Michel de Marillac
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Louise de Marillac
Marillac, Louise de (1591–1660), widow, foundress of the Sisters of Charity. Born of an aristocratic country family, Louise was educated by nuns at Poissy and by her own father, especially after her mother's early death. Her father died when she was only fifteen; although she experienced some attraction towards the cloister, she married Antony Le Gras. They had one son and lived happily together for twelve years. He died in 1625, although nursed most devotedly by Louise. Certain that she wanted to devote herself entirely to God's service, but uncertain in what way, she met Vincent de Paul, who became her director. At this time he was organizing devout, wealthy ladies into helping the poor and the sick in often appalling conditions. It soon became clear that many of the ladies were unfitted to cope with the actual conditions. The practical work of nursing the poor in their own homes, caring for neglected children and dealing with often rough husbands and fathers, was best accomplished by women of similar social status to the principal sufferers. The aristocratic ladies were better suited to the equally necessary work of raising money and dealing with correspondence. Vincent, however, recognized Louise as a woman of clear mind, great courage, endurance, and self‐effacement. He chose her to train and organize girls and widows, mainly of the peasant and artisan classes, for the service of the sick and poor. In 1633 four candidates started work in Louise's Paris home in the Rue des Fosses‐Saint‐Victor. From this humble beginning grew the world‐famous institute of the Sisters of Charity. Vincent had not intended to found a religious order. The sisters, he said, should consider themselves simply as Christian women devoted to the sick and the poor: ‘your convent will be the house of the sick, your cell a hired room, your chapel the parish church, your cloister the city streets or the hospital wards, your enclosure obedience, your grill the fear of God, your veil modesty.’ Until 1642 they took no vows at all; to this day they take vows for a year only, which may, however, be renewed year after year until death. Louise's Sisters took charge of the Hôtel‐Dieu hospital in Paris, of orphanages, and even of schools; Louise herself nursed those ill with the plague in Paris and reformed a neglected hospital at Angers. Her son, married and with a small family, visited her at the end of her life in 1660. She died the same year, exhorting her Sisters to be diligent in serving the poor ‘and to honour them like Christ himself’. She was canonized in 1934. Her Sisters have always been held in high repute and have made foundations in all parts of the world. Their distinctive habit, a grey wool tunic with a large headdress or cornette of white linen, was the usual dress of Breton peasant women of the 17th century and later. In recent times it has been replaced by dress more in accordance with the sartorial customs of the 20th century. Feast: 15 March.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- P. Coste, S. Vincent de Paul et les Dames de la Charité (1937)
- J. Calvet, Louise de Marillac: a Portrait (Eng. tr. 1959)
- other Lives by E. de Broglie (Eng. tr. 1933)
- M. V. Woodgate (1942)
- M. Flinton (1957)
- B.L.S., iii. 150–5
Gale Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World:
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Michel De Marillac
Marillac, Michel De (1560–1632), French political and religious figure. Scion of an old noble family from the Auvergne with a long history of service to the ducs de Bourbon and then the French monarchy, Marillac was born in Paris on the eve of the Wars of Religion. His father, superintendent of the royal finances in 1569, died in 1573, and Marillac was raised by an uncle. He married Nicola (Marguerite) Barbe de la Fortune in 1587 and had six children with her; after her death in 1600, he married Marie de Saint-Germain in 1601.
Law studies and practice as a barrister prepared Marillac for an office as councillor in the Paris parlement in 1586. His active participation in the Catholic League for several years after 1589 might have destroyed his career, but some deft footwork in 1593 enabled him to draw a discreet veil over it. With the consent of the new king, Henry IV (ruled 1589–1610), Marillac became a master of requests in 1595. In this capacity he worked mainly as an agent of the royal council, embarking on numerous missions to the provinces and carrying out judicial and financial commissions, especially under Chancellor Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery (1607–1624), an experience that enduringly shaped his view of government. When Marillac resigned as master of requests in 1612, Sillery made him councillor of state, a post in which he specialized in financial affairs. This advancement was supported by Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), the queen regent during the minority of Louis XIII (ruled 1601–1643), to whom the Marillac extended family was already attached by ties of marriage and household service.
These personal and political connections dovetailed with the religious ones that were central to the so-called Dévot movement that emerged after the religious wars. Marillac was an emblematic figure of the movement. He apparently wished at various moments to abandon his career for the religious life. After 1602 he was closely associated with the influential Acarie circle, dedicated to pursuing spiritual renewal and reform. Some of the most significant religious developments of the time, such as the introduction into France of the Spanish reformed Carmelites (1604) and the foundation by Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629) of the French Oratory (1611), were spearheaded by the circle. Marillac used his professional position to enable these and numerous other religious foundations to negotiate the legal and financial obstacles to their development. His personal combination of scholarship and religion led him to publish his own translations of the Imitation of Christ (1621) and the Psalms and Canticles (1625).
