Claude Lancelot ~ Jansenist

He was born on 1615-16 in Paris and died on April 15, 1695 in Quimperle, France.  He was Jansenist who introduced a new method of teaching languages.  In 1637 he studied under Abbot Jean Du Vergier de Haurance, one of the fathers of Jansenism, the condemned doctrine advocating that there is no freedom of the will and that redemption is not universal.  Lancelot became one of the first hermits of Port Royal, the Jansenist centre near Versailles, Fr. From 1645/46 he taught in the Petites Ecoles, Les Granges, Fr., where the celebrated dramatist Jean Racine was among his pupils.  He wrote Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre in langue latine (1644) and Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre la langue grecque (1655), in which the rules of grammar are explained in French rhymes.  His famous Jardin des raciness grecques (1657); “Garden of Greek Roots”), an alphabetical vocabulary of Greek words with French translation in rhyming verse form, was used for two centuries.  His Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement et en peu de temps la langue italienne, and Methode de plain-chant appeared in 1660.

During the persecution of Jansenism, the Petites Ecoles was dispersed, and Lancelot served as mediator between Port Royal and the pope (1644-69).  From 1699 to 1672 he tutored the young princes de Conti and completed his Memoires (published posthumously in 1738)/  je joined the Cistercian abbey of Saint Cyran but for being a Jansenist was exiled (1679/80 to Saint Croix Abbey, Quimperle.  L. Cognet’s Claude Lancelot appeared in 1950.

Reference:  New Encyclopedia Britannica

Marie-Antoinette – Queen Consort of King Louis XVII (2 of 2)

Queen Consort of King Louis XVII

Good morning everyone.   This is the second part of the article and it will be good if you read the first article before reading.  Let me continue the second part now ….

As a result, she became the main target of the popular agitators, who attributed to her the celebrated and callous remark concerning the poor:  “If they have no bread, let them eat cake!”  in October 1789 popular pressure compelled the royal family to return from Versailles, to Paris, where they became hostages of the Revolutionary movement.  Six months later Marie-Antoinette opened secret communication with the Comte de Mirabeau, a prominent member of the National  Assembly who hoped to restore the authority of the crown.  Nevertheless, her mistrust of Mirabeau prevented the King from following his advice.  After assistance to a group of émigrés (nobles in exile).  They arranged for the King and Queen to escape from Paris on the night of June 20, but Revolutionary forces apprehended the royal couple at Varennes (June 25) and escorted them back to Paris.

Marie-Antoinette then attempted to shore up the rapidly deteriorating position of the crown by opening secret negotiations with Antoine Barnave, leader of the constitutional monarchist faction in the Assembly.  Barnave persuaded the King to publicly accept the new constitution (September 1791); but the Queen undermined Barnave’s position by privately urging her brother, the Holy Roman emperor Leopold ll, to conduct a counter-revolutionary crusade against France.  Leopold avoided according to her demands.  After France declared war on Austria in April 1792, Marie-Antoinette’s continuing intrigues with the Austrians further enraged the French.  Popular hatred of the Queen provided impetus to the insurrection that overthrew the monarchy on Aug. 10, 1792.

Marie-Antoinette spent the remainder of her life in Parisian prisons.  Louis XVl was executed on orders from the National Convention in January 1793, and in August the Queen was put in solitary confinement in the Conciergerie.  Despite her sufferings, her courage remained unshaken.  She was brought before the Revolutionary tribunal on Oct. 14, 1793, and guillotined two days later.

Louis-Joseph, the first son of Louis XVl and Marie-Antoinette, died in June 1789; their second son, who became the titular king of France (as Louis XVII) upon Louis XVl’s execution, died in a Parisian prison in June 1795. – The New Encyclopedia Britannica

 

Marie – Queen of France

Consort of King Louis XV of France

Marie, in Polish Maria Leszczynska (b. June 23, 1703, Breslau, Silesia, now Wroclaw, Pol.—d, June 24, 1768, Versailles, Fr.), queen consort of King Louis XV of France (ruled 1715-74).  Although she had no direct influence on French politics, her Polish dynastic connections involved France in a European conflict that resulted in the eventual annexation of Lorraine by France.

Marie’s father, Stanislaw I of Poland in 1704.  After he was deposed in 1709, he settled with Marie at Wissembourg.  In the hope of quickly obtaining an heir to the French throne, Lois XV’s chief minister, the Duc de Bourbon, betrothed the 15-year-old king to Marie in 1725.

The marriage took place at Fontainebleau on September 5, Marie bore Louis 10 children between 1727 and 1737, but only one of her two sons—the dauphin Louis—survived infancy.  In 1733 France entered the War of the Polish Succession against Austria in support of Stanislaw’s claims to the Polish throne; Stanislaw was made duke of Lorraine but the treaty that ended the conflict (1738).  Meanwhile, Louise XV, having lost interest in his queen, was lavishing his attentions on a succession of mistresses.  Marie’s marital unhappiness was intensified by the death of the Dauphin in 1765.  In accordance with the treaty of 1738, Lorraine became a part of France when her father died in the following year.  A. Leroy’s Marie Leczinska appeared in 1940. – The New Encyclopedia Britannica

Marie-Therese Lamballe – Louise de Savoie-Carignan, Princess De

 

Marie-Therese

Lamballe, Mari-Therese-Louise de Savoie-Carignan, princesse de 

(Birth: September 8, 1749, Turin, Piedmont, now in Italy—Death: September 3, 1792, Paris), the intimate companion of Queen Marie-Antoinette of France; she was murdered by a crowd during the French Revolution for allegedly participating in the Queen’s counter revolutionary intrigues. 

The daughter of Prince Louis-Victor de Savoie-Carignan, she was married in 1767 to Louis-Alexander-Stanislas de Bourbon, prince de Lamballe, who died the following year.  She went to live at the royal court at Versailles upon the marriage (1770) of the dauphin Louis to Marie-Antoinette, and, by the time Louis ascended the throne as King Louis XVI in 1774, Marie-Antoinette had singled her out as a confidante.  The following year she became superintendent of the Queen’s household. 

In October 1789, several months after the outbreak of the ‘revolution, Mme Lamballe accompanied the royal family to Paris, where her salon became the meeting place for Marie-Antoinette’s secret intrigues with royalist sympathizers of the revolutionary National Assembly.  Mme Lamballe was also popularly suspected of abetting the Queen’s private dealings with France’s Austrian enemies.  After the overthrow of the monarchy of August 10. 1792, she was imprisoned with the Queen in the Temple prison but was transferred to La Force prison on August 19.  Having refused to take an oath against the monarchy, Mme Lamballe was on September 3 delivered over to the fury of the populace, who cut off her head and carried it on a pike before the windows of the Queen. 

A.  Sorel’s La Princesse de Lamballe was published in 1933. 

 

Visual source:  allposters