Jean de Montereul

Jean de Montereul (c. 1614, Paris – 27 April 1651, Paris) was a French ecclesiastic and diplomat.

The son of an advocate to the parlement de Paris, Jean was originally intended for a legal career himself, but in the course of a trip to Italy with Pomponne de Bellièvre (a nephew of pope Urban VIII) he was made a canon of Toul. Paul Pellisson wrote that he was "very proper in negotiation, with a flexible and agile mind, very concerted, and who would hardly ever do anything without a purpose. It was he who gave the opinion that the Elector Palatine would have to pass into France incognito, to go to command the Duke of Weimar's troops, and seize de Brissac ; this was why he was pursued there, and why the Elector was stopped on his journey.".

He was secretary to the prince of Conti, then to the French ambassador in Rome, London and Scotland. He was sent to Rome again in 1648 then, on his return to Paris, elected to the Académie française in 1649. Remaining faithful to the prince of Conti and to the duke of Longueville, he entered into a secret correspondence with them during their imprisonment in 1650, but died of tuberculosis aged 36 or 37, shortly after they were freed.

Besides a few pieces of verse and prose which were not published, he left an abundant correspondence, published in Edinburgh at the end of the 19th century.

• The Diplomatic correspondence of Jean de Montereul and the brothers de Bellièvre, French ambassadors in England and Scotland (1645–48), edited, with an English translation, introduction and notes, by J. G. Fotheringham, 2 volumes, Édimbourg, 1898–1899