Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 02-11-08
Charlotte de Mornay (1550-1606)
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"...TO DESCRIBE THE PILGRIMAGE OF OUR LIVES."
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Charlotte Arbaleste de la Borde was born into a established Parisian family some years before the conflict between French Catholics and Protestants grew into civil war. In the early 1560s, her father became a Protestant; her mother remained a Catholic. Some of her brothers and sisters altered their religious affiliation as the political winds changed, but Charlotte became and remained a Protestant.
At 17, Charlotte was married to Jean de Pas, lord of Feuqueres. He had served at the courts of two Catholic Valois kings, but became a Protestant in 1560 and fought in the religious wars that began in 1562. After their marriage, Feuqueres sent his wife to Sedan, in the northeast and under German Protestant control. At the end of 1568 their daughter was born, but Feuqueres never saw her. He was killed in battle five months after her birth.
In 1570, the fighting stopped and Charlotte returned to Paris. Two years later she was caught up in the massacre of French Calvinists (Huguenots) that began on Saint Bartholomew's feast day. Eventually she was able to escape Paris and return to the safety of Sedan, after leaving her daughter in the protection of her mother's Catholic family.
In Sedan she met and in 1576 married Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis-Marly (1549-1623), a Huguenot fighter and writer who had also escaped the 1572 massacre. Although he continued to go into battle, Philippe soon became an advisor to the then-Huguenot king Henry of Navarre, who hoped to become heir to the French throne. The pattern of Charlotte's life soon became set. She traveled with her husband as much as she could, frequently in secret across Catholic-held northern France; she took her family to live in London, Flanders, and Gascony, and later --- when Henry became king of France --- to the garrison city of Saumur. She bore eight children, although only three survived infancy. She entertained the courtiers, military men, and scholars who came to her husband. Above all, she tried to provide for Philippe the time to write the polemical works that were winning converts to the Huguenot cause.
In 1584 Charlotte began to write herself, a memoir of her husband, Memoires de Messire Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis-Marli. In 1595, she gave what she already written to her only son, 16 years old and just presented at court. Although her vision was failing, she continued adding to the memoir for 10 years, until the 1605 death of her son. She herself died in the next year.
Memoires de Messire Philippe de Mornay was published shortly after her husband's death in 1623. Although its purpose is to speak of Philippe, it tells us much about the woman who wrote it.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from a translation in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Link to either the page images or to the text of this 1871 issue of the periodical The Living Age and then go to p. 598 for the start of a nine-page review of Henriette de Witt's edition (1869) of Memoires de Madame de Mornay, which opens with Charlotte's 1595 dedicatory letter to her son and includes a number of other translated passages. At another site, links to PDF files of the French of the two volumes of De Witt's edition.
2. An 1854 summary /paraphrase by Hugh De Normand of the accounts from Charlotte's Memoires on the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in August 1572: first, two-thirds of the way down the page, Philippe's experience; then, at another page of the same site, Charlotte's own experience (she is here called Madame de Feuqueres).
3. Essays:
(a) Click on "Traduction" for a translation of a 2003 essay on Charlotte and the Memoires, by Nadine Kuperty-Tsur.
(b) "Shouting Down Abraham: How Sixteenth Century Huguenot Women Found Their Voice" (1997), by Catharine Randall, after showing what the writing of Agrippa d'Aubigne (1532-1630) reveals about Huguenot women, describes how Charlotte goes about asserting herself in the Memoires; quoted passages are in Randall's translation, with the original given in the notes.
4. Reviews (for excerpts from Crump, see below, under "In print"; for information on the collection's treatment of Mornay, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Ann M. Woodlief on Lucy Crump's mid-1920s A Huguenot Family in the XVI century: The Memoirs of Philippe De Mornay, Sieur du Plessis Marly, Written by His Wife.
(b) Anita Pacheco on the 1998 essay collection, Attending to Early Modern Women.
