MAINTENON, FRANÇOISE D'AUBIGNÉ, Marchioness of. - Favourite and (from 1684) morganatic wife of Louis XIV, born at Niort on 17 Nov. 1635 of Constant d’Aubigné, son of Théodore Agrippae and then in prison for counterfeiting. Educated in the Calvinist faith by her aunt Mme de Villette, she converted to Catholicism after the latter’s death.
Lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Lesdiguières, in 1632 she married the poet Scarron and shone at the centre of an important literary circle. Widowed in 1660, she devoted herself to the education of the illegitimate children that Louis XIV had had by the Hendincourt, receiving in compensation the marquessate (1673). She then rose to favour with the King, on whose religious policy she exercised a certain influence (notably in the struggle against Quietism). Thanks to her standing, she was able to found at St-Cyr a boarding-school for noble girls of limited means (1686); for the winter performances at that school (1689–91) Racine composed Esther and Athalie. The pedagogical approach there, while becoming stricter, also grew more attuned to the needs of women’s lives, being based on the serene principle not of stifling but of rightly directing nature. At St-Cyr she retired after the death of her lord and there she died on 15 Apr. 1719.
She left a vast correspondence, collected in several volumes (all incomplete) by the mid-18th and 19th centuries.