Marillac's career exemplified the myriad links between religion and politics under Louis XIII, and they propelled him toward higher office in royal service, especially once Marie de Médicis recovered her political influence during the early 1620s. She and Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) enabled Marillac to serve as finance minister from August 1624 until June 1626, when he moved sideways to the more congenial post of keeper of the seals, whose responsibilities far transcended judicial affairs. His activity as keeper was the culmination of his long career as a magistrate, which had made him acutely aware of the need to overhaul and improve internal government, as the Estates-General (1614) and successive Assemblies of Notables (1617, 1626) had demanded. This led him to envisage reform from above via comprehensive royal ordinances. With its 461 articles, the vast Code Michau of 1629 (nicknamed for Mirallac) was largely but not exclusively his doing. It codified numerous existing laws and focused mainly on religious, judicial, and financial reforms. Simultaneously Marillac's ministerial responsibilities convinced him of the corruption of government. His efforts at reform, which involved curbing the powers of the parlements and provincial Estates, earned him a reputation as being even more authoritarian than Richelieu. However, the real differences between them were in temperament and emphasis.
The political consensus that brought Richelieu and Marillac into office broke down once the Protestant revolts ended in 1629. Marillac emerged as the principal Dévot critic of Richelieu's anti-Habsburg strategy. Apart from rejecting Protestant alliances, Marillac feared that war, by perpetuating disorder and preventing badly needed reforms, would weaken France further. Marie de Médicis rallied to this position in 1630 and agreed to demand Richelieu's removal from office. Instead, Marillac lost out in the prolonged infighting that erupted in the Day of the Dupes (10–11 November 1630). Disgraced and arrested, Marillac was kept in detention in Châteaudun, where he died in August 1632. He was luckier than his half brother, who was executed after a show trial on trumped-up charges. Much remains mysterious about the wellsprings of the career of a man whose only biographer, his admiring disciple Lefebvre de Lezeau, reduced his life to an instantiation of religious virtue and high-minded self-denial, a man who was seemingly devoid of all ambition yet who might well have replaced Richelieu as chief minister to Louis XIII.
Bibliography
Bailey, Donald A. "The Family and Early Career of Michel de Marillac (1560–1632)." In Society and Institutions in Early Modern France, edited by Mack P. Holt, pp. 170–189. Athens, Ga., and London, 1991. The only modern study of Marillac, well documented.
Major, J. Russell. Representative Government in Early Modern France. New Haven, 1980. Attempts to place Marillac in political context.
—JOSEPH BERGIN
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Michel de Marillac
Michel de Marillac (Paris, October 1563 – Château de Châteaudun, 7 August 1632) was a French jurist and counsellor at the court of Louis XIII of France, one of the leading dévots. His uncle was Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne and a member of the king's council, the Conseil du Roi. A member of the circle of Marie de' Medici, he was arrested after the Queen Mother's flight in 1631 and died in prison.
Michel de Marillac was Minister of Justice in 1626. He was appointed Superintendent of Finances on 27 August 1624, with Jean Bochart. His advice to Cardinal Richelieu advocated conservative policies abroad and limited involvement in northern Italy during the War of the Mantuan Succession, while France was occupied with suppressing Huguenots at home and countering Habsburg influence in the drawn-out Bourbon-Habsburg wars that were not resolved until 1659. His main concern was encouraging economic growth, as a balance to the threats posed by popular unrest in France and the resistance to new forms of taxation to support the war. His key proposals reforming the legal administration were embodied in the Code Michau, published in 1629, which synthesised in 430 article headings texts adopted by the États-général of 1614 and the Assemblies of Notables, 1617–26, embracing every aspect of government.
Marillac was entrusted with the position of Keeper of the Seals (garde des sceaux, a Chancellor without the title)[1], after Chancellor d'Aligre was disgraced, in June 1626, compromised by his fidelity to Gaston d'Orléans.
He gained increasing influence with Marie de' Medici. After the Day of the Dupes, 11 November 1630, Richelieu had Marillac tried by a court of hand-picked judges; he died in captivity in 1632.
Marillac's brother, who had served as a general of the French army in Italy during the War of the Mantuan Succession, was beheaded that same year. Michel was the guardian of Louis' natural daughter Louise de Marillac, who became a nun, was a follower of Saint Vincent de Paul, with whom she founded the Daughters of Charity on 29 November 1633.
Notes
References
- Dictionnaire des surintendants et contrôleurs généraux des finances: Michel de Marillac
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Oxford Dictionary of Saints
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Copyright © David Hugh Farmer 1978, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2003, 2004. All rights reserved.
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Gale Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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