Maria Mancini was a beautiful young Roman woman who captured the heart of the Sun King. Her father, Baron Lorenzo Mancini, a necromancer and astrologer, had five daughters, whom he planned to marry. But before he could arrange profitable marriages for his children, he died. His wife, Baroness Geronim Mazzarini, a Sicilian noblewoman, brought her daughters to Paris, to the house of her brother - Cardinal Mazarin. There, she hoped to use her influence to arrange daughters marriages.
Why is the personality of Maria Mancini so interesting? What trace in history has this strong woman left? This article presents a biography of Maria Mancini.
Childhood
Maria’s childhood passed in Rome. She was born in the family of an Italian aristocrat on August 28, 1639. Her mother was the sister of Cardinal Giulio Mazarin, who has a gigantic influence in the French court.
As a child, the father of Maria Lorenzo, a lover of astrology, predicted that a sad fate awaits the girl: not only is the ugly girl (little Maria, according to the stories, like a goat), the stars also predict that many misfortunes will happen to her.
After the death of her father, along with her three sisters and mother, Maria was brought (at the invitation of her uncle, Giulio Mazarin) to France. The mother and uncle of the girls hoped that at the court they would be able to profitably attach a girl's brood by organizing successful marriages for them. Life has shown that these matrimonial plans are fully justified.
At the time of her arrival in France, Anna Maria Mancini was thirteen years old. A slender, dark, lively girl did not fit into the standards of beauty accepted in the light, and she was ranked among the ugly. Nothing indicated that in the future this girl would become one of the most beautiful women in the French court and a favorite of King Louis XIV himself.
From Anna Maria to Marie
Maria Mancini began to learn French culture under the guidance of her older sister Laura, the Duchess of Mercer, in the provincial Aix-en-Provence. After arriving in Paris, her uncle placed Mary in a monastery in Faubourg-Saint-Antoine in the hope of improving her behavior and honing her manners. There, surrounded by books and rigorous rituals, Mary spent eighteen months. Imprisonment in the monastery really did her good.
By 1655, she was surrounded by Queen Anne of Austria and was a regular in the fashion salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madame de Sable. At that time, Anna Maria began to be called in the French manner - Marie. This educated girl was distinguished by a special mind and quoted many poetic works. At that time, not only the subtle and inquisitive mind of Maria Mancini blossomed, but also her body. A tall slender girl with huge eyes came to be known as a beauty.
Favorite Sun King
King Louis XIV, a connoisseur of women, at first did not pay much attention to Mary. When she appeared at the court, the king actively courted her sister, the refined beauty Olympia. Louis 14 paid so much attention to Olympia that they started joking at the court, chatting that they already knew who was coming to become the future queen of France. All this so provoked the anger of the mother of the young man, Anna of Austria, that she considered it good to remove Olympia from the court, hastily giving her in marriage. And the king was for a long time at death after a military campaign.
Maria, long in love with Louis, but restraining her feelings, at the sight of the suffering of her beloved, could no longer restrain neither tears nor feelings. Her tear-stained face was the first thing Louis saw when he regained consciousness. This painting touched him so much and was so engraved in his memory that, barely getting better, he hastened to meet Mary. Thus, perhaps the purest sense of the Sun King was born.
When Louis 14 recovered, the lovers spent several happy weeks together. And when the court returned to Paris, it was impossible to separate Louis and Mary. Well-read and clever, Mary had a great influence on the king and, in a sense, made him the Sun King.
Maria, not alien to vanity and ambitiousness, often talked with the king about how happy he had the opportunity to command - and awakened in him the pride of a powerful monarch. It was under the influence of Mary, and in order to impress her, Louis began to pay attention to the study of languages, literature, discovered art for himself and passionately carried away with it.
At that time, Louis and Mary were together all the time. But at the same time, the chaste Mary did not become the king's mistress - she considered such a relationship impossible, not blessed by marriage. In addition, the smart girl understood that, having yielded to the king’s passion, she would remain only one of his nameless favorites forgotten after a week.
