Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz was a French churchman, writer of memoirs, and agitator in the Fronde.

The Florentine banking family of the Gondi was one of those which had been introduced into France by Catherine de' Medici; Catherine offered Jérome de Gondi in 1573 the château that he made the nucleus of the Château de Saint-Cloud; his hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Paris became the Hôtel Condé in the following generation. The Gondi acquired great estates in Brittany and became connected with the noblest houses of the kingdom.