Marie Madeleine de Vignerot du Pont de Courlay, Duchesse d'Aiguillon (160417 April 1675) was a French aristocrat, also remembered for her charitable work and her patronage of artists and mathematicians.

Biography

Courlay was the daughter of

Cardinal Richelieu Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (; 9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman and statesman. He was also known as ''l'Éminence rouge'', or "the Red Eminence", a term derived from the ...

's sister, Françoise du Plessis, and her husband René du Vignerot. In 1620 Courlay married a nephew of the constable de Luynes, Antoine de Beauvoir du Roure, sieur de Combalet, who died in 1622. In 1625, through her uncle's influence, she was made a

lady-in-waiting A lady-in-waiting or court lady is a female personal assistant at a court, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman but of lower rank than the woman to whom sh ...

(''

dame d'atour ''Dame d'atour'' was an office at the royal court of France. It existed in nearly all French courts from the 16th-century onward. The ''dame d'honneur'' was selected from the members of the highest French nobility. History At least from the Isab ...

'') to the queen-mother

Marie de Medici Marie de' Medici (french: link=no, Marie de Médicis, it, link=no, Maria de' Medici; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV of France of the House of Bourbon, and Regent of the Kingdom ...

, and in 1638 was created duchess of Aiguillon. The Duchess did not marry a second time, although Richelieu wished to marry her to a prince, either to the comte de Soissons or to the king's brother. After the death of the cardinal in 1642, the Duchess retained her honours and titles, but withdrew from the court and devoted herself entirely to works of charity. She became a patron of work involving science and the arts, providing funding for many notable initiatives. She died on 17 April 1675.

Patron of science and arts

The Duchess worked with St.

Vincent de Paul Vincent de Paul, CM (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was a Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. Afte ...

and helped him to establish the

Bicêtre Hospital The Bicêtre Hospital is located in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It lies 4.5 km (2.8 miles) from the center of Paris. The Bicêtre Hospital was originally planned as a military hospital, with constru ...

for foundlings. She also took part in re-organizing the

Hôtel-Dieu de Paris In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu ( en, hostel of God) was originally a hospital for the poor and needy, run by the Catholic Church. Nowadays these buildings or institutions have either kept their function as a hospital, the one in Paris b ...

and establishing several others in the provinces. Additionally, she founded and funded the establishment of the

Hôtel-Dieu de Québec The Hotel-Dieu de Québec is a teaching hospital located in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, and affiliated with Université Laval's medical school. It is part of the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec (CHUQ), a network of five teaching hosp ...

for the colonists of

New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spai ...

. The Duchess was the patroness of

Pierre Corneille Pierre Corneille (; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronag ...

, who in 1636 dedicated his tragedy ''

Le Cid ''Le Cid'' is a five-act French tragicomedy written by Pierre Corneille, first performed in December 1636 at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris and published the same year. It is based on Guillén de Castro's play ''Las Mocedades del Cid''. Castro' ...

'' to her. She also had the vision to provide patronage to

Marie Crous Marie Crous ( fl. 1641) was a French mathematician. She introduced the decimal system to France in the 17th century. Biography Coming from a modest origin, Marie Crous became an accomplished writer and teacher at Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La ...

, a mathematician who introduced the

decimal The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...

system to France with her published research.

Catherine Goldstein : Catherine Goldstein (born July 5, 1958 in Paris) is a French number theorist and historian of mathematics who works as a director of research at the (IMJ). She was president of L'association femmes et mathématiques in 1991. Education and ca ...

Neither public nor private: mathematics in early modern France

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Aiguillon, Duchesse d 1604 births 1675 deaths Marie Madeleine de Vignerot du Pont de Courlay, Duchesse d'Aiguillon Peers created by Louis XIII French ladies-in-waiting Household of Marie de' Medici