When he did emigrate in 1792 he found himself regarded as a martyr to the church and the king, and was at once named archbishop in partibus, and extra nuncio to the diet at Frankfort, and in 1794 cardinal. He was finally made bishop of Montefiascone, and settled down in that little Italian town—but not for long, for in 1798 the French drove him from his retreat, and he sought refuge in Venice and St Petersburg. Next year he returned to Rome as ambassador of the exiled Louis XVIII. at the papal court. In 1804 he began to prepare his return to France by a well-turned letter to Napoleon, congratulating him on restoring religion to France once more. In 1806 he did return; in 1807 he was again received into the Academy; and in 1810, on the refusal of Cardinal Fesch, was made archbishop of Paris. He was presently ordered by the pope to surrender his functions as archbishop of Paris. This he refused to do. On the restoration of the Bourbons he was summarily expelled from the Academy and from the archiepiscopal palace. He retired to Rome, where he was imprisoned in the castle of St Angelo for six months for his disobedience to the papal orders, and died in 1817, a year or two after his release, of disease contracted in prison and of chagrin. As a critic he was a very able writer, and Sainte-Beuve gives him the credit of discovering Father Jacques Bridayne, and of giving Bossuet his rightful place as a preacher above Massillon; as a politician, his wit and eloquence make him a worthy rival of Mirabeau. He sacrificed too much to personal ambition, yet it would have been a graceful act if Louis XVIII. had remembered the courageous supporter of Louis XVI., and the pope the one intrepid defender of the Church in the states-general.
The Œuvres choisies du Cardinal Maury (5 vols., 1827) contain what is worth preserving. Mgr Ricard has published Maury’s Correspondance diplomatique (2 vols., Lille, 1891). For his life and character see Vie du Cardinal Maury, by Louis Siffrein Maury, his nephew (1828); J. J. F. Poujoulat, Cardinal Maury, sa vie et ses œuvres (1855); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. iv.); Mgr Ricard, L’Abbé Maury (1746–1791), L’Abbé Maury avant 1789, L’Abbé Maury et Mirabeau (1887); G. Bonet-Maury, Le Cardinal Maury d’après ses mémoires et sa correspondance inédits (Paris, 1892); A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la constituante (Paris, 1882). Of the many libels written against him during the Revolution the most noteworthy are the Petit carême de l’abbé Maury, with a supplement called the Seconde année (1790), and the Vie privée de l’abbé Maury (1790), claimed by J. R. Hébert, but attributed by some writers to Restif de la Bretonne. For further bibliographical details see J. M. Quérard, La France littéraire, vol. v. (1833).
MAURY, LOUIS FERDINAND ALFRED (1817–1892), French scholar, was born at Meaux on the 23rd of March 1817. In 1836, having completed his education, he entered the Bibliothèque Nationale, and afterwards the Bibliothèque de l’Institut (1844), where he devoted himself to the study of archaeology, ancient and modern languages, medicine and law. Gifted with a great capacity for work, a remarkable memory and an unbiassed and critical mind, he produced without great effort a number of learned pamphlets and books on the most varied subjects. He rendered great service to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, of which he had been elected a member in 1857. Napoleon III. employed him in research work connected with the Histoire de César, and he was rewarded, proportionately to his active, if modest, part in this work, with the positions of librarian of the Tuileries (1860), professor at the College of France (1862) and director-general of the Archives (1868). It was not, however, to the imperial favour that he owed these high positions. He used his influence for the advancement of science and higher education, and with Victor Duruy was one of the founders of the École des Hautes Études. He died at Paris four years after his retirement from the last post, on the 11th of February 1892.
