Ren Zhigu (任知古) was a Chinese politician of

Wu Zetian Wu Zetian (624 – 16 December 705), personal name Wu Zhao, was List of rulers of China#Tang dynasty, Empress of China from 660 to 705, ruling first through others and later in her own right. She ruled as queen consort , empress consort th ...

's Zhou Dynasty, serving briefly as

chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

. Despite Ren's high status, little is firmly established about his background or career except for the time that he served as chancellor—as, unusual for a chancellor, he did not have a biography in either the ''

Old Book of Tang The ''Old Book of Tang'', or simply the ''Book of Tang'', is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdo ...

'' or the ''

New Book of Tang The ''New Book of Tang'', generally translated as the "New History of the Tang" or "New Tang History", is a work of official history covering the Tang dynasty in ten volumes and 225 chapters. The work was compiled by a team of scholars of the So ...

''. He was not even listed as a chancellor in the table of the chancellors' family tree, among the Rens.''New Book of Tang'', vol. 73, part 1
As of 691, Ren was serving as ''Fengge Shilang'' (鳳閣侍郎), the deputy head of the legislative bureau of government (鳳閣, ''Fengge''), when Wu Zetian gave him the designation ''Tong Fengge Luantai Pingzhangshi'' (同鳳閣鸞臺平章事), making him a chancellor ''de facto''. In 692, he, along with fellow chancellors Di Renjie and Pei Xingben and other officials Cui Xuanli (崔宣禮), Lu Xian (盧獻), Wei Yuanzhong, and Li Sizhen (李嗣真), were accused of treason by Wu Zetian's secret police official Lai Junchen. Eventually, they escaped death when Di was able to hide a secret petition inside clothes that his family members took back home and was able to persuade Wu Zetian that they were not plotting treason. However, they were still exiled—in Ren's case, he was demoted to be the magistrate of Jiangxia County (江夏, in modern

Wuhan Wuhan; is the capital of Hubei, China. With a population of over eleven million, it is the most populous city in Hubei and the List of cities in China by population, eighth-most-populous city in China. It is also one of the nine National cent ...

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

). There was no further reference in history about him, and it is not known when he died.

Notes and references

* ''

Zizhi Tongjian The ''Zizhi Tongjian'' (1084) is a chronicle published during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) that provides a record of Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD, covering 16 dynasties and spanning almost 1400 years. The main text is ...

'', vols. 204, 205. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ren Zhigu Chancellors under Wu Zetian