5. The fifth portrait shown here (of Jeanne d'Albret) illustrates the hairstyle that would get Charlotte into trouble with her Calvinist pastor in 1584 (for Charlotte's defense, see under "In print).
6. A two-part essay by C.T. Iannuzzo on the French "Wars of Religion" from 1562 to 1598, which clearly describes the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the wars which surrounded it. At the start of the essay is a link to a useful map of France showing the political divisions during part of the period: the League was the Catholic party; Bourbon lands were those ruled by Henry of Navarre. From the same source, a historical time line, with links to other relevant sites.
7. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Philippe de Mornay (based in large part on Charlotte's book).
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[There is as yet no complete translation of the Memoires, but Lucy Crump translated part of the work in the mid-1920s. Crump's translation includes all to 1590; then, one chapter from 1597 is given, followed by selections from the years 1590 to 1605. Also included is an interesting legal document written by Charlotte in 1584, defending the way she wore her hair. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Mornay, Charlotte Arbaleste de. A Huguenot family in the XVI
century: The memoirs of Philippe De Mornay, sieur du Plessis
Marly, written by his wife. Translated by Lucy Crump, with an
introduction (Broadway translations). London, G. Routledge; New
York, E.P. Dutton [1926?]. (vii, 300 p. plates, ports.)
LC#: DC112 .M95
This translation is from the edition edited by Mme. de Witt,
for the Societe de l'histoire de France, 1868.
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"...a guide... made with my own hand, to keep you company."
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[On Charlotte's purpose in writing Memoires. First, in 1584, when the memoir was begun:]
...Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis, etc., my highly honoured lord and husband, about whom I have a mind to write. with God's help, as a means of strengthening our posterity in their fear of God and in their hope in Him after we are gone hence. [p.84]
[And in 1595, in the dedication to her son, who was 16 years old:]
But so that you may not be without a guide I herewith give you one, made with my own hand, to keep you company, the which is your father's example, and which I adjure you to keep always before your eyes, and to follow it. To ensure this I have been at pains to write out for you all that I have been able to learn about his life, in spite of the unhappiness of the times which has so often interrupted our companionship....
Keep this writing in memory of me. And when I am gone from you, in God's own time, I want you to finish that which I have begun to write concerning our lives. [p.289]
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"I was nineteen years old, in deep trouble."
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[At the death of her first husband in 1569, Charlotte was far from her home, the widow of a rebel and the mother of a 5-month-old infant:]
I was nineteen years old, in deep trouble, away from my native land and from all means of livelihood and harassed with an infinite amount of business. While at Sedan I learnt of my father's death..., of a sister's death who was just about to be married and of my father-in-law's death as well. Such little property as I possessed had been seized on account of all the troubles; and I never saw a farthing of M. de Feuqueres' fortune. But God raised me up friends, and helped me through all my troubles. [p.120]
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"...men, women and children who were being murdered in the
streets."
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[In August 1572 Charlotte was in Paris with her daughter, when the massacre began. As the daughter and the widow of Protestants, she became a target for the mob. She escaped from her lodging just before men broke into it looking for her, and took refuge with a family friend. When his house was to be searched, she was hidden at the top of the house with a servant, but her 2-year-old daughter stayed with the family below:]
While I was in this hollow above the attic I heard the most terrible cries from men, women and children who were being murdered in the streets, and having left my child below I fell into the greatest perplexity and almost despair so that, had I not feared God's wrath, I would far sooner have flung myself down than have fallen into the hands of the mob, or have seen my child massacred before my eyes....
But one of my servant girls took the child safely through every peril and got with her to the house of... my maternal grandmother, and there she left her, and my grandmother kept her until her own death. [p.123]
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"By God, drown her for a huguenot."
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[For 10 days Charlotte survived in Paris by hiding in the homes of friends and former servants. Then, disguised as a servant, she boarded a boat:]
On getting into the boat, which was bound for Sens, I found myself in company with two monks and a priest and two shopkeepers and their wives. As we passed Tournelles the boat was stopped and passports demanded. Every one produced theirs but me, and I had none. Thereupon they all began to say I must be a huguenot and that I ought to be drowned.