Not a king should marry for love
Romantic relations with the young king Louis were initially favored by both Cardinal Mazarin and the king's mother, Anna of Austria. However, politics dominated feelings. Anna of Austria conquered King Louis of the young princess of Savoy. Louis refused this marriage with Margarita, there were no objections from the queen - she was already reflecting on a more successful party. Louis tried to attract Cardinal Mazarini to the side of the lovers, promising him all conceivable benefits if he could arrange their marriage with Maria Mancini. And initially the cardinal succumbed to persuasion. He even negotiated with the Queen Mother, but they failed. Anna of Austria delivered an ultimatum to the Cardinal and declared that in the event of such a “low” marriage, the whole of France would take up arms against King Louis, and she herself would become the head of the indignant. Cardinal Mazarin gave up and removed Maria from the courtyard in La Rochelle. Louis on his knees begged his mother to allow him to marry his lover, but the queen did not flinch.
Parting
Being distant from each other, lovers wrote letters to each other. Louis categorically did not want to marry the Spanish infante. The cardinal’s persuasion was no longer useful. Because Mazarin agreed to talk with a young relative. Having talked with Maria frankly and on equal terms, he managed to explain to her how important this marriage was to France. And the girl accepted it. She sent the last farewell letter to the king - and since then has not answered him. Thus ended this brilliant and hopeless novel.
Princess Colonna
In 1660, the sound of bells foreshadowed the conclusion of an alliance. France celebrated royal marriage with Infanta Maria Theresa. And Cardinal Mazarin, before dying, managed to take care of a relative. He arranged for Marie Mancini to marry Lorenzo Onofrio, the great horse of Naples and the head of the most powerful noble family in Rome.
Rich and handsome, Lorenzo promised to give Mary everything possible. After the death of Mazarin, Louis made a lot of efforts to break the engagement of the girl with the Column. He tried to leave his beloved near him as a lover, since fate did not allow them to get married. But proud Mary refused. And in 1661, Maria went to Italy to her future husband.
Patron and fortune teller
In Rome, the personal life of Maria Mancini seemed to have settled down. Maria and her husband were recognized as influential patrons and inveterate theatergoers. Maria arranged meetings of the French-style fashion show in the Palazzo Colonna. The main theater in Rome during this period was located in the Colonna Palace. In 1669 and 1670, Mary published two astrological almanacs with numerous predictions for worldly and political events.
Did Maria Mancini beat the children? Yes, she gave birth to a wife of three children: Filippo in 1663, Marc Antonio in 1664 and Carlo in 1665.
Marriage is falling apart
After the birth of her third son, Mary broke off marital relations with her husband, and the marriage began to deteriorate. The column began to cheat on his wife. In the end, Maria began to fear that Lorenzo Onofrio was planning to kill her.
Flight and Wandering
On May 29, 1672, she fled from Rome (accompanied by her sister Hortense) and went to the south of France, where she received a letter from Louis XIV in which he guaranteed her protection. However, then, under the influence of Colonna, the king revoked his previous promise of protection and asked Mary to leave France. Maria took refuge for several months at the court of the Duke of Savoy in Chambery, then in 1674 she went to Flanders, where she was imprisoned by agents of her husband, who continued to demand her return to Rome. But she managed to free herself and go to Spain, where she retired to a monastery in Madrid.
Life story
In 1676, a work was published, allegedly representing the life story of Maria Mancini, entitled "Memoirs of M. Mancini Column." Maria was outraged, and she wrote her own story in response, published in 1677 under the title "True Memoirs of M. Mancini, Duchess of Colonna."
Mary remained in Madrid until the death of her husband in 1689. Then she was able to return to Italy. Maria remained in Italy for most of her life, devoting time to the interests of her son, as well as engaging in espionage and political intrigue.
The favorite of King Louis XIV, Maria Mancini, passed away in May 1715. At the time of her death (May 11), she was in the city of Pisa. Her beloved king lived a little longer. He met his death a few months after the death of Mary.
Maria's legacy
Maria Mancini has long been of interest to historians and novelists solely as the favorite of Louis XIV. Only recently she began to be studied as the author of memoirs and one of the first women in France to publish her life story.
Her astrological almanacs show her familiarity with medieval Arabic works, as well as Kepler and Cardano. In addition to the printed works, Anna Maria Mancini left an extensive correspondence, which was kept in the archives of the Colonna family in the Santa Scholastic library in Subiaco, Italy. Her letters, written by Lorenzo Onofrio and her friends and relatives after she left Rome, provide rich and unique material for studying the practice of marriage and divorce in the last decades of the seventeenth century.