Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article or section reads like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup.
Please improve this article by rewriting this article or section in an encyclopedic style. (documentation, talk)
Françoise d'Aubigné
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon.
Born November 27, 1635
Niort, in France
Died April 15, 1719
St. Cyr in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire
Spouse Paul Scarron (1651 - 1660)
Louis XIV (1685 - death)
Parents Constant d'Aubigné


Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (November 27, 1635 - April 15, 1719) was the second wife of Louis XIV.

Contents

[edit] Origins

D'Aubigné was born in a prison at Niort. Her father, Constant d'Aubigné, was the son of Agrippa d'Aubigné, the famous friend and general of Henry IV, and had been imprisoned as a Huguenot malcontent, but her mother, a fervent Catholic, had the child baptized in her religion, her sponsors being the duc de la Rochefoucauld, father of the author of the Maxims, and the Comtesse de Neuillant.

In 1639 Constant d'Aubigné was released from prison and took all his family with him to Martinique, where he died in 1645, after having lost what fortune remained to him at cards. Madame d'Aubigné returned to France, and from sheer poverty yielded her daughter to her sister-in-law, Madame de Villette, who took very good care of the child. However, she also converted the child to Protestantism. When this became known, an order of state was issued that she should be entrusted to Madame de Neuillant, her godmother. Every means was now used to convert her back to Catholicism, but at the last she only yielded on the condition that she need not believe that the soul of Madame de Villette was lost. Once reconverted, she was sent home to live with her mother, who had only a small pension of 200 livres a year, which ceased on her death in 1650.

[edit] Coming to the Royal Court

The Chevalier de Méré, a man of some literary distinction, who had made her acquaintance at Madame de Neuillant's, discovered her penniless condition, and introduced his "young Indian," as he called her, to Paul Scarron, the famous witty and comic writer, at whose house all the literary society of the day assembled. Scarron took a fancy to the friendless girl, and offered either to pay for her admission to a convent, or, though he was deformed and an invalid, to marry her himself. She accepted his offer of marriage, and became Madame Scarron in 1651. For nine years she served not only as his most faithful nurse, but as an attraction to his house, where she tried to bridle the licence of the conversation of the time.

On the death of Scarron, in 1660, Anne of Austria continued his pension to his widow, and even increased it to 2000 livres a year, enabling her to entertain and frequent the literary society with which her husband had made her acquainted. On the queen-mother's death in 1666 Louis XIV refused to continue her pension. She prepared to leave Paris for Lisbon as lady attendant to the queen of Portugal. Before she started, she met Madame de Montespan, who was already, though not avowedly, the king's mistress, and who took such a fancy to her that Françoise obtained the continuance of her pension, putting off forever going to Portugal.

Madame de Montespan did yet more for her, in 1669, when her first child by the king was born, Madame Scarron was established with a large income and a large staff of servants at Vaugirard to bring up the king's children in secrecy, as they were born. Madame de Montespan almost certainly chose Madame Scarron because she was unlikely to be a rival for the kings affections. She was very religous, always wearing black with rosaries and crucifixes -- only wearing trimmings of silver and gold because court etiquette demanded it.

Château de Maintenon in the town center
Château de Maintenon in the town center

In 1674 the king determined to have his children at court, and their governess, who had now made sufficient fortune to buy the estate of Maintenon, accompanied them. The king had now many opportunities of seeing Madame Scarron, and, though at first he was prejudiced against her (telling Madame de Montespan, "I do not like your bel esprit"), her even temper contrasted so advantageously with the storms of passion and jealousy exhibited by Madame de Montespan, that she grew steadily in his favour. In 1678 her estate at Maintenon was raised to a marquisate and the lady herself entitled Madame de Maintenon by the king. Such favours brought down the fury of Madame de Montespan's jealousy, and Madame de Maintenon's position became almost unendurable.

"Madame de Maintenon knows how to love. There would be great pleasure in being loved by her." said the king. However, when he came to her with an offer to be his mistress she refused him on religious grounds. "Nothing is so clever as to conduct one's self irreproachably."[1] she wrote a friend. This philosophy served her well, and by the late 1670s the king spent every spage moment with Madame de Maintenon, talking about politics, religion and economics.

In 1680, the king severed their connection by making the latter second lady in waiting to the dauphiness. Soon after Madame de Montespan left the court. The new amie used her influence on the side of decency. Queen Maria Theresa openly declared she had never been so well treated as at this time, and eventually died in Madame de Maintenon's arms in 1683.