They made me get out of the boat. I besought them to take me to the house of M. de Voysenon... who was a friend of mine.... He was a staunch catholic and I assured them that he would answer for me. Two soldiers marched me up to the house. It was God's will that they remained standing at the door and let me go up alone. I found poor M. de Voysenon terribly upset and though I was in disguise he would call me Mademoiselle....
[M. de Voysenon tried to help Charlotte, but he was unable to placate the soldiers:]
At that moment an honest woman came by and asked what they wanted to do with me.
"By God, drown her for a huguenot. Can't you see what a fright she's in?" And in truth I thought every moment they would throw me in the river.
"You know me," said the woman. "I'm no huguenot, I go to mass every day but I've been in such a fright for this week past that I'm all in a fever."
"By God," said one of the soldiers, "so are we all. It's given me a scab."
So they put me back in the boat, telling me that if I had been a man I should not have gotten off so cheap....
The whole afternoon the monks and the shopkeepers talked of nothing but of their joy in what they had seen in Paris, and if I said a word they told me I talked like a huguenot. So the only thing I could do was to feign sleep so that there was no occasion for me to speak. [pp.125-26]
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"...study... which we now sometimes worked at together."
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[After two months of hiding, Charlotte finally escaped to Sedan. There she met Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis-Marly, who had gotten out of Paris at the start of the massacre and had been fighting for the Huguenot cause. When he came to Sedan in 1574, he began to visit at the house in which Charlotte was staying:]
...[T]he polished and honest conversation of M. du Plessis never failed to give me pleasure. All the same, having lived alone for the five years of my widowhood, and wishing to go on in the same way of life, I deliberately sounded his intentions by remarking how strange I thought it was for those who were soldiers to think of marrying in such calamitous times. But finding his thoughts far away from marriage and knowing how high his reputation was, I concluded that the frequency of his visits was due to our close neighborhood.
Since I had come to Sedan I had taken great pleasure in happily filling my solitude in the study of arithmetic, painting and other subjects which we now sometimes worked at together.... [pp.140-42]
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"The very same week that we were married M. du Plessis set
out...."
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[The two soon decided to marry, although at first they planned to wait until such time as the "troubles" were over (the "Duke" is Alencon, the French king's brother, now fighting on the Huguenot side):]
But as this time seemed slow in coming M. du Plessis... and others of our friends thought it wiser to get the wedding over. Our contract was therefore drawn up by the notaries of Donchery, our banns were published and we were married on the third of January 1576.
But just as we had fixed the wedding-date news came that the mercenaries raised by the Duke were marching through Lorraine on their way to France, so that the very same week that we were married M. du Plessis set out one morning before daybreak.... [p.156]
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"I managed to arrange for everything."
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[The "troubles" were to continue --- with brief respites --- for another 20 years. The couple eventually got across France to Huguenot-held territory and joined the service of King Henry of Navarre. One daughter was born at the end of 1576, another in 1578 in London where they were asking support from Queen Elizabeth I, and where Philippe wrote the first of the major political works that would make him a leader of the Huguenots. In 1579 the family went to Flanders, where their son was born :]
During all this time I was not free from my share of troubles, my own health bad, he [Philippe] in danger, our family in a foreign land, our private affairs in France in a great mess and bothered with debts both in England and France which we incurred on behalf of public business. But God always gave me patience and comfort and raised up friends and ways and means for me. So that without worrying M. du Plessis, or at least as little as I could, I managed to arrange for everything. [p.176]
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" I wrote it all with my own hand."
