Maison Royale de Saint-Louis

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The building of the former educational institution

The Maison Royale de Saint-Louis was a French educational institution in Saint-Cyr near Versailles , in which the daughters of impoverished noble families enjoyed a more extensive and freer upbringing than those which the monasteries gave them. It was the 1675 collected on request from the Sun King to the Marquise and him since October 1683 for left hand wedded Madame de Maintenon by decree in 1684 Louis XIV. Founded and took in 1686 in a project funded by the King and Jules Hardouin-Mansart specifically for the first "Demoiselles de Saint Cyr" were erected for this purpose. The official closure of the home on August 16, 1792 was one of the effects of the French Revolution .

The students also included illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV, as well as Maria Adelaide of Savoy , Duchess of Burgundy and mother of Louis XV.

Madame de Maintenon spent the last years of her life in the Maison Royale de Saint Louis and was buried in Saint-Cyr after her death.

history

In 1682 Madame de Maintenon became aware of Madame de Brinon and Madame de Saint-Pierre, two nuns who devoted themselves to the education of several young girls. She established the two women and their pupils first in Rueil , then in Noisy, before advocating the establishment of a larger institution.

Originally Madame de Maintenon wanted to found a monastery, but the Sun King refused her request on the grounds that there were "already enough monasteries that abuse their rights" . At her instigation, the king founded, by decree, before the great council in 1684 “a house and a community where a significant number of young, from noble families, and in particular from fathers who died in the exercise of their service (...) be maintained free of charge (...) and receive all instructions that may be appropriate to their birth and gender. ” In the following year he commissioned Jules-Hardouin Mansart, in the domain of Saint-Cyr adjacent to the palace gardens of Versailles, the Maison Royale to build. It took fifteen months to build and was completed in June 1686 when Louis XIV donated the domain to the institution. In July, the first pupils were received and Madame de Maintenon was appointed “Institutrice de la Maison Royale de Saint-Louis”, a title that gave her supreme supervision and authority over the house. The first performance of Racine's biblical drama Esther in 1689 was splendidly staged and sparked an extensive controversy, whereupon Athalie was performed two years later with significantly less effort.

Although the institution, after the outbreak of the revolution and the abolition of the feudal system and the privileges in 1789, also accepted bourgeois daughters from 1790, the Legislative National Assembly (French: assemblée nationale législative) decided to close it. This took place officially on August 16, 1792, but the last pupils and the staff did not leave the house until March of the following year.

The Saint-Cyr Military School was housed in the buildings of the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis from 1808 to 1945 .

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Footnotes

  1. ^ “Une maison et communauté où un nombre considérable de jeunes filles, issues de familles nobles et particulièrement des pères morts dans le service (...) soient entretenues gratuitement (...) et reçoivent toutes les instructions qui peuventir à leur naissance et à leur sexe. "

Coordinates: 48 ° 48 '2 "  N , 2 ° 3' 58"  E