Bishop Myriel
fictional Bishop from Les Misérables
Bishop Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel, referred to as Bishop Myriel or Monseigneur Bienvenu, is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. Myriel is the Bishop of Digne in southeastern France.
The actual Bishop of Digne during the time in which Myriel's appearance in the novel is set was Bienvenu de Miollis (1753–1843) who served as Hugo's model for Myriel. In the novel, as well as film and musical adaptions of it, the Bishop is a heroic figure who personifies compassion and mercy.
As Hugo set to work on the novel in 1848 after a long interruption, his anti-clerical son Charles objected to presenting Myriel as "a prototype of perfection and intelligence", suggesting instead someone from "a liberal, modern profession, like a doctor". The novelist replied:
I cannot put the future into the past. My novel takes place in 1815. For the rest, this Catholic priest, this pure and lofty figure of true priesthood, offers the most savage satire on the priesthood today.
Bishop Myriel in the novel
The novel’s first fourteen chapters are an account of the life and practices of Myriel. He was born into a noble family: "the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry." His wife died while they were living in Italy as exiles from the French Revolution.
“Bishop Myriel” enters the record as fictional Bishop from Les Misérables. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bishop, Myriel and fictional can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2053228. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1753, 1843 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bishop Myriel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.