MAINTENON, mAN't'-nON', FRANcOISE D'AV MUNE, Marquise de (1635-1719). Second wife of Louis XIV. She was the daughter of Constant and of .Jeanne de Cardilla•. and grand daughter of Theodore Agrippa d'Aubign), the famous Protestant champion. She was born No vember 27, 1635. in the prison at Xiort. where her parents were then incarcerated. On obtaining their release, her parents went to Martinique.
where the father died in 1645. After her fa ther's death, Erancoise returned to France with her mother, after whose death her father's sisters took her under their care, and educated her in a convent, where her conversion to the Roman Catholic religion was accomplished at the age of about fourteen: When she was sixteen, she became acquainted with the poet Searron (q.v.), who. struck by her beauty. intelligence, and help less condition, offered her his hand, or, if she should prefer it, a sum of money sufficient for her entrance into a nunnery. Although Searron was lame and deformed, she chose to marry Lim, and lived in the midst of the intellectual society which frequented the house of the poet. On his death in 1660, she was reduced to great poverty; but through the intervention of Madame de Montespan (q.v.) obtained a pension from the King. In 1669 she was intrusted with the educa tion of the two sons whom Madame de Moines pan had borne to Louis XIV., and in this capac ity attracted the attention of the King by her excellent intellectual gifts, finally supplanting Madame she Montespan in the changeable mon arch's regard. War bet wren the' two women re sulted III the triumph of the new favorite. The King bestowed on her the sum of 100.000 livres.
With Wilkie she bought the estate of Maintenon and in 1675 received the title of marquise. She was not, it is believed. Louis's mistress in the or dinary sense of the term, but from that time to the end of his life she exercised an extraordinary ascendency over him. She had become an ardent Catholic• and succeeded in bringing the Kim) under the influence of religious teachings. She favored the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. but was opposed to the violent persecutions that followed it. Louis privately married her in 16S-I. soon after tire death of the Queen. and. though she was never publicly acknowledged as his wife, her position at Court was quite different from that of her predecessors in the favor of the King. She carefully brought up the children of :Madame she Montespan; and it was at her instigation that Louis legitimatized them. When he died in 1715, she retired to the former Abbey of Saint Cyr, which, at her wish. had been changed thirty years before into a convent for young ladies. Dere she died. April 15. 1719. She received to the end of her life the honors of a King's widow. Consult: Geffroy. Mute. de Main tenon (la•correspandance a set hentique (Paris, NS; : do Mine. de Maintonon (Park, 184S-5g) ; Read. "La petite tille el Agrippa." in the Bulletin h ist oriq cue firm protestantisnte francwis. vols. 36 and 37: Brune tiere, "Mine. de .1Iaintenon," in the Rerue sic g Deus Hawks (Paris. ISS7 I ; Tapham. "Thne. Maintenon," in the Berne Historique (Paris. 1395).