Louise de Montmorency

Louise de Montmorency (1496–1547) was a French aristocrat and courtier. She served as Première dame d'honneur to the queen of France, Eleanor of Austria, from 1530 to 1535. She also played an important role within patronage and as a supporter of Calvinism.

Life

She was the daughter of Guillaume de Montmorency and Anne Pot and the younger sister of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France.

Louise married her first husband, Ferri de Mailly, in 1511. This marriage produced a daughter, Madeleine de Mailly. Ferry died in 1513, and Louise remarried in 1514 to Gaspard I de Coligny. From her second marriage she had three sons, all of whom played important roles in the first period of the French Wars of Religion: Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon; Gaspard, the Admiral; and François, Seigneur d'Andelot.

In 1530, she was appointed Première dame d'honneur to the new queen, a new court office installed just a few years earlier, which made her responsible for all of the other ladies-in-waiting of the queen and precedence as the first ranked lady-in-waiting of the French royal court. She retired in 1535 and was replaced by Mme de Givry.[1]

She had considerable patronage power independently of her husband,[2][3] and had an important role in spreading the influence of Calvinism in France in the 16th Century.[4]

Family tree

Notes

  1. ↑ Aline Roche, "Une perle de pris" : la maison de la reine Eléonore d’Autriche, Paris, Cour de France.fr, 2010. Article inédit publié en ligne le 1er octobre 2010 (http://cour-de-france.fr/article1646.html).
  2. ↑ "The patronage power of early modern French noblewomen" by Sharon Kettering. The Historical Journal, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 817-841 JSTOR
  3. ↑ "The Montmorencys and the Abbey of Sainte Trinité, Caen: Politics, Profit and Reform" by Joan Davies The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2002), 53 : 665-685 doi:10.1017/S002204690200427X
  4. ↑ "The Development of Protestantism in 16th Century France" by Graham Noble; History Review, 2002 Questia link


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