Achille Harlay de Sancy

Achille de Harlay de Sancy, bishop of Saint-Malo (1581 – November 20, 1646), the son of Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy, was a French clergyman, diplomat and intellectual. He was noted as a linguist and orientalist.

He was educated for a career in the Roman Catholic Church, but resigned his vocation to become a soldier after the death of his elder brother in 1601. For seven years, from 1611 to 1618, he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, where he amassed a fortune of some 16,000 sterling by doubtful means, and was bastinadoed by order of Sultan Mustafa I for his frauds.

Harlay de Sancy used his opportunities to acquire a valuable collection of oriental manuscripts, many of which are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

On his return to France, Harlay he joined the Oratorian Fathers, and when François de Bassompierre was sent to England in 1627 to regulate the differences between Henrietta Maria and her husband, Harlay de Sancy was attached to the queen's ecclesiastical household, but Charles I secured his dismissal. He became bishop of Saint-Malo in 1632.

References

*1911