Pierre de Luxembourg

Pierre de Luxembourg was born in 1369 at Ligny-en-Barrois in the Duchy of Bar, a younger son of Guy of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny, and Mahaut of Châtillon. His family belonged to the French cadet branch of the House of Luxembourg, a dynasty that in the same century also occupied the imperial throne. His father was killed at the Battle of Baesweiler in 1371, and his mother died soon afterward, so that Pierre was orphaned while still a small child and brought up by kinsmen among the high nobility of the Barrois and Champagne. Like many younger sons of princely houses in the fourteenth century, he was destined for the Church from an early age. He studied in Paris and, while still a boy, was provided with ecclesiastical benefices, including a canonry at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

When the Western Schism divided the Latin Church after 1378, the French crown and the house of Luxembourg-Ligny recognized the Avignon claimant Clement VII. In 1384 that pontiff appointed Pierre, then in his mid-teens, to the bishopric of Metz and raised him to the cardinalate as a cardinal-deacon. He was far below the canonical age for either office. He never obtained peaceful possession of Metz, which was disputed by a nominee of the Roman pope, and he resided at the papal court in Avignon. There he acquired a reputation, unusual among Avignon cardinals, for personal austerity. Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts emphasize fasting, night prayer, the wearing of rough garments, and the use of his income for almsgiving rather than for the display expected of a prince of the Church.

His constitution was fragile and was further weakened by penance. In 1387 he left Avignon for Villeneuve-lès-Avignon on the French bank of the Rhône, and he died there on 2 July, before his eighteenth birthday. He was buried at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. He remained a secular cleric rather than a professed member of a religious order, never married, and left no children.

Reports of healings and other wonders at the tomb circulated at once, and a strong local cult grew in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin. Efforts toward canonization were begun but stalled amid the schism, the councils of the early fifteenth century, and later political disorders. In 1527 Pope Clement VII confirmed the immemorial cult, which in later terminology constitutes beatification. Pierre de Luxembourg has not been canonized. His feast is kept on 2 July, and he is venerated as a patron of the city of Avignon.