Marie Elisabeth of France

Marie Elisabeth of France

Portrait placed ca. 1577/78.[1]
Born (1572-10-27)27 October 1572
Louvre Palace, Paris
Died 2 April 1578(1578-04-02) (aged 5)
Hôtel d’Anjou, Paris
Burial Basilica of St Denis
House Valois-Angoulême
Father Charles IX of France
Mother Elisabeth of Austria
Religion Roman Catholicism

Marie Elisabeth of France (27 October 1572 – 2 April 1578), was a French princess member of the House of Valois.

She was the only child of King Charles IX of France and Elisabeth of Austria. Her maternal grandparents were Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and Maria of Spain, her paternal grandparents were Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici.

Life

Born at the Louvre Palace, despite her gender she was loved by her parents. Her baptism took place almost four months later, on 2 February 1573 in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Despite the religion issues, her godmother was Queen Elizabeth I of England,[2] who sent William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester as her proxy in the ceremony.

Her father had times of madness, so her grandmother Catherine served as regent. The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre occurred only two months before Marie Elisabeth's birth. When Marie Elisabeth was less than two years of age her father, King Charles IX died and her uncle became Henry III of France. Her mother then returned to Vienna after Maximilian II repaid her dowry, leaving Marie Elisabeth on 25 November 1575, never to see her again.

Marie Elisabeth resided firstly in Amboise and Blois, but later she was moved to Paris, where she died on 2 April 1578 at the Hôtel d’Anjou, apparently of frail health, at the age of six,[3][4][5][6] deeply mourned by the court for her kindness, grace and softness, despite her young age. Eight days later, on 10 April, she was buried in a vault of the Basilica of Saint Denis, next to her father.

On 17 October 1793 her tomb was desecrated by the revolutionaries and the remains were thrown into a common grave. In 1817 she was reinterred in the Basilica's Ossuary.

Ancestry

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Les princesses de France- Les Derniers Valois. Previously was believed that this portrait belonged to her aunt Margaret of Valois, the later Queen of Navarre, but this was disputed in modern times. The authory of the portrait is also controversial, because the traditional author mentioned in several sources, François Clouet died on 22 December 1572, when Marie Elisabeth was only two months old.
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ L’Estoile, Journal, o. c., p. 180.
  4. ↑ Pierre de L’Estoile, Registre-Journal du règne de Henri III, vol. II (1576-1578), Genève: Droz, 1996, p. 180.
  5. ↑ Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, o. c., vol. VIII, p. 248.
  6. ↑ Brantôme, Vie des dames illustres, o. c., II, article XIII, pp. 313-315.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Weir, pp. 272–275.
  8. 1 2 Haag et al., pp. 347–349.

Additional bibliography

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