fronswah

In 1473 Ferry Carondelet was born in Mechelen, Flanders, to a wealthy and influential family originally from Dole, a commune in the Jura department of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in Eastern France. He grew up in Burgundy, in the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or, wherein the capital of Dijon was one of the greatest European centers of Art and Science; a location of tremendous wealth and power; with Western Monasticism, at the time, a Habsburg province under Emperor Maximilian I; He matriculated at the University of Franche-Comté, where he took clerical orders. In 1504 he was named Archdeacon of the Besançon Church.

In 1508 Ferry Carondelet became confessor (church advisor) to Margaret of Austria, the regent of the Spanish Netherlands, and incidentally to her ward, the future Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. In 1510 he was made Papal Legate to the court of Emperor Maximilian. In 1515 he returned to Burgundy and became the abbot of the Saint Columbanus Abbey in Montbenoît.

Ferry Carondelet is known as a major benefactor of the Montbenoît Abbey and the Cathedral in Besançon [Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.] He commissioned the Italian painter Fra Bartolomeo to create the Carondelet Altar for Besançon, and he completely rebuilt the church for the Montbenoît Abbey. He died 27 June 1528, entombed in a marble sarcophagus in the Cathedrale Saint Jean in Besançon. This portrait is attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo, a well-known Assistant to Michelangelo; it's hanging somewhere in the Schloss Rohoncz, in the infamous art collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. Carondelet's MOTTO is shown in the legend chiseled in the lintel behind his visage: NOSCE OPPORTUNITATEM.