Bibliography.—His works are numerous: Les Fées au moyen âge and Histoire des légendes pieuses au moyen âge; two books filled with ingenious ideas, which were published in 1843, and reprinted after the death of the author, with numerous additions under the title Croyances et légendes du moyen âge (1896); Histoire des grandes forêts de la Gaule et de l’ancienne France (1850, a 3rd ed. revised appeared in 1867 under the title Les Forêts de la Gaule et de l’ancienne France); La Terre et l’homme, a general historical sketch of geology, geography and ethnology, being the introduction to the Histoire universelle, by Victor Duruy (1854); Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique, (3 vols., 1857–1859); La Magie et l’astrologie dans l’antiquité et dans le moyen âge (1863); Histoire de l’ancienne académie des sciences (1864); Histoire de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1865); a learned paper on the reports of French archaeology, written on the occasion of the universal exhibition (1867); a number of articles in the Encyclopédie moderne (1846–1851), in Michaud’s Biographie universelle (1858 and seq.), in the Journal des savants in the Revue des deux mondes (1873, 1877, 1879–1880, &c.). A detailed bibliography of his works has been placed by Auguste Longnon at the beginning of the volume Les Croyances et légendes du moyen âge.
MAURY, MATTHEW FONTAINE (1806–1873), American naval officer and hydrographer, was born near Fredericksburg in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, on the 24th of January 1806. He was educated at Harpeth academy, and in 1825 entered the navy as midshipman, circumnavigating the globe in the “Vincennes,” during a cruise of four years (1826–1830). In 1831 he was appointed master of the sloop “Falmouth” on the Pacific station, and subsequently served in other vessels before returning home in 1834, when he married his cousin, Ann Herndon. In 1835–1836 he was actively engaged in producing for publication a treatise on navigation, a remarkable achievement at so early a stage in his career; he was at this time made lieutenant, and gazetted astronomer to a South Sea exploring expedition, but resigned this position and was appointed to the survey of southern harbours. In 1839 he met with an accident which resulted in permanent lameness, and unfitted him for active service. In the same year, however, he began to write a series of articles on naval reform and other subjects, under the title of Scraps from the Lucky-Bag, which attracted much attention; and in 1841 he was placed in charge of the Dépôt of Charts and Instruments, out of which grew the United States Naval Observatory and the Hydrographic Office. He laboured assiduously to obtain observations as to the winds and currents by distributing to captains of vessels specially prepared log-books; and in the course of nine years he had collected a sufficient number of logs to make two hundred manuscript volumes, each with about two thousand five hundred days’ observations. One result was to show the necessity for combined action on the part of maritime nations in regard to ocean meteorology. This led to an international conference at Brussels in 1853, which produced the greatest benefit to navigation as well as indirectly to meteorology. Maury attempted to organize co-operative meteorological work on land, but the government did not at this time take any steps in this direction. His oceanographical work, however, received recognition in all parts of the civilized world, and in 1855 it was proposed in the senate to remunerate him, but in the same year the Naval Retiring Board, erected under an act to promote the efficiency of the navy, placed him on the retired list. This action aroused wide opposition, and in 1858 he was reinstated with the rank of commander as from 1855. In 1853 Maury had published his Letters on the Amazon and Atlantic Slopes of South America, and the most widely popular of his works, the Physical Geography of the Sea, was published in London in 1855, and in New York in 1856; it was translated into several European languages. On the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Maury threw in his lot with the South, and became head of coast, harbour and river defences. He invented an electric torpedo for harbour defence, and in 1862 was ordered to England to purchase torpedo material, &c. Here he took active part in organizing a petition for peace to the American people, which was unsuccessful. Afterwards he became imperial commissioner of emigration to the emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and attempted to form a Virginian colony in that country. Incidentally he introduced there the cultivation of cinchona. The scheme of colonization was abandoned by the emperor (1866), and Maury, who had lost nearly his all during the war, settled for a while in England, where he was presented with a testimonial raised by public subscription, and among other honours received the degree of LL.D. of Cambridge University (1868). In the same year, a general amnesty admitting of his return to America, he accepted the professorship of meteorology in the Virginia Military Institute, and settled at Lexington, Virginia, where he died on the 1st of February 1873.