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[In 1583 Philippe acted as envoy from Henry of Navarre to Henry III of France. On her way to join her husband in Paris Charlotte gave birth to stillborn twins and nearly died herself; it was shortly after this that she began writing the Memoires:]
I ran the greatest danger of my life and was in the deepest trouble because M. du Plessis could not be with me. I was so sure of death that I made my testament.... But I also wrote him a letter to bid him farewell and to beg him to care for our children. I wrote it all with my own hand, as can be seen among our papers, and I never thought I should have the happiness to see him again. God helped me through all.... [p.191]
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"I had never been afraid to follow M. du Plessis...."
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[Despite her desire to be with her husband, the Paris-bred Charlotte had doubts about going to the very rural Gascony of Henry of Navarre. She attributed it to a premonition:]
...as he [Philippe] longed for us to be together as much as the misery of the age allowed, he decided that I must come to Gascony....
I had never been afraid to follow M. du Plessis to England, to Flanders or anywhere else, but now the thought of Gascony filled me with horror. I would gladly have given up going because of a vision I had had ten years before.... that the Kingdom would be split up and that to save myself from the disaster I fled to Gascony, which was a thing I should never have thought of doing at that date. [p.194]
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"...accepted by several of the largest and best churches."
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[The destruction of the kingdom did not occur, but Charlotte did have a problem at Montauban, the first Gascon town she lived in. This one passage is not from the Memoires but from a lengthy document that she prepared in 1584, apparently to be submitted to the National Synod of the Calvinist church. The pastor of the town, despite repeated requests, would not allow her to receive communion at his church because he did not approve of her Parisian hairstyle. From the opening, written in the proper third-person of legal documents:]
Mlle du Plessis made no change in her way of living whilst she was at Montauban, neither in food, nor dress nor coiffure, behaving exactly as she had done for the past fifteen years during which she has had the happiness of being accepted by several of the largest and best churches in Christendom, notably in Sedan, Germany, England, the Low Countries and France. Everywhere, to God be the glory, many people of worth can testify to the modesty with which she has conducted herself. [p.198]
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"Our poor town... became the refuge...."
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[We don't know whether the hairstyle problem was resolved; in 1585, war began again. Philippe fought; Charlotte gave birth to two daughters who died in infancy. In 1589 Philippe was made governor of the city of Saumur, and the family moved there. After the assassination that year of Henry III, Catholic opposition to the succession of the Protestant Henry of Navarre as Henry IV meant that war would continue:]
And it was our poor town [Saumur] which, in the midst of alarms on all sides, became the refuge of all the princesses and great ladies....
During the whole of this harassing time I can truthfully say that I never saw him [Philippe] free from business for a single moment.... He was the mainstay of all loyal servants of the King [Henry IV] in our parts, who came or wrote to him for advice all day long. [p.141]
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"Some day by his own authority he could settle the quarrel...."
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[But by 1593, Henry IV had decided that "Paris is worth a Mass" (though he apparently never said it):]
...[T]he king made up his mind to make profession of the catholic faith, as everyone knows. The views of M. du Plessis on the subject, which he expressed very freely, can be seen among his papers. In spite of this the King continued to urge M. du Plessis to come to court.... His Majesty was just as friendly and told him about his affairs just as freely as ever. Indeed he shut himself up in his chamber alone with M. du Plessis for three whole hours to... show him exactly what had moved him to take this step.
The long and short of it all was that he had found himself on the very brink of a precipice through the intrigues of some of his own followers.... But besides this he also said that the huguenots had not stood by him as they ought.... [H]e was filled with a belief... that the differences between the two faiths were only important because of the bitterness of the preachers, and that he believed that some day by his own authority he could settle the quarrel between them. [pp.273-74]
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"...he employed him less frequently in his affairs."
