pellerin's study brought great advances to the science of numismatics
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
. Through the publication of his enormous ten-volume catalogue of ancient Greek coins (Paris: Chez H. L. Guerin & L. F. Delatour, 1762–1778, 10 vol. in-4º. pl), which were in fact a catalogue raisonné of his own immense collection, he brought clarity to this muddied field by being the first to arrange the many thousands of issues geographically as well as chronologically. His identification of many puzzling pieces were a testimony to his rare powers of observation and perspicacity. He could be said to have cleared a path for the famous Eckhel
Joseph Hilarius Eckhel
Joseph Hilarius Eckhel was an Austrian Jesuit priest and numismatist.-Biography:Echkel was born at Enzersfeld, in Lower Austria....
. Such errors that slipped into his great work were later caught by Khell, Barthélemy
Anatole Jean-Baptiste Antoine de Barthélemy
Anatole Jean-Baptiste Antoine de Barthélemy was a French archaeologist and numismatist.He was born at Reims in 1821, and died at Ville d'Avray in 1904.In collaboration with J...
(who was to negotiate the purchase of the collection for the King), Swinton and the Abbé Leblond.
He grew progressively more blind from the time of his retirement from public service and was almost completely blind at the time of his death, a near-centenarian in 1782. He found, however, a way to turn this handicap to profit, working on the succeeding volumes of his opus by day as easily as by night, writing his text on a thin ribbon of paper that he pulled off one spool only to be wound back up onto another to be later transcribed by his secretary. His sense of touch became phenomenally acute and he was able to identify minor variants of certain coins by subtle tactile differences alone. The portrait displayed on the upper right side of this page, from the frontispiece to one of the volumes of his work shows him surrounded by some of his favourite coins and antiquities in 1780, already over 98 years of age!
Family and legacy
Pellerin married into another Versailles family in 1714 when he wed Marie-Anne, niece of Michel-Richard DelalandeMichel Richard Delalande
Michel Richard Delalande [de Lalande] was a French Baroque composer and organist who was in the service of King Louis XIV. He was one of the most important composers of grand motets. He also wrote orchestral suites known as "Simphonies pour les Soupers du Roy" and ballets...
, court composer to Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
and one of the great exponents of the French baroque motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
, among his many other masterpieces. His daughter, also called Marie-Anne, married Arnaud I de La Porte
Arnaud I de La Porte
Arnaud I de Laporte -Early life and career:According to Laffilard, archivist of the Marine, as the French Navy was known, Arnaud de La Porte was born around 1706, near Bayonne,...
(or De Laporte) in 1737 who later inherited the Pellerin offices after the premature death of Joseph Jr. The La Porte brothers were to prove very influential in the development of French colonial policy, particularly towards New France (Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
), Arnaud's younger brother Jean-Baptiste de La Porte-Lalanne being named special envoy to Quebec to look into the civil administration and to check into some alleged financial irregularities there. He later went on to become Commissioner of the French Leeward Islands
Leeward Islands
The Leeward Islands are a group of islands in the West Indies. They are the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles chain. As a group they start east of Puerto Rico and reach southward to Dominica. They are situated where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean...
, and Saint Domingue (Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
).
Pellerin's grandson, Arnaud II de La Porte
Arnaud II de La Porte
Arnaud II de La Porte French statesman, Minister of the Marine, Intendant of the King's Civil List .-Early life and career:...
, after a brief stint as Minister of the Navy in 1789 became intendant of the Civil List
Civil list
-United Kingdom:In the United Kingdom, the Civil List is the name given to the annual grant that covers some expenses associated with the Sovereign performing their official duties, including those for staff salaries, State Visits, public engagements, ceremonial functions and the upkeep of the...
in 1790. A close confidante of the beleaguered king, Louis XVI entrusted him with great sums of private money to be distributed toward the moderation of the rapidly radicalising revolutionary fervour. Despite a close collaboration with Mirabeau
Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau
Victor de Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He was the father of great Honoré, Comte de Mirabeau and is, in distinction, often referred to as the elder Mirabeau....
, and especially due to the latter's premature death, La Porte's efforts proved to be in vain, and he was arrested and convicted of treason against the Revolution becoming, on the 23rd of August, 1793 the second political victim of that new humane device: the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
. In a macabre gesture, his severed head was then presented to the King, imprisoned in the Temple, as a grisly birthday gift. His services and ultimate sacrifice were recalled during the restoration by the King's younger brother who had been crowned as Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
, and Pellerin's great-grandson Arnaud III de La Porte was created a baron in recognition, in 1822. That title remains in the family to this day.
Sources
- Based on the Dictionnaire Biographique Universel, article by Louis-Mayeul ChaudonLouis-Mayeul Chaudon-Life:He was born in Valensole. After studying in the colleges of Marseille and Avignon, Chaudon decided to become an ecclesiastic, and was admitted to the order of Saint Benedict at Cluny. Here he had the use of a library...
and Antoine-François DelandineAntoine-François DelandineAntoine-François Delandine , was a French writer.Delandine was born in Lyon. A lawyer at the Parliament of Dijon and the Parliament of Paris, he made a brief political career during the French Revolution when was elected to the Estates-General of 1789 as deputy of the Forez. He was imprisoned...
, translated with background interpolations and additions by R. Sekulovich.