Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot de Pontcourlay,

suo jure ''Suo jure'' is a Latin phrase, used in English to mean 'in his own right' or 'in her own right'. In most nobility-related contexts, it means 'in her own right', since in those situations the phrase is normally used of women; in practice, especi ...

Duchess of Aiguillon (; 160417 April 1675) was a French aristocrat, also remembered for her charitable work and her patronage of artists and mathematicians.

Biography

Vignerot was the daughter of

Cardinal Richelieu Armand Jean du Plessis, 1st Duke of Richelieu (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), commonly known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a Catholic Church in France, French Catholic prelate and statesman who had an outsized influence in civil and religi ...

's sister, Françoise du Plessis (d. 1615), and her husband, René de Vignerot, Seigneur de Pontcourlay (d. 1625). In 1620 Vignerot 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 (alternatively written lady in waiting) or court lady is a female personal assistant at a Royal court, court, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking nobility, noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was o ...

(''

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. They were ranked between th ...

'') to the queen-mother

Marie de Medici Marie de' Medici (; ; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV. Marie served as regent of France between 1610 and 1617 during the minority of her son Louis XIII. Her mandate as regent ...

, 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 Only brother of the King. 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. from 1638 she was the duchess of Aiguillon in her own right.

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 an Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. In 1622, Vincent was appointed as chaplain to the galleys. ...

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-organising the

Hôtel-Dieu de Paris In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu () 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 being the oldest an ...

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 ...

for the colonists of

New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, 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 Kingdom of Great Br ...

. 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 17th-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronage ...

, a compeer of

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, ; ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world liter ...

, 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''. Cast ...

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

Marie Crous Marie Crous ( fl. 1641) was a French mathematician. She is known for two publications: a 1636 study in which she contributed to the further development of arithmetic using decimal fractions, and a 1641 textbook of practical arithmetic rules. She pro ...

, 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 (''decimal fractions'') of th ...

system to France with her published research. Catherine Goldstein
Neither public nor private: mathematics in early modern France

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vignerot, Marie Madeleine 1604 births 1675 deaths category:French suo jure nobility French nobility Peers created by Louis XIII French ladies-in-waiting Household of Marie de' Medici