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[In 1598, Henry IV would try to "settle the quarrel" by the Edict of Nantes, granting a measure of freedom of religion to the Protestants. Later in the same year, though, Philippe published a book denying the Catholic belief that the Eucharist was the body of Christ; this was perhaps more freedom than Henry had in mind, especially since the king was at that time asking the Pope to annul his first marriage:]
Toward the end of July 1598..., M, du Plessis published his book on the Institution of the Holy Eucharist. It is unbelievable how it upset people, especially the clergy. Some of his friends wanted him to print it anonymously, but, although he was well aware of the hatred he would excite, he considered that the book would be more widely read if he put his name on it and thereby would better serve to throw light on the truth.... The most noise against it was made by the preachers from their pulpits, and especially by those of Paris during Lent, for in that city they never refrain from preaching sedition.
...[A] letter came from Rome in which the Pope complained of the book whose author had dared, although he was one of the King's most intimate servants and councillors, to speak of the Pope as Antichrist. On this certain people pointed out the probable consequences to the King, chiefly because he had every reason to cultivate the Pope's goodwill both to unmarry him as well as to marry him again, matters which lay very close to the King's heart.
In spite of these representations His Majesty never said a word to him about it or showed him any less friendliness, although it may very well have been the reason why he employed him less frequently in his affairs. The only thing His Majesty said was that he was sorry he could not keep him as near to his person as he would have liked. [pp.275-76]
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"And here it is fitting that my book should end."
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[Despite the king's apparent friendliness, 1598 ended most of the Mornays' participation in royal affairs. At Saumur, Philippe continued active in Huguenot matters; Charlotte saw to the marriage of her two eldest daughters. With France at peace (more or less), their son went off to the Low Countries to find a religious war; he found one and was killed --- aged 26 --- in 1605. With this, Charlotte ended the Memoires; she died a year later:]
Happy end for him, born in the Church of God, nourished in His fear, noted for his worth while yet so young, lost in a righteous quarrel and in an honorable action. But for us the beginning of a sorrow which can only end in death, with no other consolation but what the grace of God can give us....
And here it is fitting that my book should end. It was written for him, to describe the pilgrimage of our lives, and now God has willed that his life should end so soon and so sweetly. And truly did I not fear M. du Plessis' grief, whose love for me grows as my sorrow grows, I would not fain survive him. [p.285]
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[This collection includes an essay by Catherine Randall, "Positioning Herself: A Renaissance-Reformation Diptych," which discusses Charlotte de Mornay and Helisenne de Crenne. In the section that treats Mornay's Memoires (pp. 218-28), Randall discusses the ways in which Mornay creates her own textual identity while writing of her husband. Randall provides her own translation of cited passages, including passages not in Lucy Crump's incomplete version above. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Attending to early modern women / edited by Susan D. Amussen
and Adele Seeff; advisory editors, Jane Donawerth ... [et al.]
(Center for renaissance and baroque studies). Newark: University
of Delaware Press; London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University
Presses, c1998. (338 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN721 .A88 1998; ISBN: 0874136504
Papers and summary reports of workshops of a symposium held Apr.
21-23, 1994, at the University of Maryland at College Park. Includes
bibliographical references and index
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[In this article (also available online) Randall looks at the writings of Agrippa d'Aubigne (1532-1630) and at Mornay's Memoires to see both how a Huguenot male writer revealed the constraints under which Huguenot women lived and how Charlotte went about dealing with those constraints. (See the issue's table of contents online.):]
Randall, Catharine. Shouting down Abraham: How sixteenth century
Huguenot women found their voice. Renaissance Quarterly,
50:2 (1997), 411-442.
LC#: CB361 .R45; ISSN: 0034-4338
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[Although it does not deal with Charlotte de Mornay, this
study by R.J. Knecht provides useful historical background on
the period. It is brief and clear and is especially helpful in
reflecting modern research on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
(See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Knecht, R. J. (Robert Jean). The French wars of religion,
1559-1598 (Seminar studies in history). Longman [i.e. London];
New York: Longman, 1996. 2nd ed. (iv, 151 p.: ill., maps)
LC#: DC111 .K54 1996; ISBN: 058228533X
Includes bibliographical references (p. [134]-143) and index
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Updated 02-11-08