[edit] Marriage with Louis XIV

The queen's death opened the way to yet greater advancement; in 1684 Madame de Maintenon became first lady in waiting to the dauphiness, and in the winter of 1685-1686 she was privately married to the king by Harlay, archbishop of Paris, in the presence, it is believed, of Père la Chaise, the king's confessor, the marquis de Montchevreuil, the chevalier de Forbin, and Bontemps. Owing to the inequality of social status, she could not marry the King openly and become Queen. The marriage was morganatic. No written proof of the marriage is extant, but that it took place is nevertheless accepted by historians.

Her life during the next thirty years can be fully studied in her letters, of which many authentic examples remain.

[edit] Influence and legacy

This article or section reads like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup.
Please improve this article by rewriting this article or section in an encyclopedic style. (documentation, talk)

Her political influence has probably been exaggerated, but it was supreme in matters of detail. The ministers of the day used to discuss and arrange all the business to be done with the king with her beforehand. It was done in her cabinet and in her presence, but the king in more important matters often chose not to consult her. Such mistakes as, for instance, the replacing of Catinat by Villeroi in 1701 may be attributed to her, but not whole policies - notably, according to Saint-Simon, not the policy with regard to the Spanish Succession. Even the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the dragonnades have been laid to her charge, but recent investigations have tended to show that in spite of ardent Catholicism, she at least opposed, if not very vigorously, the cruelties of the dragonnades, although she was pleased with the conversions they procured.

She was afraid to imperil her great reputation for devotion, which had in 1692 obtained for her from Innocent XII the right of visitation over all the convents in France. Where she deserves blame is in her use of power for personal patronage, as in compassing the promotions of Chamillart and Villeroi, and the frequent assistance given to her brother Comte Charles d'Aubigné. Her influence was on the whole a moderating and prudent force. Her social influence was not as great as it might have been, owing to holding no recognized position at court, but she always exercised it on the side of decency and morality. It must not be forgotten that from her former life she was intimate with the literary people in France of the day. Side by side with this public life, which wearied her with its shadowy power, occasionally crossed by a desire to be recognised as queen, she passed a nobler and sweeter private existence as the foundress of Saint Cyr. Madame de Maintenon was a born teacher; she had so won the hearts of her first pupils that they preferred her to their own mother, and was similarly successful later with the young and impetuous Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy. She had always wished to establish a home for poor girls of good family placed in such straits as she had experienced. As soon as her fortunes began to mend, she started a small home for poor girls at Rueil, which she afterwards moved to Noisy, forming the nucleus of the splendid institution of St. Cyr, which the king endowed at her request in 1686, out of the funds of the Abbey of St. Denis. She was in her element there. She herself drew up the rules of the institution; she examined every minute detail; befriended her pupils in every way; and her heart often turned from the weariness of Versailles or of Marly to her "little girls" at St. Cyr.

It was for them that Racine wrote his Esther and his Athalie, and it was because he managed the affairs of St. Cyr well that Chamillart became controller-general of the finances. The later years of her power were marked by the promotion of her old pupils, the children of the king and Madame de Montespan, to high dignity between the blood royal and the peers of the realm, and it was doubtless under the influence of her dislike for the duke of Orléans that the king drew up his will, leaving the personal care of his successor to the duke of Maine, and hampering the duke of Orléans by a council of regency. On or even before her husband's death in 1715 she retired to St Cyr, and had the chagrin of seeing all her plans for the advancement of the duke of Maine overthrown by means of the parliament of Paris. However, the regent Orléans in no way molested her, but, on the contrary, visited her at St. Cyr and continued her pension of 48,000 livres. She spent her last years at St. Cyr in perfect seclusion, but an object of great interest to all visitors to France, who, however, with the exception of Peter the Great, found it impossible to get an audience with her. On 15 April 1719 she died, and was buried in the choir at St. Cyr, bequeathing her estate at Maintenon to her niece, the only daughter of her brother Charles and wife of the maréchal de Noailles, to whose family it still belongs.

La Beaumelle published the Lettres de Madame de Maintenon, but much garbled, in 2 vols. in 1752, and on a larger scale in 9 vols. in 1756. He also, in 1755, published Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon, in 6 vols., which caused him to be imprisoned in the Bastille. All earlier biographies were superseded by Théophile Lavallée's Histoire de St. Cyr, reviewed in Causeries du lundi, vol. viii., and by his edition of her Lettres historiques et édifiantes, etc., in 7 vols.

Preceded by
Maria Theresa of Spain		 Royal consort of France and Navarre
1685–September 1, 1715		 Succeeded by
Maria Leszczyńska

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Herman, Eleanor: Sex with Kings, page 115. William Morrow, 2004

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Persondata
NAME d'Aubigné, Françoise, Marquise de Maintenon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Royal consort of France
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1635
PLACE OF BIRTH Niort
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1719
PLACE OF DEATH St. Cyr, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../f/r/a/Fran%C3%A7oise_d%27Aubign%C3%A9%2C_marquise_de_Maintenon_9215.html"